Bet From Anywhere Blog

Tags:   Isle of Man · Malta · partygaming · Poker StarsNo Comments.

Kentucky authorities want to seize 140 Internet domain names, saying the web sites bring illegal gambling within the borders of the commonwealth.

Attorneys for a trade association for the gambling web sites countered that Kentucky lacks the authority to make that move because the domain names aren’t property and, besides, they are based offshore and beyond Kentucky’s jurisdiction.

A three-judge appeals court panel in Kentucky is now weighing whether a state can seized a web site domain name to curtail gambling within its borders, even if it means cutting the rest of the world off from the site.

The question arose after Franklin County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate ruled in October that the state’s lawsuit seeking to block Kentuckians’ access to more than 140 online casinos could go forward. Wingate also ruled that he planned to hold a hearing about whether the state could seize the web sites.

The hearing has not been held pending the outcome of the appeal heard Friday. [Read more →]

Tags:   kentuckyNo Comments.

Collaboration by two of the world’s most respected news organizations reveals how online poker players suspecting cheating were forced to successfully ferret out the cheaters themselves. That’s because managers of the mostly-unregulated $18 billion Internet gambling industry failed to respond to their complaints.

The results of the four-month investigation by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, producer Ira Rosen and The Washington Post’s two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Gilbert Gaul will appear this Sunday, Nov. 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT on 60 Minutes.

“He was raising, just really, really bad hands against very good hands. He seemed to play crazy,” says Todd Witteles, a computer scientist turned poker player who believed he was losing too much to the same person. “It seemed like he was giving his money away. Except the only thing was, he wasn’t losing. He was playing in a style that was sure to lose, but he was killing the game day after day,” Witteles, who played a key detective role, remembers.

Michael Josem, a player and a computer security expert, plotted the odds of such consistent success. “We did the mathematical analysis to find that they were winning at about 15 standard deviations above the mean…approximately equivalent to winning a one-in-a-million jackpot six consecutive times.”

The cheating, which netted the cheaters more than $20 million, occurred on two of the Internet’s most popular sites, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. The two sites operate out of a shopping mall in Costa Rica and run their games on computer servers housed on an Indian reservation outside of Montreal. They are licensed by a Mohawk tribe that has no background in casino gambling, a tribe that previously made the majority of its money selling tax-free tobacco. Though such gambling is illegal in both Canada and the U.S., the betting laws in those countries have no jurisdiction on the sovereign reservation.

Tags:   Absolute Poker · cheating · internet gambling · ultimate betNo Comments.

BringIt is another online destination where console gamers from around the globe can play video games for real money. Gamers compete in head-to-head challenges and multiplayer bracket style tournaments, and win real cash. As usual, the games that are being played for cash prizes on BringIt are considered “Games of Skill” and not games of chance, and are allowed by the law.

Players can ‘BringIt’ for as little as $1 or up to as much as $100,000, so both casual players and those who crave the adrenaline of high stakes can engage at their own pace and be assured their BringIt challenge experience is safe and secure. During gameplay, the collective entry fees are held in an escrow account until the winner is declared and verified, at which point the funds are released to the winner’s secure account, minus the BringIt service fee. BringIt provides neutral arbitration as well as a self-regulating player feedback system that lets members know an opponent’s standing in advance of initiating a challenge or accepting a match.

CrunchGear offers the following feedback about BringIt:

Once registered for the site (free) you pay up a little into the account (they’ll match up to $20 for the beta) and go get your wager on, assuming you’re 18 or older. BringIt supports every major console out there along with PCs, although it seems it only works with one on one matches at the moment. That actually leaves out quite a lot of the gaming community — Counter-Strike, for instance, is a huge segment and very team-based. But there’s a healthy 1v1 community out there as well, and at any rate it makes the betting considerably simpler. You challenge someone, put up an agreed amount into escrow (anywhere from $1 to $100,000) and at the end the total is given over to the winner, minus the 10% fee you knew had to be in there somewhere. These being games of skill (and thus impervious to the legal restrictions on games of chance), some matches may be close or contested; a record of the events of each game is emailed to each player, however, and I can only assume that when things get hairy, a BringIt “ref” will be brought in to make the call. [Read more →]

Tags:   BringIt · PS2 · PS3 · Wii · XBOX 360No Comments.

The Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board announced the release of a joint final rule to implement the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The Act prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with unlawful Internet gambling, including payments made through credit cards, electronic funds transfers, and checks.

The Board and the Treasury are required by the Act to develop a joint rule in consultation with the Department of Justice. The final rule requires U.S. financial firms that participate in designated payment systems to establish and implement policies and procedures that are reasonably designed to prevent payments to gambling businesses in connection with unlawful Internet gambling. The rule provides non-exclusive examples of such policies and procedures and sets out the regulatory enforcement framework. For purposes of the rule, unlawful Internet gambling generally would cover the making of a bet or wager that involves use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any applicable federal or state law in the jurisdiction where the bet or wager is initiated, received, or otherwise made. [Read more →]

Tags:   Barney Frank · Bill Frist · HR 4411 · Jim Leach · uigea · WichtermanNo Comments.