Bidding for the national lottery privatisation contract just got less competitive
According to a Turkish Press report the bidding for the Turkish lottery privatisation contract is now less competitive following the withdrawal of local group Dogan Holding and its Italian partner Lottomatica. Both companies had already met the government’s preliminary requirements for bidders.

Dogan advised the stock exchange that it’s withdrawal was due to adverse market conditions, but little more is known beyond that.

In a separate statement, Lottomatica, one of the world’s largest commercial lottery operators and a market leader in the Italian gaming industry, announced that it has exited the Turkish process and that it had terminated the memorandum of understanding signed earlier with Dogan Holding to participate in the tender.

The much delayed privatisation process for Turkey’s state-owned national lottery is expected to begin in August after enactment of a bill on financial control.

Along with several foreign companies, Koc Group, Cukurova Group and Is Yatirim are among the Turkish companies competing in the tender process for management of the lottery, which generates an annual turnover of US$ 683 million and US$ 189 million in net profits.

Million dollar challenge now over the 20 percent complete mark
Online poker aces Patrik Antonius and Tom ‘durrr’ Dwan got it together for another 890 hands Thursday, although the session count at Full Tilt Poker for the epic 50 000 hand online poker marathon appears to have jumped from 12 to 17 with little record of what happened in the brief period from session 12 to session 17.

That said, InfoPowa will take Full Tilt at its word and report that session 17 saw the two online poker aces pass the 20 percent complete mark with a 890 hand session that brings total hands played thus far to 10 180, with Antonius still ahead although by a slightly lower margin at $79 277.

This session saw some marked swings in pot size, including seven pots that reached $100 000; the two pretty evenly matched players have now wagered a total of $ 59 246 993 in the competition. Biggest pot of the session was a whopping $292 000, which Dwan took.

Interesting stats from the independent poker site MarketPulse show that so the average pot size in the challenge is $4 124 and that total time played as session 17 ended was 31 hours and 40 minutes.

An online poker site from Cake network, Lock Poker is offering their players new Mac poker software which is first on the network.
This Mac based poker software has the same characteristic and game play with their PC version with Play and Real money games, including ring games, Satellites, MTT’s and Sit ‘n Go’s. There are also other great features that players can enjoy like player to player chat, table resizing and multi- table play.
CEO of Lock Poker Jennifer Larson says, “One of our mandates as a company is to provide a superior online poker experience. It only makes sense that we would extend our product to the Mac platform - as Apple is a leader in innovation and customer experience.”
With Lock Poker, players are allowed to experience the innovative download software without an application from the third party for a more stable and smoothly running game.

Durrr get ahead again
The eleventh session in the Tom ‘durrr’ Dwan million dollar challenge with Patrik Antonius (see previous InfoPowa reports) was short and, for Dwan, sweet. The two players met again online at Full Tilt Poker to play 154 hands over 20 minutes before Antonius called it a night.

The statistical site MarketPulse, which has been recording the progress of the 50 000 hand contest, reported that nine days had passed since the last clash between the two, and that the latest [eleventh] session brought to 7 247 the hands player so far over the 11 sessions, with a total of 41 683 576 placed at risk by the two players.

The biggest pot in session 11 was $123 977 picked up by Dwan when he flopped a set of jacks and Antonius missed all of his outs.

Dwan is back in the lead in the challenge overall, which has now been running for a total of 20 hours, but it’s only by a slender $30 577.

Dwan continued to deliver exciting entertainment on the TV screens this week when the fifth season of High Stakes Poker was shown in the United States. In the final episode the 22 year-old clashed with fellow ace Barry Greenstein to win a $919 600 pot, the largest ever won on the show. Other players in the hand included current WSOP champ Peter Eastgate.

In their 12th session its Antonius who gets ahead
Patrik Antonius and Tom ‘durrr’ Dwan managed to put together a meaningful 12th session in the 50 000 hand Dwan million dollar challenge midweek, playing a rapidly fluctuating and thrilling 2 043 hand session over almost eight hours before calling it a night due to fatigue. Durrr was at one point handling action on seven tables simultaneously and with apparent aplomb.

Biggest hand of the night, which generated a pot of $154 984, went to Antonius after a brief but intense round of action, and contributed handsomely to Antonius’ final result, which saw him edge ahead of his opponent to finish with an overall $80 707 lead on Dwan in the $200/400 pot-limit Omaha challenge.

The two poker aces have now completed 9 290 hands, or around 17 percent of the required 50 000 hands, with an average pot size of $4 077. In the latest session the pair managed to get through an average 250 hands every hour.

Just like Maryland, Delaware is holding the possibility of having budget deficits and looking for means to balance the books without giving up the needs of the people or worthwhile projects or programs. After years of debate, voters of Maryland have already approved the referendum that authorizes the playing of slot machines but with limited numbers only. However, the fruits of this venture can only be seen in few years more. Meanwhile, Delaware has already been enjoying the benefits of legal gambling for several years now.
Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware has proposed a huge pay cuts and increased on tax for all state workers. He is also considering an extreme expansion of gambling which includes sports betting, riverfront entertainment and some table games like blackjack and poker. It is his objective to transform Delaware into a Vegas-like gaming tourist destination. This is an effort to balance the state budget and to offer something unique to the region. Most residents will appreciate this means of raising revenues, though as it appears in the first glance gambling may not be the golden goose. Casinos in Delaware get a steady cash flow, in which big portion of it goes to state’s treasury.
On the other hand, Maryland realized that venturing into gambling may not pan out the today’s economy as what they expect. They were disappointed with the initial round of bidding for slots licenses. It was also remember that in 1976 when Delaware venture too in sports betting, it was a big flop.
Sports like horse racing can be considered as competitive event. Betting on sports gambling is becoming more compelling. Everything about the sports gambling including the odds, the potential payouts, and the increased opportunity for corruption greatly affects the performance of the players, especially if they are bribe and threaten to throw a game and influence the outcome of the game in favor to those who give a higher stake.
Gambling can be a slippery slope. Slots used to be nothing but just one harmless entertainment. When it became a successful they decided to expand new more additional games. Where will it stop?
Any other state such as Delaware that is looking for extra revenue would be foolish to put many financial eggs into one basket which is gambling.

It’s not too often that you hear about the game of craps when you’re reading up on the online gambling news. I know because I read a whole lot of online gambling news! That said, I was pleasantly surprised to come across the online casino, Craps.com, in my recent foray of scanning the news headlines.

A Playtech Software powered site, Craps.com, is owned and managed by Playtech’s leading online casino network, Imperial E-Club (Intercontinental Online Gaming), and boasts some of the most popular Playtech online casinos of today, including the long standing Casino Tropez, European player favorite Casino Europa and the Italian Stallion, Casino Bellini.

And while you can certainly play online craps at all of these casinos, Craps.com was developed in celebration of this exciting games, which incidentally, can offer one of the lowest House Edges in the casino if played with the proper Craps Strategy. In fact, the casino started off by offering craps, and over time, began to offer the full suite of Playtech’s 100+ cutting-edge games.

What’s all the hubub about, you ask? Well, besides the fact that Craps.com is celebrating their second birthday, one lucky player recently nabbed an approximate $120,000 jackpot on the “Queen of Pyramids” progressive video slot here. See - I told you they offer more than craps :).

So, yes, while craps is definitely a game of strategy that can help stretch out your bankroll (assuming you know which bets to make, or should I say, not to make), other less strategic games like slots can certainly “blow up” a bankroll, so to speak. For this particular jackpot on Queen of Pyramids, the lucky player - Marie Claire P. from France (Playtech casinos are closed to U.S. players by the way), had only been playing twenty minutes making $.25 bets.

The ironic thing is that she could have won plenty more if she made the max bet. Such is the way with progressive jackpot casino games. Nonetheless, $120,000 is nothing to scoff at on a $.25 wager. It’s definitely a nice chunk of change to put toward some wagers on the craps table.

Wednesday, an anonymous source leaked a list of banned Web pages the Australian government plans to block access to. The list, which appeared on WikiLeaks.org, not only includes the URLs of child-pornography and terrorist websites, but also those of several online-gambling, legal pornography and Christian-church sites.

Australia’s capitol in Canberra, ACTThe list is reportedly the work of the Australian Communications and Media Authority and includes 2,395 URLs. The government agency compiled the list as a catalogue of sites it plans to block access to using Web-filtering software.

The list was meant to be confidential, and the ACMA has since added WikiLeaks.org – a nonprofit, anonymous document repository for whistleblowers – to the blacklist. According to WikiLeaks.org, an “Internet filtering-software maker” provided the list.

Betfair.com CEO Andrew Twaits was furious after learning that the list includes his company’s domain name. According to ComputerWorld.com, Twaits was unaware that the ACMA considered Betfair.com a Totalizator Agency Board competitor. Australia’s Totalizator Agency Board, or TAB, is the nation’s state-sponsored sports-betting monopoly.

“We didn’t know (about the ban),” Twaits said. “We’ve been licensed to operate in Australia for three years and have never received a complaint or any allegation that Betfair locally or globally is not permitted to be used by Australians.

“The global Betfair site is used by Australians every day.”

Although it is illegal for offshore online-gambling sites to offer their services in Australia, Twaits insisted that the law does not apply to its sports-betting site because the company blocks Australians from accessing its poker and casino products.

“I need to find out what the implications are and how we got on the list,” Twaits said. “I’m amazed that this has happened.”

The following gambling URLs are currently included on the ACMA’s blacklist:

FullTiltPoker.com
GamblingClub.com
Betfair.com
PokerNews.com
Bodoglife.com
CDPoker.com
CoralPoker.com
PacificPoker.com
PartyPoker.com
PokerRoom.com
VegadPalms.com
WilliamHillCasino.com
HollywoodPoker.com
PokerStars.com
AbsolutePoker.com
ParadisePoker.com
MansionPoker.com
DuplicatePoker.com

Internet gambling on Fantasy Sports, one of the notorious carve-outs in national US anti-online gambling legislation, is under the microscope in Maryland, where Delegate John Olszewski Jr., D-Baltimore County, presented a bill this week to a House committee to exempt fantasy sports from state gambling prohibitions.

The state politician has a taste for modern communications, it seems, and presented humorous fantasy football commercials on YouTube to emphasise the growing popularity of the Internet-driven pastime.

While fantasy sports are exempted from federal gambling restrictions, the issue is not specifically addressed in state law, reports Fox News. Olszewski’s bill would not extend to popular college basketball office pools, which are illegal under state law.

“We’re just taking this (federal) language and inserting it into Maryland law,” Olszewski said, giving a brief explanation of fantasy sports and showing members of the House Ways and Means committee in Maryland his personal fantasy football team, the “Outlaws.” Olszewski’s YouTube videos - one portrayed a groom apologising to friends mid-wedding ceremony for missing a fantasy draft - drew laughs from the committee.

Fantasy sports allow online players to compete against others based on statistics accumulated by real professional athletes or teams. Owners draft, own and trade athletes from most professional sports, in either free or pay leagues with prizes.

Several national organisations offering fantasy gaming opportunities have limited Maryland residents from fully participating due to concerns over the ambiguity of state law, Olszewski said. Maryland is one of six states whose residents are ineligible to win cash prizes from CBS Sports’ fantasy football pay-to-play leagues.

The legislation is critical to giving Maryland residents the same opportunities to win prizes as fantasy owners in many of their neighboring states, said Justin Cleveland, association manager for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

“It allows Maryland players to be able to participate in what has become a national pastime,” Cleveland said. “If this legislation goes through … then they’re just going to bring the state of Maryland into sync with the majority of the country.”

The state has issued a report claiming fantasy sports would “probably not” be considered illegal gambling under state law. But the report also says “there are benefits to stating this finding explicitly in the code.”

More than 27 million people nationally play fantasy sports, which is an $800 million industry, said Cleveland, who offered written testimony in support of the bill.

Solidifying the legality of fantasy sports might also bring in more money for the state through the sales tax.

“There’s fantasy fishing, there’s fantasy U.S. Congress,” Olszewski said. “For all I know there’s fantasy Maryland General Assembly!”

Online poker website PokerStars.com is about to roll out one of its largest and most ambitions promotions yet - the $30 million Spring Championship of Online Poker, which has been designed to accommodate players at all levels and pockets and will take place April 2-12. In some cases, the guaranteed prize-pools are set to create new benchmarks in online poker - up to $5 000 000!

To cater for all pockets, the 22 events on the schedule are each split into three, making a total of 66 tourneys. For example, the first event is a 6-max No-Limit Hold ‘em with re-buys event, with three separate buy-ins of $5.50, $55 and $550. The events will also be supported by satellite activity with low buy-ins.

Dominating the schedule, and sure to achieve wide media coverage, are two High-Roller events, with the series ending on a Main Event on Sunday, April 12.

PokerStars will offer a substantial guaranteed prize pool on each buy-in level of each tournament, and the range of events covers most popular genres of poker. Main Event buy-ins will see different levels between $109 to $10 300, featuring buy-ins ranging from $109 to $10,300, with the high stakes version offering a guaranteed prize pool of $5 million while the medium- and low-stakes events will be worth a guaranteed $3 million and $1 million respectively.

Full details of the schedule can be found on the PokerStars website.