The online gambling world has been looking forward to the final table of the 2008 World Series of Poker (WSOP) almost 4 months.  The WSOP organizers specially included three month break to spark interest in the tournament and the final event.  And now Dennis Phillips has over $9 million waiting for being wagered against 8 other gamblers to win the 2008 title of World Series of Poker Champion.  Phillips is 53 years old from St. Louis, he who played for seven days of No-Limit Texas HoldEm in July before the playing was completed.

The play resumed on 9 November, 2008 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Phillips and his opponents were different when they sat down at the final table to play.  All of them have a wager in the $32.6 million; each has already paid $900,670 for 9th place finish on 15 July.

Besides Phillips there were Canadian Scott Montgomery, a well-known poker pro, and Darus Suharto.  If one of them could win, he might have been the first Canadian to win the main WSOP event.  Tuan Lam who was second in the 2007 main WSOP event, Ylon Schwartz, Kelly Kim, Peter Eastgate, David ‘Chino’ Rheem, and Ivan Demidov, a 27 year old semi-pro from Russia, according to chip count he is in second place behind Phillips.

All of the nine players that won a seat at the final table generated additional earnings from the game, interviews and endorsements, which were viewed on ESPN. As a rule, ESPN holds the final table in November.  The final table wrapped up yesterday with Demidov and Eastgate competing for the first place. Eastgat won $9.15 million first place pot and winner’s bracelet.

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After four intensive days of poker during the first PokerStars EPT Hungarian Open at the Las Vegas Casino in Budapest, the British, Will Fry won the first prize of $759,456 and a seat to the €10,000 EPT Grand Final that is in Monte Carlo. The 28-year-old player defeated 531 players in the $5,544 sell-out tourney.

In his interview Fry said that he was going to make charity donations with his winnings.

Fry has been playing Texas HoldEm for eight years and three last years he has been playing professionally, specializing in cash games.

In one of the most impetuous heads-up plays in EPT history, Fry could manage to top Ciprian Hrisca, a 35-year-old Romanian player. The final hand started with raises and re-raises till all the chips finished in the middle preflop. Hrisca had Ac6d against Fry’s pocket JdJs. After the board brought Qs6c10dKcQc, Fry won the championship with queens and jacks and Hrisca finished in second place with $436,688.

Fry said that he got such good cards first for many years.

71 Hungarian gamblers and a lot of players from around the world took part in inaugural European Poker Tour Budapest tournament. 157 PokerStars gamblers competed in the four-day event, 104 of them had won the seats on PokerStars.

John Duthie, EPT founder, said that the European Poker Tour proved again that they could move into developing markets like Hungarian one and offer sell-out tournaments. He added that the local players offered overwhelming support and gamblers from worldwide were happy to attend this event.

The next PokerStars EPT is at Casinos Poland at the Hyatt Regency Hotel from 15 to 19 November.

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The online casino gambling and betting market of Italy has increased in the past months. Moreover the state promises new gambling licenses into the market. In the light of all abovementioned Playtech has received most of the software provision deals with the majority of these new companies. Playtech gets 4 new licensing agreements with the companies that operate in the fast developing Italian online gambling industry whereas some of the other main software providers have been happy to secure one new deal. However, that is all coming to an end since Boss Media assumes responsibility and tries to find business inside the opening poker market of Italy.

Boss Media will possibly find an entrance into the Italian market by means of Boss Media’s parent company. GTech Lottomatica operates Boss Media and also the leading “white label” company in the online casino gambling market of Europe. By tradition, St. Minver has allowed smaller companies to open niche casino gambling and betting companies all around Europe whilst they are still having access to best quality gambling and betting software.

Boss Media does not want to launch quietly. This week the online casino poker and betting software developer has announced that it is launching an extraordinary poker network that will face Italy. Their plans are ready now and the poker network of Italy will expand slowly in order to include other online poker players. Boss features a very stable gambling platform. Boss Media software powers some very outstanding and powerful poker gambling companies all over Europe including Eastern Europe. The above-said network will be completely opened in the forthcoming months.

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For a long time The Poker Players Alliance has asserted that there is a difference between the online casino industry and online poker gambling. The Alliance has looked for legislation to legalize online gambling in the United States proving that online poker is a skilled game that has some element of chance. And though the PPA has also upheld legislation at the federal level that could legalize internet casinos that would operate on a regulated base in the United States, the PPA is most concerned with legalizing online poker. Recent situation in Kentucky when Steve Beshear, Governor of the state, decided to confiscate the domain names of several online poker gambling sites was much criticized by the PPA.

John Pappas, Executive Director of the PPA, has recently released a statement on the current situation in Kentucky that outlined the PPA’s position on the proposed anti-online gambling legislation in the state. Pappas said that the Kentucky’s actions were not only extreme, but causeless in that it could be proven clearly that poker is really a skilled game and not chance and thereby online poker sites should not have been part of the said action.

This sentiment goes well together with the primary argument of PPA that internet casinos and poker sites are two different entities to which different rules and regulations should be applied. The Franklin Circuit Court Judge has extended the judgment till 7th October in view of all of the juridical action and arguments in support of the online gambling industry rights.

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This week the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the United Kingdom has struck online casinos again. This time it touches one of the pillars of the online gambling industry, PokerStars. PokerStars is the world’s leading poker room gambling site; the company stands out for very high daily and synchronous gambling rates. And with the beginning of autumn PokerStars must take away a poster advert that depicts land-based and online poker ace Daniel Negreanu. The said advertisement supposedly contains some taboo implications determined by ASA as inappropriate for a gambling advertisement.

PokerStars fought the judgment from the ASA but without success. The ASA asserts that the phrase that is used on the poster suggests that online poker gambling improves a self-image of a person. The wording at the poster’s bottom cites Negreanu who says: “Poker is a sport of courage, conviction and confidence.” The advert depicts Negreanu in hockey gear and holding a hockey stick but not at the poker tables. According to PokerStars, it is a delineating fact. PokerStars disputes that the wording does not suggest that a concerned player could find these things at an online casino, but in place of it the ad implies that those users who have already succeeded have the above-mentioned characteristics.

The ASA evidently sees the advert in a different way and insists on that it defies some advertising clauses of the United Kingdom in place. PokerStars have to pull the use of the advertisement from the public and do not use of the poker advertisement any longer.

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Playing poker at the internet casinos has just proved a lot more profitable for the poker professionals who participated in the just finished World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) tournaments held by Poker Stars. Poker Stars is the biggest online poker gambling site in the world and per se it can play host to some biggest online based tournaments in the world. All the leading internet casino poker gambling companies compete for the high roller poker gamblers and the Poker Stars WCOOP is certainly a main event in the gambling industry.

With reference to the result of the just ended WCOOP, the tournament events have finished now and the final event all the players could have hoped for was very competitive with a giant entry and more than $3.6 million. The buy-in was really competitive taking into consideration the tournament scale, at $530, it was enough to get rid of the amateur players from the poker pros.

The event finished with a long final table which made online casino poker players hold their breaths in anticipation. The first prize was an enormous $452,086 and Calvin32, an American player, is the holder of this year honors now. The player had tough competition at the final table and Poker Stars and all those who were watching the event saw the players gamble over 200 poker hands before Calvin32 managed to prevail.

Poker Stars has run a firm annual competition that not only draws the best online casino poker players from all over the world, but awards one gambler with the World Champion title for the whole year.

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Online casino gambling has become extremely profitable and competitive at the moment so that the gambling industry hasn’t only expanded globally, but also offers international and world tournaments. The latest tournament that is drawing global attention and excitement in the online gambling industry is the forthcoming World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) held by Poker Stars. Poker Stars is the world’s leading poker gambling site in terms of the amount of simultaneous and daily players. Because the site keeps on expanding, Poker Stars decided to launch a global Poker Championship for the online poker gambling community as a way to bring all the best in the globe to compete for parts of a gigantic prize pool.

This is its 7th season of WCOOP and it is at the end of this month. A big poker championship is always exciting event for the online gambling industry. At this time Poker Stars is running lot of qualifiers according to which they send some poker gamblers to the event with no buy-in. The WCOOP has steadily grown over the past 7 years and now it is held once a year, growing in the quantity of online poker gamblers as well as the minimum prize pool which is available for a number of events.

This year WCOOP is held in the last weeks of September and it leads up to the much anticipated main event. The main event that lasts for two day will crown the new WCOOP online poker winning gambler on 22 September, 2008. At the moment Poker Stars holds satellite and qualifying tournaments.

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PKR is a growing internet poker gambling site. Due to the fact that the online gambling industry is really expanding into the European market and there’s a rising demand for high-quality and trustworthy gambling sites, the number of the members and the amount of the revenues of PKR soared in the past year. The added bonus stands PKR apart from the rest the online poker sites, PKR offers 3D poker gambling. Internet casinos and poker sites able to fill a niche market are starting to take off now.

PKR has just doubled the amount of registered 3D poker gamblers. Now there are over 2 million gamblers at PKR, the number that is enormously high for a poker gambling site catered to a niche group of poker players when launched. But as technology progress is developing and PKR puts more money into marketing the exclusive 3D poker product the world’s players want to sign up for the site, receive the bonus signup promotions, and try out the ground-breaking poker software.

Since the amount of registered online poker players increases on the site PKR is swiftly moving its way into the elite status. Such companies, for example, Titan Poker, PokerStars, Full Tilt and the like all can boast a huge amount of members and the leading online poker gambling websites are determined by the amount of daily and simultaneous players. Keeping this in mind it could be a little longer before PokerStars starts worrying about losing its leading position.

The company offers next generation poker gambling to the players.

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Everybody knows professional poker gamblers had a hard job. Any poker pro must have a lot of skill and experience and also lots of luck whether at the online or the land casinos. One of the best poker professionals in the gambling industry was able to go out off the year of bad luck and big losses at the gambling tables at last. Though, it is enough interesting that Tom Durrr” Dwan never left off and went on betting big and playing often in spite of his repeated losses at poker tables since he was sure that it was just a matter of time prior to the fortune could smiled on him and he could get back some of the losses.

Last week, the casino poker pro turned his almost $1 million of gambling losses into a nearly breakeven situation. The winning streak of Dwan encompassed 2 of the major world’s poker online casinos, Full Tilt and Poker Stars and according to the latest information Dwan has compensated over $850,000 in winnings at the poker tables.

As expected there isn’t any telling how long Dwan’s will hit a winning streak but without any doubt Dwan will take part in more forthcoming online casino poker events and the range of main land tournaments as well. Soon the WSOP Europe event comes forth; Dwan will surely have some tough competition in the face of the best land and online poker players all over the world, all of them will try winning at the event.

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For nearly a year the internet gambling industry has demanded for the identity of those who were involved in the biggest cheating scandal in the online poker gambling industry history. Absolute Poker along with Ultimate Bet, its sister site, were involved in sweeping fraud activity by former employees caused that the companies lost some credibility and a part of its established online poker network. Though the Kahnawake Gaming Commission conducted the investigation, fined, and up to had closed the cases against Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, poker players are claiming that the sites give more information about these scandals and the involved employees.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission and Tokwiro Enterprises, the parent company for Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, released a diluted statement about the cheating scandal. This report left much to be wanted for the majority of poker players. All the information that was released to the public did not contain details and nobody has been named and arrested in concern with both of the scandals that were revealed within half a year of each other. This fact upsets the online poker gambling industry all over the world.

though the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet didn’t give names and information, however, there is a source (in our age of internet is hard to keep secrets and information) that says that some persons supposedly involved in the scandals have been living it up outside Canada and therefore out of the Canadian government jurisdiction.

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