Golden Nugget Poker app now available; NY assembly speaker criticised; Pinnacle Entertainment sued by pop group

golden-nugget-pokerGolden Nugget casino has launched an app for smartphones to help promote its play-for-prizes/freeplay poker product. The Golden Nugget Poker app is now available for download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store with players in certain US states able to win prizes that are redeemable at the company’s land-based venues. Prizes that players can win include rooms at Golden Nugget hotels, Landry’s gift cards and dinner at Golden Nugget venues in the United States. eGR report that residents in Florida, Illinois, Iows, Mississippi, California, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Vermont can’t win prizes. The new app follows the firm’s freeplay site launching in June 2012 and they are also among the company’s to have been awarded an online poker licence by the Nevada Gaming Commission.

New York assembly speaker Sheldon Silver is being called out for making the state’s gaming industry expansion lucrative for the state’s politically chosen lawmakers with critics calling the legislation “The Lobbyist Protection Act of 2013”. A source responsible for preparing the legislation told the New York Post: “This could be worth tens of millions of dollars in fees to lobbyists from gaming interests across the country”. The new casinos are likely to be upstate and there will be a chance for voters to have their say in November when it’s expected there will be a referendum.

Popular rock band The Black Keys is suing Pinnacle Entertainment for copying their songs in TV commercials to advertise the group’s casinos. The band are claiming the music was “substantially similar” to their track Howlin’ for You and that it is “infringing” their rights. The Black Keys have, in the past, sued both Pizza Hut and Home Depot with both cases settled out of court, and this one could quite easily go the same way.