This poker event will feature 57 poker tourneys and will begin on the 11th of October going on to the 7th of November, for a total of 28 days. London Calling is scheduled to take place at the Shaftesbury Avenue and will host Texas hold’em tournaments with no limits, along with pot limit Omaha games, Heads Up games and HORSE poker. The tourney will also include a PLO8 event and players will find that the entry prices fro these games have been set at £20 to £100. Players who like HORSE will be delighted to note that the HORSE poker event at London Calling will be a two day show.

London Calling will end with a main event game featuring a £300 buy-in Main Event that will go on for two days. The tourney will showcase a leaderboard featuring player names and scores. Player points can be used to enter freerolls at PKR.com,

PKR.com appears to be excited about the event and Simon Prodger, the company’s Marketing Director commented on the event. “It’s been our ambition to put on an event like this for some time, and we’re delighted that London now has the perfect venue in which to do so. With regular buy-ins ranging from £20 ‘London Calling’ is for the huge number of people who’d love to play a high-quality, dealer dealt tournament but find most poker tours and festivals are too high for their bankroll,” he said.

Ulliott’s book “Devilfish: The Life and Times of a Poker Legend” has already created a lot if interest in the poker community and is priced at £12.99. In his book, Devilfish goes into detail about his life and poker experiences and his voice his heard clearly throughout the chapters.

The upcoming Poker in the Park event is expected to attract over 20,000 fans and will take place in Leicester Square in London. The event is the biggest free poker gathering in Europe and is highly publicized, making it a great platform for the launch of Devilfish’s book. The event will go on for two days and fans of Devilfish will be pleased to note that the player will also do a public reading, and participate in a Q and A session as well. Players can expect to get their brand new copies of the pre-published book autographed by the man himself at the book signing program.

According to Philip Conneller, Bluff Europe’s Editor, “With his eye-popping tales of Humberside villainy, ‘Devilfish’ has written a truly memorable book about his extraordinary life. We can’t wait to get down there and get our signed copies.”

One of the reasons for this success is that most of the internet gambling firms are well run and managed efficiently so as to not run into many obstacles. While other companies are still dealing with layoffs and job cuts, and countries are recording double digit unemployment rates, the gaming industry is able to provide jobs, as is evident in the case of blackjack dealers in PA casinos and the scope for internet poker affiliates online.

Another reason is the FIFA World Cup which took place this summer and allowed sportsbetting companies to make huge profits during their first two quarters.

Paddy Power, the third largest gaming group in the UK and the biggest gaming operator in Ireland, recorded a 50% hike in profits during the first half of 2010 taking in €11 million in soccer bets alone. Paddy Power was also able to increase the number of its betting shops in the UK, by an additional 100 in the course of 2 years.

Australian betting companies also thrived this year. Sportingbet.com and PartyGaming both benefited from their sportsbetting operations and the former took in $78 million in soccer bets while PartyGaming recorded a €19.7 million profit. However, 888.com which has no sportsbetting operation did not record a drop in profits but tabled an unchanged income.

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.

According to the country’s latest gambling laws, gaming enterprises are required to submit applications for licenses which can are authorized by the Estonian Tax and Customs Board. Enterprises are also required to hold both a gambling permit and a license for organized online gambling, if they wish to run an online gambling site in Estonia.

PokerStars appears to have met all these criteria and has secured their license much to the delight of Estonian poker players. The permit will be enforced on the 23rd of August, 2010 and players will only have to wait a few more days to see it lifted.

Tomas Larsson, who manages PokerStars’ operations in the Baltic regions, appears to be pleased with the new license. “Applying for a license is always a complicated process and I am very glad that by now PokerStars has met all criteria for receiving a gambling organizer’s license in Estonia,” he said.

Although Estonia is one of the smaller states in the European Union, it is known to have a strong base of poker players and gamblers. It is also reportedly one of the best developing markets for PokerStars in the EU. “In addition to Estonia having excellent players and tournament organizers, Tallinn is also a new and truly attractive destination for many top players,” Larsson added.

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.”

The case began when eight bank accounts from these companies were seized by the Feds in June 2009, after it was noted that funds from the two payment processors were allegedly used to finance illegal internet gambling operations. It has also been reported that these payments were traced to PokerStars and other online gaming sites.

In defense of their site PokerStars issued the following statement, “PokerStars does not condone efforts by processors to conceal the nature or purpose of funds used to play online poker. PokerStars has taken steps to ensure that processors properly disclose the nature of their business to their relevant financial institutions.”

The eight accounts contained a sum of $13,335,248.91 deposited into the accounts within a period of six months that ended in May 2009. This sum has been held by the FBI since the year 2009 and is only being released now that Ahmad Khawaja has now agreed to forfeit this money, which has been described as “proceeds of the illegal transmission of gambling information and operating an illegal gambling business,” by the court.

This forfeit will end the civil settlement that has been going on for over a year now.