Barney Frank even appeared on the Tonight Show as hosted by Jay leno where he discussed the bill. “We now make it illegal for adults to gamble on the internet. If you have some guy who wants to play poker on the Internet, we say it’s illegal. Why anybody thinks that’s the government’s business is beyond me. We could make billions of dollars a year by making it legal and taxing it.”

Leno disagreed with Frank and was of the opinion that live gambling was not as accessible as online gambling. “Vegas works because you have to go to the desert to get there. You lose your money and you come home. You can’t go to the desert again until you get more money. If you’re sitting at home and you’re up late at night and you got your little credit card, next thing you know … it’s like a mini bar,” said Leno. Frank won this round when he pointed put that the HR 2267 excluded credit card usage.

The Commerce Casino has taken a rather strong stance against the HR 2267, opposing congressman Barney Frank’s bill. The Commerce Casino along with a few other casinos, took issue with legalizing online gambling in the US. In response to this, the PPA took up the cause and launched a petition in support of the bill which was signed by 7,000 people.

Waltona Manion, a spokesperson for those casinos which supported the card room’s opposition against Barney Frank’s online gaming bill, had this to say: “We’re looking for Federal enforcement of the same strict licensing and regulation for online poker as U.S. land-based casinos abide by…Frank’s bill provides fewer industry regulations and player protections. It imposes lower taxes for foreign online companies than what U.S. casinos pay. It would enable illegal offshore companies to export significant money from our economy.”

Although the exact terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, it has been reported that the Kahnawake Gaming Commission authorized the sale and was assisted by Tokwiro Enterprises. Blanca Games appear to be excited about the acquisition and see a good potential for profit growth in the future. “The acquisition of Cereus is a significant opportunity for us. Cereus is a major platform of well-managed assets. Over the past few years, it has created new brands, like ub.com, that are extremely well-positioned in the most desirable demographic in our market: players in the 20s and 30s age brackets. From our perspective, we have acquired a large, sophisticated online gaming operation with state-of-the art capabilities, ranging from compliance to business intelligence to online marketing to customer service,” Stuart Gordon commented.

In their press release, the company claims that Cereus’s security was one of its biggest strengths, despite the many reports of its faulty security. In the year 2007, both UltimateBet and Absolute Poker were involved in security scandals and in 2010, PTR found a security problem on the network. It remains to be seen whether Blanca Games will regret their purchase at a later date should they find security issues.

Gordon however is positive about the acquisition and claimed that no changes would be made to the website, “We see a tremendous growth opportunity in this deal and beyond, as Blanca seeks additional acquisitions in the market.”

These rumors were soon put to rest when Pokernewsnation.com reported an exclusive bit of information from their sources who had confirmed that it was Cake Poker that Fleyshman was considering. It was also reported that Victory Poker affiliates were not happy bout the move.

Following this, Dan Fleyshman went public and confirmed the move to Cake Poker saying, “I really was happy with the passion of the team at Everleaf but I felt like CAKE could handle all things that I wanted deep down inside. They have a Malta license which is where I happily live! Over 100 employees, management that I see working hard at all the conventions and loads of guaranteed tournaments! I’m really excited to do promotions with them, they are already successful but I want to help build that whole network on a global scale,” he claimed in an interview.

Fleyshman also appeared to be very excited about the move and is looking forward to the increased high stakes action that the sites will get, when Victory Poker’s top poker professional players like Andrew Robl and Antonio Esfandiari meet with Cake’s Doyle Brunson and Phil Laak.

Called Zynga Poker, this game is expected to be available in languages like Mandarin and players in Taiwan and Hong Kong are sure to be entertained by it. However, players in other Chinese regions may not have access to the game, since their authorities have banned Facebook.

The game will reach over “25 million players monthly” and will soon have world wide access. Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga claims that the Zynga Poker will widen the company’s scope and increase its audience.

“We are excited to bring poker to Hong Kong and Taiwan and connect local players to the nearly 30 million people around the world who are already active on Zynga Poker,” Pincus said.

The poker game is one of the company’s most popular games and is now in a beta version.

This collusion ring supposedly from Hangzhou, appears to have worked together by playing Double or Nothing Sit and Go tourneys at the site, while minting their money off unsuspecting players. PokerStars was soon alerted to the scam by complaints from participants and froze the suspect player accounts.

This group of colluders which numbered more than 40 players would target the high buy-in sit and go tourneys at $52 to $104 fees and take up half of the seats there. As the game progressed, these players would allegedly share hand information and tricks and end up winning all double their buy-in while the rest of the players went home with empty pockets. Players first became suspicious when groups of six or more Chinese layers would sit down to a poker table simultaneously and then walk away with the winnings as the game ended.

“Jane0123” was a player from the game who was investigated by the site. PokerStars closed this account on these grounds stating, “In reviewing hands it is clear that you routinely made team plays to create situations where you were supposed to benefit. You and your friends routinely played four and five players deep, and squeezed the blinds between two or more cooperating players. After reviewing several hands, for several players, it became obvious that this was part of some kind of agreed-upon strategy.”

Wyn Ellis, an analyst for Numis stated, “Momentum is also gradually gathering behind regulation in the US… There are plenty of promising opportunities on the horizon.”

This partnership of Bwin and PartyGaming which will be completed by next year will place the resultant enterprise as one of the biggest gaming companies on the market today.

PartyGaming also announced plans to continue such consolidation efforts and partnerships, leaving one to wonder which company is being considered for the next tie-up. The company’s statement claimed that it would “continue playing an active role” in this sector as soon as the Bwin deal went through.

Reports indicate that the company may be considering European markets like France for its new ventures. Countries like France which has recently regulated its online gaming laws and are giving out licenses to foreign gaming companies are a good bet for expanding gaming operations. Other online gaming markets to consider include the United Kingdom, Italy and Denmark. It is believed that in the year 2011, Denmark will open its online gaming market to new investors.

Jim Ryan, CEO of PartyGaming, commented on this issue saying, “As previously announced, Clean EBITDA margins in the first half were slightly lower than expected due to the delayed launch of cash game poker in Italy but we retain our previous full year guidance of approximately 28%, subject to the returns achieved on planned marketing spend in both France and Italy where we are continuing to expand the share of our respective poker networks.”

Police Central District Commander Major General Ben-Tzion Sau signed an order which requires internet service providers to block access to online poker and casino sites. The ISPs have argued that the order is not a reasonable one. While they can easily block known online poker sites, it is easy to circumvent the block. For online poker rooms, it’s only a matter of opening a site under a different name. All they need to do is change a single letter or add a dash, and the site is a new site which is no longer blocked. Moreover, if the software has already been downloaded, the block may not affect the player at all. For players, getting around the block is only slightly more difficult. Most Israeli companies have offices out of the country, which means that many hi-tech workers in Israel can easily access the internet via a proxy server or a virtual private network, completely avoiding their local ISP.

The police demanded that the ISPs begin the block within 48 hours, but many requested a delay of one week to study the legal and technological implications of implementing such a block. As of now, over five days after receiving the order, Bezeq International, one of Israel’s largest ISPs, has not blocked PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, PartyPoker, Cake Poker, or any of a number of other online poker sites.

In theory, the ban on advertising online gaming sites had been removed from YouTube’s terms and conditions page in 2008, but in practice, sites were not permitted to run their advertising on YouTube. The change in policy is a step in the right direction from the Google team. While advertising to countries where online gambling is illegal could present a liability to YouTube and Google, it’s hard to understand why the country choice is quite so limited. Hopefully, though, this step in the right direction will be the first step along a road to treating online casinos like normal businesses instead of like dens of iniquity.

On the first matter, the claim was that the PokerStars.net site, despite not being a gambling site itself promoted its sister site PokerStars.com. The court ruled that the site stands alone. According to Justice David J. Harvey, it is unlikely that New Zealand residents would be induced to gamble just because they used the PokerStars.net site.

The ruling read “Firstly, the nature of the material in the advertisements made it clear that what was being advertised was free websites that do not involve gambling. Secondly, the .com website is not mentioned at any time. Unless the user knew of the existence of the .com website, no association could be made between PokerStars and that particular website.”

On the other matter, the judge ruled that the Asia Pacific Poker Tour is not a gambling event, but a contest. Since the tour has an entry fee and a prize for winning the contest, it is not gambling in the same way that house-banked games or even a regular game of poker is. Players know exactly what the registration fee is before signing up, and the prize poor is established before play commences. This is a small step, but hopefully one day, poker tournaments will not be considered gambling in New Zealand.