THE AMERICAS
South Point Poker made history as the first operator to receive a Nevada online poker license; a US District Court judge said poker was not prosecutable under the federal Illegal Gambling Business Act; Las Vegas Sands may be in trouble with Nevada regulators over a money transfer made on behalf of an alleged Chinese triad associate; MGM Resorts unveiled its $800m Massachusetts casino plans; Atlantic City’s Revel isn’t half-a-year old but already needs a loan to keep the lights on while the Golden Nugget has been reduced to suing customers for its own mistakes; Bwin suffered a legal setback in Argentina; the CEO of the British Columbia Lottery Corp challenged PokerStars to a duel, despite the fact that PokerStars’ Isai Scheinberg is all set to carve up America and the rest of the world.
EUROPE
Schleswig-Holstein took another step towards joining the other German states in signing the new gaming treaty; the UK Office for Fair Trading put the brakes on Rank Group’s £250m bid to buy Gala Coral’s casinos; Stanleybet had a profitable 2011; Everest Poker is reportedly joining iPoker and Titan Poker absorbed a couple iPoker skins; Camelot lost its legal joust with its Health Lottery rival; Italians bet vast sums on Olympic volleyball; Citigroup said to sell Bwin.party while you still can; Playtech’s Teddy Sagi found yet another way to make the markets pay off; a British royal got royally pissed in Vegas and the move to dot-country isn’t necessarily dot-death for European online gaming affiliates.
ASIA
If you needed more proof that poker’s popularity is growing by leaps and bounds in Asia, Macau will play host to a HK$2m buy-in über-high-roller poker tourney this week; meanwhile, Macau casinos are on track for a record August; Sands Cotai Central’s second phase set a date to open; Singapore slapped its two casinos with half a million in fines; Tabcorp joined Tatts in filing a pokies lawsuit against the Australian state of Victoria; Pagcor’s remittance to the Philippine gov’t is 30% ahead of last year; Apple and Samsung got a mixed verdict in the South Korean version of their global patent dispute and Genting pulled out of a casino project in Vietnam.
