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Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA)'s attempts to enter real-money gambling may be held back by US laws, which favor existing casinos, according to Bloomberg. So far, 3 US states, including New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware, have passed laws that will allow online gambling games to be played on their territories, but it looks like the conditions will benefit casinos which dominate the gambling scene. This could create problems for the social gaming giant, which is looking to reduce its dependence on its current business model, including bolstering growth and business transactions by offering real-money games. At present, Zynga (ZNGA) has employed a 'free to play' business model, which was started by multiplayer online games like Jagex Games Studio' RuneScape. It allow players to play games free of cost but with the choice to spend real money on virtual items or other in-game advantages. These in-games purchases are called "micro-transactions".

Although online poker is a gold mine of data, until now nobody knows where the players and their money come from. It seems that the knowledge about the online poker market has not been able to keep up with the speed of its evolution in the past years. This paper is the first to shed light on this matter. We use data of 4,591,342 poker identities from the Online Poker Database of the University of Hamburg (OPD-UHH) collected over a six months period from 09/2009 to 03/2010. We find that the USA is still by far the biggest market with 1,428,823 active players and 650.5 million US$ net revenues in 2009. However, with regard to the number of internet users in a country Hungary is the biggest relative market: One out of 57 Hungarians with internet access plays online poker for real money. The two main drivers of the proportion of online poker players per internet users are GDP per capita and culture. Using the data from the OPD-UHH, future research will be able to break down the market also on a regional level within countries and to examine inter and intra country differences in the playing habits of online poker players.

888, one of the world's most popular online gaming entertainment and solutions providers, has today announced, as part of its online US strategy, an alliance with WMS Gaming Inc., a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of games, gaming content and gaming machines in the United States.

"The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Zynga is working hard to try and push online gambling in the United States. The company has spent as much as $75,000 to lobbying policy which would make online gambling legal in the US."

Many people await the day when online poker is fully licensed and regulated in the US, but visions of 2005 or anytime pre-Black Friday are likely to bring disappointment. Even worse is the unwillingness to accept anything less than what we had before.

US poker market after Black Tuesday 

"Boom… Prior to 2006, Internet-based gambling was effectively legal in the United States. Although the Federal Wire Act from 1961 prohibited transmission of sports betting information using telecommunications services, in 2002 a U.S. appeals court ruled that the sports-related provisions in the Wire Act did not preclude Internet gambling. Although some states and jurisdictions did have laws on the books specifically prohibiting online gambling, many did not - and so started a bit of an online gold rush as online gambling companies tried to capture chunks of the lucrative U.S. market."

"Slot machines you see in casinos today could soon be things of the past. Not in 20 years, but in five. Experts predict that the games themselves aren't likely to change. They'll just get more portable, as gaming tries to keep pace with customers used to being entertained by iPads and smartphones. Instead of players sitting at big banks of slot machines, they'll gamble on iPads installed in restaurants, bars and other parts of the casino, much like video poker screens are today, but portable. "

Aristocrat is live with a play-for-fun site for Maryland Live! Casino, a new $500M gaming and entertainment destination, currently in development in Hanover, MD. The site, http://www.myliveonlinecasino.com , is live now and will be used as a vehicle for the brick-and-mortar casino to promote its brand and attract players well in advance of its scheduled opening on June 6, 2012.

NEARLY 130,000 Australians are playing illegal internet poker games, with US operators raking in $68 million in one year, according to new research. Online casino games, including poker, are illegal in Australia but in May the federal government released an interim review of interactive gaming laws that recommended legalising internet poker as part of overall liberalising of the industry. Other casino games would remain banned.

"Social game developers have all the ingredients that the gambling guys are missing," Mr Griffin said. "They have good user experiences. They have a huge install base of a billion players, but they don't have access to monetisation." Betable has not announced any specific contracts, but said the platform could be used by the popular Facebook or social games like Zynga's Farmville.

Ralph Topping, chief executive of William Hill Plc., used his personal blog to call for online social gaming to be regulated. Topping said the London-based firm has adopted a "watching brief" stance when it comes to social gaming. "Social gaming is no longer the next big thing for gambling, it is already a very big thing," Topping wrote. "Over one billion dollars has already been spent by 'traditional' gambling companies alone in mergers and acquisitions and hundred of millions of dollars in revenue is already being generated."

"But one of the more intriguing use cases for Big Data involves the gambling industry, a sector that's so reliant on number crunching and intelligent prediction that it's been left with little choice to grab a hold of its masses of data and exploit it to the max."

First, the main objective is to promote poker as a game of skill, a mind-sport, and to take it away from just being associated with casinos and gambling. USPF members love poker, we love the possibilities of the game, the way it can be used to hone one's mental muscle, and how it can be applied as a teaching tool. The idea is that we are going to be a sports federation … we weill sanction events, rank players, organize or own events.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that poker is more a game of skill than chance and cannot be prosecuted under a law created to stop organized crime families from making millions of dollars from gambling. The decision by Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn was embraced by advocates of card games pushing to legalize Internet poker in the United States. The judge relied extensively on the findings of a defense expert who analyzed online poker games.