Dennis Cleofe

Bet-at-Home Strikes Sponsorship Deal with ATP Hamburg Tennis Championship

Apr 092011

Bet-at-Home, the renown online sports book, has signed a three-year long sponsorship deal with the ATP Hamburg Tennis Championship. The deal is thought to be worth approximately $250, 000 per year, and it sees Bet-at-Home become the top sportsbook sponsor of the ATP Tour.

The sponsorship deal marks a significant coup for Bet-at-Home, for the ATP Hamburg Championship is one of the most highly regarded and well-attend events on the tour.

Indeed, the tournament’s high prize money — in this year’s tournament over €1,000,000 is there for the taking — often attracts a high quality player-field. Consequently, this elite player field attracts a large number of spectators.

This year’s Hamburg ATP event will commence on 18 July 2011 at Rothenbaum clay courts. Its final will take place on July 24 at the huge 13,200 capacity Rothenbaum centre-court (the largest centre court in Germany).

In total, the tournament will see 48 players — including Thomaz Bellucc, Andrey Golubev, Nicolas Almagro, Jurgen Melzer — compete for the men’s singles title, while the doubles title will be contested by a 16-strong playing field.

Jonathan Duhamel Goes Down a Storm on First Trip to Macau

Poker, WPT No Responses »

Apr 072011

Jonathan Duhamel

Jonathan Duhamel made his first ever visit to the Chinese gambling capital Macau this week.

The 2010 World Series Poker Main Event champion travelled to Macau to compete in Day 1C of the Macau Millions at the Casino Grand Lisboa. Duhamel competed alongside 182 other players, and the young champion from Canada received a great deal of attention from the local Macau entrants.

Indeed, the manager of PokerStars Macau Marketing, Fred Leung, said that within just “10 seconds” of Duhamel’s arrival at his table in the PokerStars Macau poker room, local players were greeting and asking to be photographed with the Canadian poker star.

One lucky player even collected a signed Jonathon Duhamel PokerStars Macau jacket after beating the WSP champ in a coin toss (the jacket was bounty which had been previously placed on Duhamel’s head).

The Macau Millions is an event which guarantees HKD $1,500,000, and its organisers are hoping to make the event the first tournament in Asia to surpass 1,000 competitors. So far, 412 players have registered to play, and the tournament looks on track to surpass 2010’s record of 741 entrants.

Thursday will see the HKD €2,200 Day 1D event commence. The event will finish on April 10.

Bulgarian Online Gaming Regulations Proposal Submitted to the European Commission

Casino Industry, Gambling Law, Gaming, Land Base Casinos, Online Casinos No Responses »

Mar 312011

Bulgaria Flag

In recent months, Bulgaria, the youngest member of the European Union, has begun to gain much notoriety within the European gambling industry.

Last month, for example, a number of European casino operators — both online and land-based — voiced their objections to Bulgarian plans to create a law which would ban all gambling advertising nationally. The operators criticized the proposal, describing the law as unbalanced, unfair, and prejudiced against the gambling industry.

Furthermore, last month also saw representatives of the Bulgarian Gaming Associations visit Strasbourg, France to lobby the European Gaming and Amusement Federation for enforced gambling regulation throughout the entire EU.

Now, Bulgaria’s notoriety is set to rise even higher: the Bulgarian government has recently made the European Commission aware of its proposals for another national gaming law which, if passed, will enforce new regulations for online gambling.

Currently, the status of each of Bulgaria’s new draught proposals is still undecided; whether or not the laws which these draughts propose will be successfully passed still remains to be seen. However, the proposals will certainly be a hot topic of discussion at this year’s annual Easter European Gaming Summit, which will take place in the capital city of Bulgaria, Sofia, on October 17-20.

At the summit, a number of gaming associations from throughout Europe will give presentations which aim to examine current key issues relevant to European gaming. Those within the gambling industry will be particularly interested to hear how those European countries who have recently legalized and regulated their online gambling industries — such as Lithuania and Estonia — view Bulgaria’s proposals.

Blackberry Playbook Set to Challenge Apple’s Mobile Gambling Hegemony?

Gaming, Online Casinos No Responses »

Mar 262011

The Blackberry Playbook

Undoubtedly, with the sustained success of its iPhone and the iPad products, Apple has long been the dominant force in the mobile gaming industry; however, Blackberry’s new Playbook may be set to challenge Apple’s hegemony.

Due to be released in April 2011, the Blackberry Playbook is expected to have a huge impact on mobile gaming. The Playbook, like the iPad, is a tablet computer device. However, the playbook is, according to reports, is much smaller than both the iPad and the recently released iPad 2. The Playbook, therefore, would be much easier to transport, and much more comfortable to operate, than an iPad; accordingly, the Playbook could potentially become the tablet device of choice for online gamers.

Another plus point for the Playbook is its price. Indeed, the Playbook is set to be marketed at the same price as the iPad 2. The other competitors in the market — namely, the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Motorola Zoom — are likely to cost more. Again, then, after April 2011, the Playbook — smaller, more comfortable, and no more expensive than an iPad — could easily have become the online gamer’s tablet of choice.

Paradise Poker Tour Prague Won by Czech Poker Publisher

Poker No Responses »

Mar 082011

Paradise Poker Tour

The Paradise Poker Tour Prague, held at the Card Casino in the Czech Capital this weekend, was won by Radoslav Průcha, a Poker magazine publisher.

Průcha, a Czech native, beat initial leader Luboš Galuška, also from the Czech Republic, in heads up. The Poker magazine publisher ultimately collected €30,000.

Reflecting on his first ever victory, Průcha said: “I’ve been playing poker for a number of years so to win an event like this is fantastic. In many ways the feeling of being the winner is even better than the money.”

Průcha commended the tournament’s format, saying: “I really enjoyed it; the event was really well-organised and I think it’s a great idea, giving normal players the chance to experience a big tournament like this.”

Altogether, the Paradise Poker tour Prague main event, which ran from March 2-6, drew 230 players. Its buy-in was €550, and its prize pool was a guaranteed €125,000.

The final table finished thus:

Radoslav Průcha €30,000
Luboš Galuška €21,300
Mariusz Chrusciel €14,000
Tibor Boros €9,150
Bernd Wachter €6,000
Salim Alibas €4,900
Ivan Buchbauer €4,100
Jiři Vojta €3,500
Petr Hlavaček €2,900

William Hill See and Increase in Online Profits

Casino Industry, Online Casinos, Sports No Responses »

Mar 042011

William Hill, the UK gambling firm has experienced a marked increase in profits: an increase which can be attributed to the recent growth of the company’s online gambling operations, an increase in demand for bets placed during sports events, and the effective efforts of its retail division.

Specifically, the British bookmaker’s profits saw an increase of 7%, rising to £276.8 million ($451.7m) for the year. Revenues also saw a 7% increase, rising to £1.07 billion ($1.75b). Also, pre-tax profits rose to £193.3 million: an increase of 60% .

The most successful area of William Hill’s enterprise this financial year was undoubtedly its online division — a division which was established between Hill and the online gambling software company Playtech.

Indeed, the online division, whose online sportsbook division specifically has experienced a high degree of growth, saw a 24 % revenue increase (£251.5 million). This growth can be accredited to the in-play betting feature — a feature which, combined with the successful placement of advertisements during specific televised sporting occasions, saw a huge 114% rise in revenue.

Bruce Willis to Star In Online Gambling Movie

Online Casinos No Responses »

Feb 172011

According to recent reports from a number of Entertainment news sites, Hollywood film star Bruce Willis has been cast in a lead role in an upcoming movie-adaptation of Beth Raymer’s memoir “Lay the Favourite” — an autobiography which documents the rise of online gambling in the late 1990s.

The film will be directed by Stephen Fears: the director behind acclaimed films such as “The Queen” and “High Fidelity.” Fears has said that filming is scheduled to commence in April and that other Hollywood A-listers could be set to join Willis, specifically Justin Timberlake and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Zeta-Jones is said to be up for the role of Beth Raymer herself — the former cocktail waitress who documented her experiences with a number of online sports gamblers in her best 2010 memoir. Timberlake may possibly take the role of a senior figure at a Long Island-based sportsbook, while Willis has been confirmed to portray a down-on-his luck sports gambler named Dink.

A film of this type will be in good company, since a number of high quality and renowned movies which involve the popular gambling industry have been produced over the years. Indeed, Paul Newman’s 1970s hit picture “The String” and the recent baccarat-heavy James Bond success, “Casino Royale,” are but two examples.

Perhaps the most memorable film to specifically bring ports betting itself to the silver screen, however, is Casino: the 1995 Martin Scorsese epic in which Robert DeNiro shone in his role as Chicago bookmaker Sam “Ace” Rothstein.

WikiLeaks Overtakes Gambling in Terms of Google Hits

Casino Industry, Gaming No Responses »

Dec 252010

WikiLeaks

To be unaware of WikiLeaks you would have to have had your head buried firmly in the sand for the entirety of this month. WikiLeaks has been the hot news topic for weeks. WikiLeaks is the news story about which everybody has an opinion. WikiLeaks has become inescapable since the radical website, which claims to offer a safety haven for all whistleblowers, made around 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables publicly available over the past month.

At the heart of the WikiLeak’s organisations ethos is a firm belief in the right to freedom of information; but currently, it is information on WikiLeaks itself is which is in great demand. Indeed, the notoriety of the now ubiquitous radical online organisation has grown to such a degree that the term “WikiLeaks” has overtaken the term “gambling” in numbers of Google search results.

To explain, typing the search term “WikiLeaks” into the Google search engine presently produces around 154 million results: a massive amount of results. In contrast, the search term “gambling” produces 44 million results. Admittedly, this is still very high, yet even those large results figures are dwarfed by WikiLeaks’.

Google searches, and the number of results, they return, can indicate a great deal about public interest, and WikiLeaks, rather than gambling, certainly seems to be the current focus of many people’s attention.

For example, the search term “Poker” garners 121 million results, “Casinos” return 27 million, while “Blackjack” returns 17 million. Less broad terms narrow the scope of the search and, consequently, return even less results: “online betting,” “online gambling,” and “online casinos,” for example, return a considerably lower 1.7, 4, and 8 million results, respectively.

A narrower WikiLeaks-related search — “Julian Assange,” the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, for example –still produces a massive 68 million results: only two million less than US President Barack Obama and considerably more than Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (21 million results).

Dwan and Cates Resume the “durrrr” Challenge 2

Poker No Responses »

Nov 292010

Tom Dwan

On Saturday, after a break of almost two months, Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Dan “jungleman12” Cates resumed the durrrr Challenge 2, playing 2,120 hands of $200/$400 No-Limit Hold’em.

The long-overdue session, however, was somewhat of an anticlimax. Cates initially took an early lead, going up with slightly more than $200K. Dwan then mounted a come back by going up $91k. Yet, neither of the two players finished the session with a substantial victory. Dwan, particularly, failed to win big; a slender $13,000 worth of winnings means that the “durrrr” challenge’s namesake is $646k down after playing 9,783 hands.

Neither player commented on when they will again resume the challenge.

However, despite the slightly anticlimactic nature of the resumed “durrrr” Challenge 2, the Full Tilt Poker site was still the place to be for of some of this weekend’s most gripping and exciting action.

For example, Di “Urindanger” Dang, a player who has been slightly out of form of late, took down his Full Tilt competition in a thrillingly devastating fashion. Dang’s return to form has seen him take $655k in winnings over the last few days. The weekend’s other big winners included HateJuice (+$354k), Arbianight ($277k), and DrugsOrMe ($231k).

In a complete contrast to these victorious players, David Benefield may come to remember the weekend as the time when he experience one of the worst performances of his career. Indeed, on Saturday Benefield lost $608k in total. $368k of that amount went to Patrik Antonius in a $500/$1,000 Cap PLP session; the remaining $240k was lost during a series of $200/$400 Six-Max games.

GooGie MonA and davin77 also put in some poor displays: each recording losses of $174k and $274k, respectively. Similarly, Ziigmund — a Finnish player who is widely known to have registered a number of losses already this year — continued in the same vain by losing $170k.

The following is a list of numerical facts about the durrrr Challenge 2:

3: the total number of times Tom “durrrr” Dwan has tweeted about eating goose.
8: the total number of sessions of played so far.
15: the total number of hours played so far.
53: the total number of days since the durrrr Challenge 2 last took place.
2,120: the total number of hands played between “durrrr” and “jungleman12” this weekend.
9,783: the total number of hands played thus far.
645,667: the amount by which “jungleman12” leads “durrrr”
9,000,000: rumoured to be the total of Dwan’s Macau winnings (in Macau’s currency).
58,125,811: the total amount of cash wagered during the challenge so far.

Nevada generating lower revenues from gambling‏

Casino Industry, Gaming, Land Base Casinos No Responses »

Sep 152010

Las Vegas Nevada

The gambling industry in the Nevada state saw revenues of $11.5 million which led to the casinos making profits of around $830 million. This figure was almost 5 percent less than what was recorded in July 2009. There was a 3.5 percent increase in table games to bring in total revenues of $291.4 million and gambling machines achieved $525.5 million in sales after winnings declined by 9 percent.

The game of baccarat which is very popular with high stakes gamblers mainly from Asia brought in $743 million representing about 1 percent of the total gambling revenue in the state. Gambling firms generated 9.1 percent more revenue from this game.

Half of all the gambling revenue from the state have always been generated from the gambling district in the state’s capital and July was no exception at $461.3 million which was the same figure generated for the same month last year.

Casino revenues generated in the southern Las Vegas district declined by an unbelievable 19 percent while the northern district was worse at a 23 percent decline. South Lake Tahoe experienced a 12.9 percent decline to total $23.7 million.

Washoe County and Elko County both experienced a 2 percent decline while Carson Valley declined by 4 percent.

Mike Lawton, a gambling expert stated that the state’s declines were reducing in total as there were about 10 areas with more than 10 percent losses last year. He stated that out of seven months whose data have been made available, 6 of them had experienced less than 10 percent losses and one month had recorded a gain.

The Nevada State looks to be having a risky future because more than 30 percent of revenues generated are from the gambling industry and in July, the state received just $49.9 million in taxes from casinos representing a sharp decline of 13 percent compared to the same period in 2009.

Gambling expert Steve Schwartz stated that rival gambling industries springing up in other states will make it difficult for the Nevada gambling industry to thrive as much as it used to in the past.

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