The resistance to legalize online poker, which is led by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) and the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association (IMEGA), are looking forward to the chance of arguing their case in court for legal online poker in the US. They want to argue that poker is a game of skill rather then a game of chance.
When $30 million in transit from offshore poker websites to the American public was seized in June by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) it looked as if this may be the platform needed to argue the case. Right away the PPA announced that they had brought together a team of legal experts to combat the seizure.
When the heat simmered on the seizure case and the SDNY indicted Douglas Rennick, a citizen of Canada, it was the clear that the poker resistance would have an uphill battle.
The indictment against Rennick stated that he committed bank fraud in opening accounts stating that his various companies would be processing both rebate and affiliate checks when in reality they were making payments that had to do with online gambling.
iMEGA chairman Joe Brennan Jr. stated, “It doesn’t even give you the opportunity to get into a debate on the status of Internet poker. Whether Internet poker is legal or not is almost inconsequential when you have a processor lying about where the money is coming from.”
The Illegal Gambling Business Act of 1955 is mentioned in the following 2 counts of money laundering and gambling conspiracy in the Rennick’s indictment. If he were found guilty of bank fraud then he would not really have to come back to the U.S. to face trial.
An amicus brief was filed by the PPA for the SDNY and said that the seizure of funds to the public is in conflict with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in that poker is a skill game and that skill games are not illegal under the Gambling Business Act. The amicus brief is really the only thing that the PPA can do about the issue.
PPA chairman John Pappas stated, “We think it’s an underhanded move by the (Department of Justice) to get away from actually having a hearing and a trial on the facts. I think the odds that (Rennick) will appear and that there will be a trial are very slim. We think this move was tactical by the DOJ to avoid pushing forward with a trial on the merits of whether poker is a lawful game.”
Even though it was the case that the seized funds were payouts for poker players online the bigger poker websites of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker refunded the withdrawals as well as player bonuses into the accounts of the players that were impacted by the seizure. The poker websites located offshore will not go after seized funds and open up their operations to the American legal system.
August 26th, 2024 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Tonight I played an RTG game called “Medal Tally”, which is an olympic-game themed video slot. The layout is generic for a 5×25 slot game, and the background and images are pretty unexciting. There isn’t really any good music or effects to keep you engaged, so it is very easy to get bored, as I did. Also, something I found strange, there were no options to change my wagers. I was playing for funny money, as always, and noticed that my bet was static. I’m not sure how that works, but it is the first time I ran into that issue. The wagering system did appear to be standard ($0.01 – $1.00 per line). As for gameplay, it was much like the looks, unexciting and quickly boring. I had a few wins before I ducked out, but even with my bets set at $1.00 per spin, I ended up $50 in the hole. There is a free game feature wich is triggered by the appearance of, get this, “Feature”…very creative…5 of them will yield 20 spins, 4 yields 15, and 3 gives 10 spins. I want to reiterate how boring the gameplay was on this game, I played for about 10 minutes, and during about half of that I zoned out and was just clicking spin, so I don’t really know what happened, other than it took my funny money. Save your time, and skip over this game, it is definitely not worth a visit.
September 22nd, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Tonight I tried out an RTG slots game called “Crazy Vegas” which turned out to be a pretty typical game, nothing really special. The game layout and design was cheesy, sort of like a lounge lizard type of feel, very Vegas. It is a typical 5×20 slot game, with bets from $0.01-$5.00 for a $100.00 max bet. There are a couple of bonus features to the game. First, there is a scatter multiplier, which if triggered by 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols will payout a 5/20/.100 multiplier, respectively. The second is a free spin feature, triggered by three free spin chips in reels 2, 3, and 4. The first two chips flip and sum to reveal the number of free spins and the third reveals the feature multiplier. I hit this twice, and the payout was pretty respectable, ~$1000 for each game. The last was a feature called Big Bonus, which was triggered by a Big Bonus icon on the first and last reel, which opened a minigame feature. On this minigame, there are two reels, and inner and outer; the outer reel spins one direction and picks the base value, and the inner spins the opposite direction and picks the multiplier. I picked up a $6000 win on that game. Overall, the game was pretty generic but the payouts were pretty nice. I ended up only $600 up, but at certain points I was as far as $4500 in the black, so big wins are certainly doable on this game.
September 15th, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Well, after a prolonged hiatus, I am back with a vengeance, and I got it started off on a different note with “Lucky 8′s”, a scratch card game from an RTG casino. This was an Irish themed game, centered around a leprechaun, naturally, and his pot o’ gold. The graphics are cute and kitschy, the kind of thing that would catch your eye at a convenience store rack. The way the game is played is you select your bet amount, ranging from $1.00 to $10.00, then play and scratch, just that easy. There are two sets of scratchers, one has two numbers, the Lucky numbers, that you must match to win, if you make a match you win the prize (bet multiplier or free game), and you can win as many times as you match. The other ways to win are to uncover a Lucky 8 or a Horseshoe, both of which carry the same type of prizes. The gameplay goes pretty quick, as you would imagine, and the payout frequency was pretty high, probably one is every three games I won a prize, and whenever you win you are guaranteed t at least make back your bet with a free card or 1x multiplier! After about 10 minutes of playing, I found myself up around $400, which was pretty good for playing a $10 scratcher, and I only had one really big win, which was about $300. It was pretty mindless, and took even less effort than a slot to play, but the payout was worth it, so I would highly recommend this game as a respite from the constant spinning of the slot reels.
September 10th, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Tonight I ventured back into a Microgaming casino and tried a game called “Big Kahuna – Snakes and Ladders.” This turned out to be a very island-themed game, where many of the icons were tropical fruits, or monkeys, etc. The music was okay, somewhat tropical, but it didn’t help the gameplay. I only played for about 15 minutes until I had enough of losing money. The game is a 5×15 slot with up to 20 coins bet per line, with a bet from $0.01 – $0.25, allowing a $75.00 max bet. I played for 15 minutes on the max bet, and ended up down almost $2000, which was plenty of a loss for me. There is supposed to be both a free spin bonus, and a quest bonus. The quest comes with three snake icons, in the 1st, 3rd, and 5th reels, I never hit that. I never fully understood what triggered the free spin feature after reading the information, but I hit it once and picked up 5 free spins. That saved the game a little, as it was a decent payoff, but the standard gameplay payoffs were very inconsistent. Not to mention the game was terribly laggy and couldn’t keep up. The slot motion was pretty smooth, but the act of spinning, or transitioning between wagers was very slow. Overall I was really displeased with this game, as I was amped up for a pretty good game tonight, only to be let down, once again.
August 17th, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
So tonight I tried out a dice game at a Vegas Tech casino that was called “Poker Dice.” I love poker, and dice games can usually be fun, so I decided this was a good bet. Right off the bat I was pleased with the aesthetics. The game table looked very authentic, and the dice shaker and roll graphics were very good, and not very ‘cheesy’.
On to the game, the setup is a one hand bet on a roll of 5-dice. Each 6-sided die has a 9/10/J/K/Q/A, and the standard poker hands possible from these combos make up the payout table. There are 7-payout hands ranging from Two Pair up through 5 of a kind. The payout is a tiered payout scale, which is basically 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 20 times your bet. The tier comes in with the bet; your minimum bet is $1.00 and the maximum is $100.00, per tier, and you can bet up to 5 tiers. This makes the maximum bet $500, and the maximum payout $10,000. It sounds more complex than it is, and it works just like a generic slot. The game play is pretty fluid, and I enjoyed my time, I played for roughly 25 minutes. For the first 15 I was betting conservatively, $5 on the 5th tier, so $25 per roll. There was a high frequency of low payout wins, but enough big wins to keep me at or above my starting balance for most of the game. Then I stepped up the bets to $25 per tier, for a $125 total. There is a big risk vs. reward for the higher bets. The payouts can be substantial, but losing streaks can kill you fast. I went pretty quickly from being up $750, to down $800, and by quickly, I’d say over the span of about 5 minutes of $125 rolls. For the last few minutes I decided to max out and see if I could run down to zero, and surprisingly, it took a while. With a $500 bet, the payouts on decent hands were enough to pad my account against a couple of losses. Ultimately I did blow through my balance, but a more conservative play would afford some pretty quick and significant gains.
Take some time, play this game, and give the dice a roll. Any player will get a kick out of this nice spin on a classic game.
June 21st, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
GamblingSmarts.com is proud to recommend BetUS Poker. We will have a full review soon, but here is the deal is a nutshell:
- Great Signup bonus (100% up to $600 at time of this post)
- Monthly 25% reload bonus
- Many freerolls and cash tournaments
- Unique promotions, loyalty rewards program, and other features (gold cards, gold chips, etc)
- Licensed by Kahnawake
- Powered by Cake Gaming – one of the fastest growing poker networks
- Quick download and setup
Give it a try and let us know what you think!
June 21st, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Sign Up a new account at Sun Poker and you can play in the following free rolls. The first one is for about anyone as it only requires a 1MPP buy-in. The later one requires a 50MPP buy-in. MPPs are awarded based on the rake of the hand (see below).
$2,500 FreeRoll:
June 28, 2008 7pm UK / 2pm US EDT
1 MPP buy-in
Password: sun2500
$5,000 FreeRoll:
June 29, 2008 7pm UK / 2pm US EDT
50 MPP buy-in
Password: sun5000
What are MPPs and how do I earn them?
MPPs are Sun Poker’s way to reward our loyal poker clients. Points are earned by playing at our regular cash game or ring game tables. Players are awarded MPPs along the following schedule.
Rake from 0 to .24 = 0 MPP
Rake from .25 to 0.99 = .25 MPP
Rake from $1 to $3 = 1 MPP
Tournament Fee’s $/£/€ 1 = 3 MPP
Sun Poker is a great poker room if you are into cash tournaments. They offer plenty of other reasons to play, but we are very into all their freerolls and similar tournaments. They know how to treat their players!
Play Texas Hold’em Online
June 12th, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Welcome to the Gambling Smarts blog. Let me introduce myself… I am Matt – the webmaster behind GamblingSmarts.com. I’ve been working for 2 years to build enough resources to make this website useful. While we are still adding articles and other tools, we are well on our way. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be using this space to recap our efforts to date – from our casino reviews to some of our slots and table game strategies.
In general, you’ll find here updates about the website as well as some of my thoughts about gambling (online and land based casinos) as well as the legal environment and innovation. It is my goal to keep you informed as well as share my views with the world – all right here.
You can either sign up for our RSS feed and view this blog in your favorite reader (such as MyYahoo) or stop by every few days and see what is new.
January 10th, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
