On Tuesday, Foxborough voters elected two members of the board of selectmen who opposed the casino plans. Selectman Lorraine Brue was re-elected while Virginia Coppola, a former state representative, was elected for the first time. Both not only opposed the casino, but made it part of their election platform.

As a result, there may not be enough support in the board of selectmen to pass casino legislation. Even if there is, the election shows strong anti-casino sentiment among the voters, which would also curb the casino plans. Before applying for a state gambling license, state law requires that the developers first secure an agreement with the city where they want to build the casino. Without the consent of Foxborough, the casino deal cannot continue.

As a result, Wynn Resorts and the Kraft Group announced that the plan to open a casino has been “suspended.” The Kraft Group, founded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, had plans to partner with Wynn Resorts to open a casino resort on land across from the Patriots’ Gilette Stadium. It would have continued Kraft’s idea of turning the stadium into an entertainment hub all year around, rather than simply a football venue.

In a statement found on http://news.google.co.uk/, Kraft said that “the citizens of Foxborough have spoken” and that the Kraft Group respects “their collective voice.”

While the casino opponents are claiming victory, some are still a little worried. Selectman Brue, in particular, wasn’t happy that they used the word “suspend,” which seems to imply that they will try again at a later time. “I personally hope that suspend means ‘end,’” Brue said. All of this is really only secondary to a much bigger question, though: Why is there no consensus on whether the city is spelled Foxborough or Foxboro?

Tags: Foxborough casino, Massachusetts gambling

Now, I have nothing against casino-slotsonline.com. It’s a legitimate website. But the “play and win” thing bothers me because it seems to imply that if you play you will win. You might. Here’s the dirty secret, though: you probably won’t.

I’m not being pessimistic. I was following the laws of probability. All casino games have a house edge, meaning the odds favor the house. That means losing is more likely than winning when you play. Playing games with the best odds give you a better chance of winning, but the probability is still that you will lose. Players are willing to play anyway because the rewards when you win, which are more than just monetary, are worth the risk.

The mindset of playing casino games to make money is dangerous. You should play casino games for fun and to attempt to win money, but never take for granted that you will win. When creating a budget for how much money to wager at the casino, don’t think of it as an investment that you will get back. Think of the money as spent. Think of it the same as admission at a park or movie theater. If you win money, that’s great, but you should always wager money and be prepared to kiss it goodbye. There are no sure things in gambling. Keep that in mind when you place a wager.

Tags: money management, online gambling

O’Sheas had carved out a niche for itself with cheap drinks and low minimum wagering at its blackjack and craps tables but it will temporarily close with its current location demolished before returning with a new look and location as part of the $500 million Linq project that Caesars is building on the Strip.

The Linq project will create an entertainment district next to the Flamingo casino which will include a 550 foot observation wheel, restaurants and bars, as well as retail and shopping space. Linq will link the Flamingo and Imperial Palace casinos (both owned by Caesars) and provide an easier flow between the two properties in addition to the new venues opened.

O’Sheas will re-open in 2013 within the Imperial Palace casino, which is getting a facelift of its own; Caesars officials have promised that the new O’Sheas will retain its Irish-themed flair.

The Linq project is expected to be completed within 18 months and will be one of the new projects to hit the Strip since the recession that the city is still struggling to recover from — and which left several other huge multi-billion construction projects in a state of limbo and currently unfinished.

O’Sheas 300 or so employees are expected to be offered jobs with other Caesars properties, while the Linq project is expected to to employ 3,000 workers during construction and create 1,500 permanent jobs when completed.

While Las Vegas has slowly recovered from the recession and seen gambling revenues stabilize as visitor traffic grows, it’s still a shadow of its former self after the property bubble burst and home prices in the city plummeted while unemployment soared.

Shuffle Master is purchasing Ongame from bwin.party, as bwin acquired Ongame back in late 2005 for nearly $600 million and the poker network operator was considered a surplus asset after bwin and PartyGaming merged in 2011.

The deal is slated to close no later than nine months from the annoucement, with CEO Gavin Isaacs of Shuffle Master having the following to say:

“I am confident that Ongame will fit seamlessly into our ongoing interactive initiatives of delivering our renowned brands to online gaming operators, partner websites, social networks, and mobile platforms. This acquisition is further evidence of our great momentum as we continue to execute on our core businesses and pursue our strategic objectives for future growth.”

Ongame operates a poker network that dozens of online gambling sites license in order to offer customers the chance to play in poker cash games and tournaments. The Ongame Network is currently the fifth largest poker site in the world, although it’s expected to drop significantly when bwin follows through with plans ot move its poker players to PartyPoker.

The deal is the latest in a flurry of activity that has seen various brick-and-mortar gambling companies look to bolster their online rpesence and capabilities, with Bally agreeing to buy the B2B platform of ChiliGaming and Caesar’s and others agreeing to joint ventures and partnerships with online operators.

Some of the moves are due to rekindled hopes that legal online poker will become available in the US within a year or two, as more and more states such as Nevada, New Jersey, and California continue to introduce legislation that could see them offer intra-state online poker sites for state residents.

The truth is that gambling laws in the United States are much more complex than most would have you believe. That is why the government’s Small Business Administration recommends checking out all local and federal laws before starting or taking part in any gambling business that exists or operates on American soil. On their website, www.sba.gov, they stress the importance of reading all gambling laws and making sure you are not violating the law. Some states don’t allow gambling at all. Some don’t allow online gambling. Sports betting is only allowed in four states, and not allowed at all online (which is why Bodog is in trouble).

Gambling businesses are tightly regulated in the United States, so you can’t just decide to start an online casino or gambling hall. You would need a license from the appropriate regulatory agency. If you want to play online casino games, it is legal as long as your state doesn’t allow it, since there is no federal law banning online casino games or online poker. Online casinos that are safe and legal for Americans to visit can be found at howtoplayslots.org.

Tags: Small Business Administration, US gambling laws

The raid occurred in November 2009 but the women are just now being required to appear in court; unfortunately two of the women have since died with several others now in a nurse home, according to the daughter of the 98 year-old woman.

“They were playing with only very small sums of money, just to make it interesting,” she said. “It’s silly for police to concern themselves with such trivial games when there are more serious things they should pursue.”

She also said that he mother intends to keep playing poker as a way to keep her mind sharp, and that another of the women arrested by police insisted that she be allowed to finish her hand first before the raid was completed.

Gambling in Cyrpus is illegal outside of casinos and is punishable by a €750 fine or up to 6 months in prison. Prosecutors in cyrpus said the case was simply following procedure as far as the women being summoned to court and that no decision had yet been made as to whether or not they would be prosecuted.

Cyprus has also made other headlines recently in its attempt to crack down on online gambling as well, with its parliament debating whether or not to pass legislation to regulate online gambling.

The bill under debate would ban all forms of online gambling but also simultaneously create an independent gaming board that would regulate all aspects of betting, with the potential of awarding licenses to online gambling operators and collecting sizable tax revenues.

The charges stemmed from the US government’s crackdown in April 2011 on three of the world’s largest online poker sites — including PokerStars and Full Tilt — that saw company executives and other middlemen such as Lang swept up in the prosecution and charged as well.

Lang admitted to being a middleman who helped online poker operators skirt US laws passed in late 2006 designed to block banks in the US from processing transactions from online gambling sites; instead of making online gambling illegal the US laws were drafted in order to block the source of money to sites themselves.

With help from Lang and others online sites were able to continue to process deposits from US players by working with financial brokers who created fake companies to mislead banks into processing payments from seemingly legitimate companies not involved in online gambling.

Lang joins other defendants who have also pleaded guilty, with others still awaiting trial. While several well-known executives and poker pros such as Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson have been hit with similar charges, to date the only defendants who have faced trial have been relatively smaller fish in the food chain such as Lang.

The charges carry up to a penalty of 30 years in federal prison but Lang will likely only serve a fraction of that time, with the odds good that evidence he provided to build other cases will likely help him when his sentencing is due on September 24.

Bally plans to integrate the ChiliGaming technology into its existing slots and casino management products, giving its casino clients a chance to offer a full range of gambling options to their guests, whether playing online or at a brick-and-mortar casino.

In a press release concerning the deal Bally also spoke to other attractive elements of the deal: “Bally Technologies has also obtained an experienced team of industry veterans from within the online gaming industry, which will help our customers optimize their use of this platform,” said John Connelly, Vice President of Business Development at Bally.

ChiliGaming had recently been in the news when it announced it had struck a deal with the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas to offer free online poker to US residents, with an eye towards offering real money games if US laws change to allow for it.

The Bally deal is just one of several different acquisitions and partnerships announced as brick-and-mortar casinos and gambling companies position themselves to take advantage of the laws in the US regarding online gambling changing. Despite anti-gambling laws passed in late 2006 to try to stamp out online gambling, many operators remain highly interested in the US market, one of the world’s largest for gambling.

Shuffle Master is rumored to be in advanced talk to buy Ongame Network from bwin.party while IGT previously purchased Entraction Network to bolster its own online offerings. Caesars signed a deal with 888 in early 2011 and MGM and Boyd entered in to an agreement with bwin.party later in the year to work together to provide a wide range of online gambling products.

A few weeks back stories surfaced that one roadblock to a completion of a deal was a claim by Chris Ferguson that he was owed millions by Full Tilt due to loaning the company funds from a personal account of Ferguson’s that was used for operating expenses in the wake of Black Friday.

More recent stories have emerged that Full Tilt is owed millions by poker players including Phil Ivey, Layne Flack, David Benyamine, Erick Lindgren, Barry Greenstein, and Mike Matusow.

Full Tilt reportedly extended the players personal loans on numerous occasions, with nearly $17 million currently owed by players to the company. Those missing funds are just one of several issues holding up the sale of Full Tilt, as lawyers and accountants at Groupe Bernard Tapie are working to uncover all the skeletons in Full Tilt’s closet and get a true picture of current assets and debts — a process made difficult by the woeful accounting in place at Full Tilt.

In an interview with a prominent poker portal and forum a lawyer from Groupe Bernard Tapie had the following to say: “If the money doesn’t come in, it creates a serious obstacle to completion of the deal. This isn’t the only issue with the takeover, and the deal won’t end on any one issue, but this is a substantial item.”

Groupe Bernard Tapie claimed that it released the info about money owed by pros when other attempts to collect on the debts failed; Barry Greenstein for one has taken issue with that statement, claiming that he’ll gladly repay the $400,000 he owes Full Tilt if he receives a guarantee that it will go towards refunding the estimates $200 million owed to US players (with an additional $200 million owed to international players as well).

The online gambling industry was admittedly a little slow to jump on the Facebook bandwagon. The industry seemed to be waiting out, seeing if it was a fad that would soon end, like most social networking websites. With over 750 million users and counting, it seems that Facebook will be around for quite some time. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that Facebook is so popular because it’s so popular. In other words, people are on there not because of its great features, but because all of their friends are on it.

And now you can count online casinos among the user profiles. If you have a favorite online casino or several that you visit, searching for their name on www.facebook.com should reveal a fan page that you can “like.” But why should you like a casino’s page? It’s a legitimate question. While using Facebook to interact with all of your friends, why would you also want to follow an online casino? The reason is because it can be beneficial to you.

online casinos use Facebook to interact with their customers, giving you another point of contact if you have an issue, want to make a suggestion, or just want to talk about their games or software. Through status updates, the casinos will also notify you when they launch a new game, start a new promotion, have a great tournament, or do anything else you want to know about. Sometimes they will even have exclusive bonuses only for those that are fans of their Facebook page. If you are a frequent customer, befriending them on Facebook can be beneficial.

Tags: Facebook, Facebook online casinos