Digital Poker practices

Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, said in a conference call with analysts today that the company will launch its first real-money online gambling poker game in the first half of 2013. The game will likely be launched outside the U.S., since real-money online gambling is still illegal in the vast majority of states. There are regulatory roadblocks in many countries, but Europe is pretty open. Pincus said the launch will be subject to online gambling regulatory reviews. Zynga's non-real-money poker game, Zynga Poker, accounted for 18 percent of revenue. In that game, users purchase poker chips with real money, but they cannot cash out any winnings

Strip casino giant MGM Resorts International isn't planning to open more multibillion-dollar integrated casino-resort complexes anytime soon. Instead, MGM Resorts will in June launch myVegas, a free-to-play social gaming casino where only virtual money is bet to win only virtual prizes. Think of Farmville meets Bellagio.

AUSTRALIANS could get access to legal online poker tournaments and a wider choice of online sports betting options under proposals to liberalise the internet gambling sector

"If you are gambling on your smartphone, if you are gambling on your computer, you are absolutely on your own."

More than 30 companies have now submitted applications to operate an online poker site in Nevada, with Wynn Resorts being the latest to join the growing list.

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.

In April, Wynn was in talks with Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA), the world's largest social gaming developer, to form a strategic online partnership. (See our previous post: Wynn Takes Hard Look At Online Gambling Market With Zynga) Speculation is rife that Wynn is interested in partnering with Zynga for this project. Zynga enjoys a dominating position in the social gaming industry and has about 232 million average monthly active users across 166 countries.

Steve Bourie, author of America's #1 best-selling book on casino gambling and travel has a YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/americancasinoguide that recently surpassed the one million views mark.

Las Vegas casinos are building Facebook gambling games to attract new customers, taking advantage of online gaming's popularity to turn a potentially huge profit. Nevada's big-name casinos are partnering with online gaming companies to increase Strip tourism by hooking young players with virtual versions of blackjack and bingo.

This is weird: Rafael Nadal has joined PokerStars, the world's largest online poker site.

But even with this approval, Bally and IGT still have to wait for individual casinos to be licensed for this sort of gaming.

If you love gambling and live in Delaware, you'll soon be able to legally play slots and games such as roulette and poker online. The state hopes to launch online gambling in 2013 and intends to make betting available on a variety of digital devices, including smartphones and tablets. The new gambling offerings will generate $7.75M in fiscal 2013.

There are hundreds of virtual slot machine and poker games on Facebook and other sites that are almost identical to adult gambling games.

"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.

888 Casino has recently celebrated great success with the launch of its roulette application for Android devices and is seeking to replicate this success with the release of its roulette application for the iPad. The launch of these two applications signifies the introduction of 888 into the mobile casino realm.

Online poker could be just months away in Nevada, and Gov. Brian Sandoval said he's comfortable state regulators are taking appropriate steps to license operators while protecting the public.

"While Zynga waits to make a move into the online gambling space, other Internet casinos are all in - and have been for more than a decade. This infographic shows how much the industry has grown since 1998, from online bingo and poker sites to national and state lotteries."

The world's largest Internet poker company, PokerStars, is settling with the government to the tune of $731 million more than a year after a crackdown on online gambling. And, in possibly the best part of the deal, the company is also buying former competitor Full Tilt Poker and paying back its customers, who were left locked out of their accounts after the site's U.S. operations were shut down last April. In the agreement with the Manhattan branch of the Department of Justice, PokerStars will forfeit $547 million to the government over three years. The payment will settle civil charges that the company engaged in fraud to sidestep U.S. regulations on online gambling.

"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."

A report released by Juniper Research the mobile gambling market, which is currently worth $13 billion a year, will be worth around $100 billion a year by 2017. Already William Hill, Ladbrokes and Paddy Power have all seen a 40% increase in online sports-books customer placing bets from mobile devices. A quick look at some of the biggest gambling operators easily reveals how much focus they're placing on mobile gambling. All Slots Mobile has just launched an HTML5 platform for Apple devices which brings 11 of its most popular mobile slots and video poker games to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.