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Full Tilt Poker CEO Raymond Bitar says he will do "whatever is required" to return millions of dollars to online poker players who lost access to their cash after the site was closed down by the government. Bitar, 40, was arrested on Monday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, according to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Bitar was charged last year with gambling, bank fraud and money laundering in connection with the operation of Full Tilt Poker.

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."

"Even as Apple's storefront plays host to an increasing number of casino apps, the company isn't taking a cut of sales from gambling in its apps, Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Apple, said. Games are permitted in the App Store as long as they comply with local laws, said Neumayr, who declined to comment specifically on Big Fish. "Apple wants to keep arms' length from this," said Paul Thelen, CEO of Big Fish. "They don't want to be the middleman in a gambling operation.""

While I do not necessarily expect official word from the company on its real-money online gambling plans on Wednesday's call - all CEO Mark Pincus has said is he was exploring it - a story hit a gambling industry magazine earlier this week (via the Gambling911 website) that flew under the radar.

Let's start with the obvious: When it comes to the green stuff, no game company is, well, playing games. But Zynga is about to enter a whole new playing field. CEO and co-founder Mark Pincus recently announced that his social gaming giant will enter the real-money gaming (or online gambling) business outside the U.S. in 2013. In fact, Zynga already has products in the pipeline. "What we've said, and what we have to announce today, is that we have our first products in development and that we intend to release them in markets that are regulated and open, subject to our getting licensing," Pincus said during an unfortunate analyst conference call, TechCrunch reports.

Zynga has announced the release in early 2013 of its poker application that will involve real-money gaming. Over the past year, Zynga has struggled to keep its foothold in the mobile gaming market as new entrants have entered the industry. Zynga's solution: real-money poker, which is set to launch in the first half of 2013 in international markets. Zynga's latest quarterly earnings report - its sales of $332.5 million missed the $343.1 million mark that Bloomberg had forecasted - sent the company's stocks plummeting as low as $3.03 per share on Wednesday. At the end of today's trading Zynga's stock price sat at $3.17 per share, but has dropped even further in after-hours trading. During the earnings conference call, Zynga CEO, Mark Pincus blamed Zynga's second quarter shortcomings on Facebook. Changes to Facebook's algorithm apparently surfaces fewer games, thereby decreasing the frequency with which Facebook users discover Zynga games.