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Leading online poker room BodogLife.com has launched a series of special proposition bets for the upcoming 2009 World Series Of Poker (WSOP) taking place in Las Vegas beginning on July 3.

There are 20 separate bets on offer from BodogLife.com involving this year’s WSOP with one of the most popular sure to be picking which former Main Event Champion will last longer in 2009’s showcase event. Peter Eastgate, Phil Hellmuth and Chris Ferguson are currently listed at odds of 9/2 followed by Doyle Brunson at 11/2. Past champs Joe Hachem, Greg Raymer, Dan Harrington, Huck Seed and Scotty Nguyen are listed at 7/1 followed by Jamie Gold at 10/1 and Jerry Yang and Chris Moneymaker at 16/1.

For the ladies, BodogLife.com is offering odds on which female player will last longer in the Main Event with Jennifer Harman and Kathy Liebert currenty in the lead at 5/1. Annie Duke is at 7/1 alongside Cindy Violette, Isabella Mercier, Clonie Gowen, Evelyn Ng, Liz Lieu, Mimi Tran, Katja Thater and Vanessa Russo while Jennifer Tilly and Maria Ho are 10/1.

BodogLife.com is also taking bets on which poker author will take the most money during this year’s tournament with 1989 WSOP Main Event champion Phil Hellmuth currently in the lead at odds of 5/2. Canadian player Daniel Negreanu is in second at 3/1 followed by the legendary Doyle Brunson at 7/2. Other notable players on the list include Barry Greenstein at 5/1, TJ Cloutier at 6/1, Phil Gordon at 10/1 and David Sklansky and Mike Caro at 12/1.

One of the more interesting bets involves Scotty Nguyen and whether he will hit his stated target of at least four million dollars in combined winnings at this year’s WSOP. The 1998 WSOP Main Event champion revealed last week that he would retire immediately if he failed to meet this special goal and BodogLife.com is offering odds of 24/1 that the Vietnam-born player will succeed.

 

German Internet-lottery company Tipp24 AG announced Friday that it is laying off 139 of its 154 employees, effective as late as Tuesday. The layoffs, it said, are due to the second stage of Germany’s Interstate Gaming Treaty, which forbids companies other than state-sponsored monopolies from operating online.

The second stage of the law went into effect on Jan. 1. The new restrictions also prohibit non-monopoly firms from using the Internet to offer their services to those in other EU member states from within Germany.

According to Tipp24 AG Executive Chairman Jens Schumann, German lawmakers’ claim that the new restrictions will help problem gamblers is a ruse.

"It seems more likely that the state treaty is designed to eliminate private companies under the pretext of preventing addiction," Schumann said.

He went on to explain how deep cuts in the company’s payroll are counterproductive economically: At the same time as Germany is trying to create and save jobs, he said, “It is also destroying the jobs of a healthy, mid-size company with a law which [sic] contravenes EU legislation.”

Many of the jobs, Schumann said, will be moved to the U.K., where gambling restrictions are more lax. Only 15 people will continue to work at the company’s headquarters in Hamburg.

“Tipp24 AG transferred around 130 million euros in tax revenue to (Germany’s) federal states last year alone,” Schumann said. “Controlling addiction would be much more effective via the Internet than at the lottery kiosk. We will therefore continue to take legal action against the new state treaty."

phill.provance@gamblingplanet.org

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American Idol betting odds fluctuate so much through the course of a season, that it is tough to get a grasp on who will be favored from week to week. This year, Danny Gokey has been the favorite since the live competition has begun.

That will all change tonight when the top nine contestants hit the stage. Adam Lambert had the best week of all the Idol’s last week according to the judges, and now he has become the betting favorite. His odds to win the competition dropped to +110.

Gokey did not fall completely out of favor with the odds makers. He is still the second choice, with odds of +250. The two of the top favorites have been the same from the beginning of the season.

There are only three women left in the competition. Allison Iraheta has the best current odds of any of the women at +500. Lil Rounds, who previously was the ladies favorite, has dropped to +1000, and the long shot of the women is still Megan Joy Corkrey at +6000.

As for the rest of the male vocalists, Matt Giraud has odds of +1000 after a strong performance last week. Even though the judge’s thought he was great, he was in the bottom three, but managed to survive.

Anoop Desai has managed to stay alive after almost being eliminated early in the competition. Kris Allen has flown under the radar but is starting to become one of the popular Idol’s. They are both at +2000. Scott MacIntyre is now the long shot on the male side at +4000.

Friday, Virginia consulting firm Cigital released the findings of a study it says proves poker is a “game of skill." The firm analyzed over 103 million raked hands at PokerStars.com and found that players with the best cards folded before 75 percent of hands went into showdowns.

The firm collected data for the study from Dec. 1, 2008 to Jan. 2, 2008 and only recorded the outcomes of hands in which the stakes were are least $.10-$.20. Paco Hope, one of the study’s authors, explained that because most of the hands did not go into showdowns a player’s skill, not the quality of his hands, determined whether he won.

“If the hand didn’t have a showdown, the cards didn’t pick the winner in that game,” Hope told CardPlayer.com. “There’s the public perception that poker is essentially a game of random cards. The study really goes to the heart of that by looking at real numbers, at what do we actually see on online poker — which is pretty representative of poker generally because there’s the same rules.”

Some, however, question the validity of the study, pointing out that PokerStars.com hired Citigal to conduct it. Peter Winkler, a Dartmouth College mathematician who has studied poker, is one expert charging that the firm should have examined other facets of the game.

“Who folds is determined to a huge degree by the value of the cards!” Winkler said. “The player who picks up A, A and stays in while the rest fold is the lucky one; the player who picks up 3, 2 and folds before the 3, 3, 2 flop comes down is the unlucky one. That the A, A player wins with an ultimately inferior hand does not prove poker is a game of skill. If anything, it shows the opposite: An unskillful player holding the 3, 2 hole cards might have stayed in.”

Still, those at Citigil seem undeterred by such criticisms.

“I don’t care who won or why they won,” Hope said. “What I care about is the decisions they made. The fact they decided to fold indicates it was decisions that determined the hand.”

phill.provance@gamblingplanet.org

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The Associated Press reported Monday that the sheriff’s office of Nacogdoches County, Tex., arrested eight people Saturday in connection with operating an illegal casino. The casino, a trailer off FM 225 in Nacogdoches, housed 71 “eight-liner” slot machines, which police confiscated during the raid.

The news comes as the Texas state legislature considers a bill by Sen. Joe Menendez to legalize raked Texas Holdem games. If passed, the bill could have far-reaching effects on online gaming in Texas and the rest of the U.S.

According to the Nacogdoches Sheriff’s office, 50 people face charges as a result of the raid. In addition to the eight people arrested, deputies issued 42 others Class C misdemeanor citations, which carry a maximum fine of $500, for patronizing the casino. Authorities also said they confiscated some $15,000 in illegal earnings.

Nacogdoches authorities said it is unclear if the people arrested were operating the casino. Those arrested are due in court as early as Tuesday.

phill.provance@gamblingplanet.org

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The recent non-binding vote in the EU Parliament on the Schaldemose own-initiative report has resulted in some critical fallout for Malta’ 5 MEPs.

The non-binding vote approved the concept that the regulation of online gambling in Europe should be left to the individual member states instead of hewing to a pan-European set of regulations. The vote effectively suggests that for Internet gambling, the broad EU principle of free movement of goods and services between member nations should not apply.

An alternative report prepared by British MEP Malcolm Harbour was defeated, and it is the Malta MEPs treatment of this report which has triggered the ire of the Malta Remote Gaming Council.

Harbour’s report was more in tune with the Malta government’s official line on Internet gambling, arguing that it is simply another form of EU economic activity and should therefore be subject to the principle of free movement of goods and services between member nations, to which the European Commission currently works.

“Malta prefers the present internal market rules to regulate the gaming industry over national regulation as some member states have, in the past, tried to stifle competition through their laws,” the Times of Malta remarks.

The newspaper reports that the EU debate had the potential to impact the 4000 Maltese residents working in the online gambling industry on the Mediterranean island, and the MRGC feels it should therefore have been very closely followed throughout by local MEPs.

Instead, says the Council, the four MEPs did not bother to sign as initially supporting Harbour’s alternative report - a document that was in the interest of the island’s industry, and two of them did not attend the session when the crucial vote was taken at all.

Malta Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil was the only one to escape the Council’s disappointment as the sole Malta MEP who followed the dossier with interest and made sure to lend his support throughout.

Although Malta Nationalist MEPs David Casa and Dr Busuttil and Labour MEP Louis Grech voted with the minority and supported the Harbour alternative, the other two Labour MEPs, John Attard Montalto and Glenn Bedingfield, were absent and did not vote.

However, what seems to have most irritated the MRGC is not the plenary vote itself but what happened before, observes The Times.

Before going to plenary Harbour’s report needed at least 40 signatures to be accepted. Although lobbied to do so, only Busuttil of the five Maltese MEPs took the initiative to sign it and lend a helping hand to Harbour.

“This is totally unacceptable,” Alan Alden, general secretary of the MRGC, told the newspaper.

“We just cannot understand how only three of the five Maltese MEPs voted for the alternate resolution submitted. Furthermore, we noted that only Simon Busuttil actually endorsed the alternate resolution initially,” said Alden.

“Malta is always trying to attract investment and needs to do all in its power to protect the remote gaming industry, which accounts for six per cent of GDP, directly employs 2000 people and indirectly about another 2000. We worry about a factory with 150 workers closing down but then ignore an opportunity to do something for this industry. It is totally unacceptable to the council and we intend to pursue this matter further,” Alden stressed.

Asked for their reaction, the four MEPs who did not initially sign the Harbour report said they could not sign because they were not physically present in Brussels when Harbour asked for their signatures.

Asked why they did not vote during the plenary, Attard Montalto and Bedingfield said they missed the session for different circumstances. Attard Montalto was “indisposed” and did not travel to Strasbourg and Bedingfield said he was caught in a flight delay and did not make it on time for the Strasbourg voting session.

Associated Press reports that Delaware legislators anxious to raise more cash for state coffers by legitimising sportsbetting now face opposition from the powerful National Football League and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

A delegation visited Dover this week to lobby against Delaware Governor Jack Markell’s proposal to re-authorize sports gambling in the state.

The NCAA officials’ starting gambit was a threat to ban all playoff games in Delaware if the state legalises sports betting, and NFL representatives made their opposition known in a brief meeting with Markell on Thursday this week.

“I welcomed them to Delaware and they told me that they hoped I would reconsider my position,” Markell told an Associated Press reporter. “I told them I think we’re coming from different places.”

The proposed sports betting lottery driven by Markell is expected to generate about $55 million for the cash-strapped state in its first year if it clears the General Assembly.

By virtue of a brief and unsuccessful experiment with a sports lottery in the late 1970s, Delaware is one of only four states, along with Nevada, Montana and Oregon, grandfathered under a 1992 federal law that bans sports gambling.

Delaware’s status as the only state east of the Mississippi River that can offer sports betting could provide an economic buffer against slot machine competition in neighboring Pennsylvania and Maryland.

The NFL, which has several teams in neighboring states, has long opposed sports betting, saying it would tarnish the game’s image and could lure youngsters into gambling, though the lottery would be restricted to people 21 and over.

NCAA officials also threatened that a sports betting lottery would make Delaware off-limits for any post-season championship events. NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said NCAA policy prohibits the staging of any session of an NCAA championship in any metropolitan area where legal sports wagering is allowed.

State officials counter this by noting that the sports betting proposal would prohibit betting on Delaware teams. They argue that the NCAA’s position seems inconsistent and point to the annual Las Vegas Bowl football game, and skiing championship events that have been held in Nevada.

“I don’t know if it’s retaliatory or just a bluff, but it strikes me as a little overreaching on their part,” said Markell’s chief of staff, Tom McGonigle.

McGonigle said the state has not ruled out a challenge to the NCAA policy.

Osburn, the NCAA spokeswoman, said there has been no inconsistency. She said the Las Vegas Bowl is not an NCAA event, and a skiing event held in Nevada in 2004 took place before the anti-sports wagering policy had been extended from men’s basketball to all NCAA sports.

Osburn said the decision to use Reno, Nev., as a site for this year’s West Regional skiing championships was “an administrative oversight on our part.”

Hackers protesting the secret censorship blacklists of the Australian government exposed by Wikileaks caused the online censorship board’s web page to be taken briefly offline Thursday, reports the Wired.com blog.

Whilst Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was doing the talkshow rounds trying to rationalise the secretive censorship moves of the government’s Australian Media and Communications Authority, the hackers hijacked the agency’s website to protest revelations that the government planned to require ISPs to block public access to thousands of websites, many of which are innocuous.

The hackers executed a little censorship of their own, replacing the AMCD public message with their own tongue-in-cheek version that started: “We are part of an elaborate deception from China to control and sheepify the nation…”

The federal government’s actions have triggered protests across Australia, with critics slamming it as censorship. Internet providers argue that the sort of filtering being considered by the government could slow browsing speeds, and point out that illegal material such as child pornography can be traded on peer-to-peer networks or chats, which would not be covered by the filter.

Several Internet providers are conducting trials of the filter, but three of Australia’s biggest ISPs have withdrawn from the trial.

Recently eyebrows were raised when Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet’s CEREUS network’s Bad Beat Jackpot hit over half a million. This six-figure jackpot was one of the largest seen online and promised someone who lost a hand with quad eights or better a life-changing sum.

“Another life-changing jackpot is about to be hit at the online poker tables,” stated Annie Duke, UltimateBet’s Cardroom Consultant at the time. “One lucky Texas Hold’ em player is about to win in a day what most people make working several years. It’s unbelievable.”

It was even more unbelievable when the bubble finally burst – EMILIE14’s straight flush lost to PEACE2UALL’s Royal Flush, showering players with a total jackpot of $807,543.95.

For his loss at the table, EMILIE14 secured $270,843.03. The winner of the hand left the table $132,904.14 richer and two other players who were seated in the hand each took home $2,678.25 in cash. 57 other players each pocketed $1,678.25 for no other reason than they happened to be playing at Bad Beat Jackpot Tables with the same stakes.

 

Dow Jones business news service reports that the 27 nation European Union trade bloc has announced the completion of its 12 month investigation into US anti-online gambling practices, reaching the conclusion that the US government is in breach of international trade rules.

The investigation was undertaken at the behest of major European gambling groups working through the Remote Gaming Association, which claimed that US laws and enforcement practices discriminated against European online gambling businesses and individuals and were in breach of World Trade Organisation rules.

The finding is a further setback for the Americans, who have lost a succession of disputes brought against them by the Antigua and Barbuda government in the WTO based on US anti-online gambling laws.

EU investigators said that U.S. moves to bar European online gambling companies from operating in the U.S. constitute an obstacle to trade despite the US Trade Representative unilaterally removing gambling from its WTO trade obligations last year.

Although proceedings at the World Trade Organisation would be justified, the investigating team recommended that the E.U should seek a negotiated solution with the U.S. government on the matter, the report said.

E.U. Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton said: “It is for the U.S. to decide how best to regulate Internet gambling in its market, but this must be done in a way that fully respects WTO obligations.”

“I am hopeful that we can find a swift, negotiated solution to this issue,” she added.