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Collegiate sports are fun to watch. I love my Virginia Cavaliers; while I don’t get too hung up on the exploits of kids half my age (my wife would argue this), I enjoy cheering for my alma mater’s student-athletes and I do take a little pride in seeing them get better and better throughout their… Read more »
The important poker people were in Beverly Hills last Thursday receiving their shimmering trophies at the 3rd Annual GPI American Poker Awards. It was kind of like Sunday night’s Oscars except nobody posted about it on Facebook and David Peters was correctly announced as GPI Player of the Year on the first try. Many of… Read more »
As we told you on Tuesday, there has been a lot of talk in the past week about an incident on BetOnline.com in which a live blackjack dealer appeared to cheat a player. The site has responded by saying it is investigating the incident; it has also jettisoned the provider that had been running the… Read more »
People in the United States who are 18-years old can drive, can purchase cigarettes, can go to war, can vote…18-year olds are considered adults. There are very few things 18-year olds are not allowed to do. They can’t be President of the United States (though an exception was made recently to allow a child in… Read more »
Time to pack it in. The only hurdle left for computers to overcome in order to take over the Earth is sentience. This week, the Libratus Poker AI, developed by Tuomas Sandholm and Noam Brown at Carnegie Mellon University, completed a total destruction of four professional poker players in heads-up No-Limit Hold’em. This comes just… Read more »
The Las Vegas Sands Corp., headed by online poker’s top enemy, Sheldon Adelson, has agreed to pay a $6.96 million criminal penalty to settle a federal case in which the government was investigating the company’s potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The issue at hand stems back nearly seven years to 2010,… Read more »
On Monday, Antigua and Barbuda Governor-General Sir Rodney Williams announced that legislation will soon be introduced that will allow his country to collect on the judgment awarded to it by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in response to the United States’ negative stance on internet poker years ago. Antigua and Barbuda has been issuing online… Read more »
The NFL is down to its final four teams: the Pittsburgh Steelers face the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game and MY Green Bay Packers will head down to Atlanta to take on the Falcons in the NFC Championship Game. Up until Sunday night, when the Packers and Steelers won games that went… Read more »
The Trump Taj Mahal has been closed for three months, a black hole on the uptown end of the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Its owner, Carl Icahn, shows little serious desire to do anything to revive it. Last Wednesday, Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian spoke with reporters after his State of Atlantic City speech at the… Read more »
I still don’t exactly get why daily fantasy sports is so much more acceptable to lawmakers than online poker (well, I do, but I am going to remain indignant about it), but hey, at least daily fantasy sports is gaining legal traction in the U.S. Some form of online gambling might as well. On Tuesday,… Read more »
Nervous about potential online gambling-ending legislation, internet gaming operators are making plans to bolt the Australian market. In the past week, the first domino fell, Vera&John, a site that sounds more like a place to order chocolate-dipped fruit than an online casino, told its Australian customers that their accounts will have to be closed. In… Read more »
According to the New York Post, Carl Icahn, whose Icahn Enterprises owns the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, is in discussions with other casino operators to sell the property. The former center of east coast poker closed on October 10th. Aside from making money, one of the reasons Icahn is looking to make… Read more »
Former Amaya, Inc. CEO David Baazov has ended his bid to purchase his former company and take it private. His offer was for CAD $24 per share, a 30 percent premium over Amaya’s stock price on November 11th, the date the offer was made. The total deal would have been worth nearly CAD $3.5 billion.… Read more »
Another daily fantasy sports (DFS) site – or should we say sites, plural – bites the dust. The iTEAM Network announced yesterday that it is shutting down. Customers of the network’s sites should not have anything to fear, though, as a network representative confirmed to LegalSportsReport.com that player funds were kept separate from operating funds… Read more »
Merger talks between GVC Holdings and Ladbrokes Coral Group have broken down, according to a Tuesday report by The Financial Times. Shares in Ladbrokes Coral dropped 9 percent on the news Monday, and though they have bumped up slightly since, they have yet to get back to where they were when the markets were excited… Read more »
Ohio State Senators Dave Burke and Cliff Hite introduced a bill last week that would authorize the Ohio Casino Control Commission to regulate daily fantasy sports (DFS), making the games explicitly legal in the state. DFS operators such as DraftKings and FanDuel are currently active the state and happily accept Ohio customers, but legal gray… Read more »
Playtech PLC’s co-founder Teddy Sagi, the company’s largest shareholder, has sold off a sizable chunk of his stock in the company. The sale was made through his trust, Brickington Trading Limited. It was known that Sagi was going to sell some of his stock, but he decided to increase the amount from 10 percent to… Read more »
We all knew it was coming, but on Friday morning, DraftKings and FanDuel announced that they have agreed to a merger, a deal which will create a company that will have a virtual monopoly on the daily fantasy sports industry. Per the press release, DraftKings CEO Jason Robbins will be the new company’s Chief Executive… Read more »
Amaya Inc., parent company of PokerStars, announced on Monday that it has received an offer from former CEO David Baazov to purchase the entire company. The offer price is CAD $24 per share, making the total deal valued at approximately CAD $3.48 billion. Amaya’s stock price closed at CAD $18.34 on Friday, so Baazov’s offer… Read more »
In 2012, poker pro Phil Ivey and his friend, Cheung Yin Sun, won £7.7 million playing punto banco at London’s Crockfords Casino. After a delay because of a bank holiday, though, the casino refused to pay them, claiming that they cheated. In 2014, a High Court ruled in the casino’s favor and now, a three-judge… Read more »
The World Poker Tour (WPT) announced today that it helped raised more than three-quarters of a million dollars for the Cardiac Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) via the “All In” for Kids Poker Tournament held about two weeks ago. The event, which took place on October 27th at the Mandarin Oriental New York… Read more »
Less than two weeks ago, William Hill and Amaya Gaming confirmed rumors that they were discussing a potential merger. A so-called “merger of equals” would have actually been classified as a reverse takeover, as the smaller company, William Hill, would technically acquire the larger, Amaya. On Tuesday, both companies announced that the talks have ended… Read more »
The state of Georgia is bereft of any sort of legalized gambling aside from the lottery, but over the last few years, support for a new gaming industry – land-based casinos specifically – has slowly built. Last week, the Chairman and CEO of MGM Resorts spoke in front of the Rotary Club of Atlanta, pitching… Read more »
The Trump Taj Mahal Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City closed yesterday after 26 years. Once the poker hub of the east coast, the Taj is no longer owned by the groping Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but rather by billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s Icahn Enterprises and is operated by Tropicana Entertainment. The Taj Mahal… Read more »
In August, 888 Holdings and The Rank Group were unable to convince William Hill to join forces with them to form a new mega-gaming firm. Now, 888’s Chief Executive is insistent that his company and Rank are not about to merge sans Will Hill. The week after the second of two proposals from 888 and… Read more »
