Gambling News of note

[Handy Harry]

Who's a naughty boy then???

A mother thought her 19-year-old son could be trusted with credit. Then she found out he'd lost more than $4,000 in a single day at a casino, playing blackjack with borrowed money.

The lending institution immediately doubled the credit limit on his Visa, which he used for cash advances, and then gave him credit lines on two bank accounts, without any proof of the ability to repay the cash advances or credit lines.

The story shows the need for financial literacy education in high school, as well as appropriate controls on credit use by young adults. Taylor's son says he started gambling at the age of 17, using fake identity papers. Casinos in Ontario require proof that customers are 19 years old before allowing them in.

He went to the casino frequently and, inevitably, started losing money. So, he kept going back to regain the money he'd lost. He already had a Visa card with a $500 credit limit, which his mother had co-signed when he was 17. When he turned 19 last August (and was still working at a summer job), he applied for a Visa in his own name and had the limit increased to $1,000. With his frequent casino visits, he soon exhausted the $1,000 limit on his Visa and spent all the money in two bank accounts.

That didn't stop him. Using a pay phone at the casino, he called the bank's 1-800 number at 7 a.m. after a night of gambling to ask for more credit. When the bank asked if he was working, he said yes — though he hadn't worked since August.

The bank doubled his Visa limit to $2,000, so he took out a $1,000 cash advance. When that money was lost, he called again and got the bank to put overdraft protection on one account. Then he got overdraft protection on his other account. He maxed out both credit lines (to a total of $3,226.74) over a period of a few hours.

[Handy Harry]

¤ Mexico's congress plans to legalize casino gambling, opening the way for poker, roulette and slot machines to appear in hotels at beach reports from Acapulco to Ixtapa, El Universal newspaper reported on its website. The lower house's Interior Affairs Commission today plans to unanimously approve the text of the bill, the paper said.

The bill then needs to be approved by majority vote in the 500-seat lower house and later ratified by the Senate to become law. Mexico's five largest parties in congress have already agreed to approve the law before Dec. 15, the paper said. Most of the bills approved in commission are voted into law.Casinos are expected to be a boost Mexico's tourism industry, which already brings in $8 billion a year from foreign visitors. Mexico's tourism chamber estimates that 40 casinos would generate at least $3 billion in sales and create 200,000 jobs.




¤ Next month in the New Year the most famous luxury department store in the world, Harrods, in London, England, will re-launch what promises to be one of the most luxury online casinos ever seen, industry experts predict. Harrods has reached an agreement with the prestigious software supplier, Kismet International Studios, who will supply the software and maintain the online casino.

The Harrods site, which will be available via www.harrods.com, has been closed for almost a month since Gaming Insight, its former software supplier, left. The site will also be reachable through www.KismetStudios.com.

[Handy Harry]

¤ The special status of the Chinese property tycoon Li Pei Ye as a high roller meant that employees of Melbourne's Crown Casino did not rush him to sign documents.

This was the case even when the documents authorized a $2.2 million transfer from his account to underwrite the gambling junket of an acquaintance. The casino relied on a gesture, a handshake and verbal instructions in English with one of the general managers. But Mr Ye, who says his understanding and speaking of English is "simple", says he never gave these instructions - and is suing Crown for defamation, unconscionable dealings and misleading and deceptive conduct under the Trade Practices Act.

Mr Ye, an Australian citizen based in Shanghai whose property empire is worth $1.6 billion, claims Crown wrongly transferred $2.2 million of the $3.65 million he had deposited into its account.

Part of the funds was to repay a $2.8 million gambling debt he had run up with Crown in July 2000. With the debt unpaid, he went on an international credit agency list as delinquent, and claims there was a subsequent credit squeeze on his property empire and loss of face and honor among colleagues.

[Handy Harry]

¤ Internet gamblers have clever ways to circumvent credit card curbs and other efforts to crack down on 1,800 cyber-casinos, congressional watchdogs say. They use everything from debit cards that tap money directly from their bank accounts to wire transfers and digital cash that can be placed on everything from a PC hard drive to a cell phone, Congress' General Accounting Office reports.

But the findings come as business makes progress in tightening up on online casinos, mostly in the Caribbean, that are visited by 2 million people a week: PayPal, eBay's online payment system that was popular with Internet gamblers, halted gambling payment services last week. Visa and MasterCard slapped new rules and charges on "high-risk" Web sites including online casinos with spotty payment records and reputations for billing disputes.

Yahoo.com stopped carrying advertisements for online casinos, which had 2.5 billion ads last year. The upshot is that analysts with investment bank Bear, Stearns now predict that Internet gambling will make just $4.2 billion next year, down 20 percent from its original $5 billion estimate but up from 2002's expected $4 billion take. Government is getting into the act, too. The crackdown started this summer when New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer got No. 1 card-issuer Citibank to agree to block online gambling with its credit cards by reprogramming its computers so they no longer recognize the transaction codes assigned to virtual casinos and other gambling Web sites. Other credit card issuers including MBNA, Discover and American Express have since signed on.

Next, Spitzer's office reached a settlement with PayPal to stop offering gambling payment services to customers from New York, one of 48 states allowing lotteries and other betting but not offsite gambling unless specifically authorized by state law. Only Utah and Hawaii outlaw all gambling. Federal law bans interstate gambling by wire, and that's thought to cover Internet wagering, but Congress has weighed legislation to toughen the statute and give law enforcement the power to stop banks and other financial service firms from processing online gambling transactions.

The bill passed the House but died when Congress quit before the Senate acted, but House sponsor Jim Leach, R-Iowa, vows to reintroduce it next year. He says Internet casinos are free of regulations that govern real-world U.S. casinos, "where the odds are against you, but a lot of rules apply." Keith Whyte, head of the National Council on Problem Gambling in Washington, agrees the Internet gives gambling addicts who've typically maxed out their 16 credit cards "yet another avenue to continue their gambling." New gamblers could be enticed with a casino as close as a mouse click on their PC, Whyte adds.




¤ Police in Malaysia have broken up a major illegal gambling syndicate, which organized betting on European football matches. Officers believe the gang has links to Britain and Hong Kong, and took millions of dollars in bets.

Bets on single matches played in Britain, Italy or Spain often totaled US $750,000 or more. Officers say they are now hoping to catch the criminal mastermind behind the syndicate, and uncover its links to other gangs. Police moved in on the gambling syndicate after a tip-off.

They arrested three men and seized equipment used to run the sophisticated online service. The arrests were led by officers from Malaysia's secret societies and vice divisions. Malaysian Chinese triad gangs have been linked to attempts to fix football matches in Britain before.

[Handy Harry]

¤ In late 1997, the Seminole Tribe considered an enticing offer to set up an Internet gambling site on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. An outside consultant said if the tribe invested $4.7-million to start the venture, it could rake in a net profit of as much as $706-million in three years.

Every man, woman and child in the tribe would pocket about $280,000. Then-Seminole Chairman James E. Billie wanted to forge ahead. Billie decided to go ahead with the Internet gambling plan, according to defense attorneys for three former Seminole employees charged with conspiracy to embezzle millions from the tribe. The defense attorneys claim the three -- Timmy Cox, Dan Wisher and Michael Crumpton -- are loyal workers, not thieves.

They said their clients just followed orders from Billie to secretly wire tribal cash first to Belize and then to Nicaragua to establish the gambling site. The U.S. government claims the three defendants siphoned $2.77-million out of the tribe's investment account in the spring of 2000, which they funneled to a shell corporation in Belize called Virtual Data. They then laundered the cash with a series of transactions and covered up the crime with a set of phony invoices.

Cox, Billie's handpicked $170,000-a-year operations officer, arranged for the initial transfer of funds, according to federal indictments unsealed in June. Wisher, a $125,000-a-year computer services expert for the tribe, and Crumpton, a contractor who is Wisher's son-in-law, helped facilitate the wire transfer, according to court papers.

The three are charged with conspiracy, embezzlement, money laundering and making false statements to federal investigators. They face prison terms of 90 to 115 years if convicted on all charges.

:eek:

[Handy Harry]

¤ High-ranking members of Congress plan to make an outright ban on all Internet wagering a top priority next year because of its vulnerability to money laundering. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, Democratic minority whip in Congress, said gambling over the Web is "ripe for cheating" and "cannot be controlled."

Only a bill completely banning Internet wagering could stop money laundering through Web sites, he said.

U.S. Rep. Michael Oxley, chairman of the House Committee on Financial Service, agreed Monday with Nevada's senior Senator and said the issue would be the top priority of his committee in 2003. According to a report released by the General Accounting Office Monday, law enforcement officials remain sure Internet gambling is an easy source to launder money.

"Internet gambling could potentially be a powerful vehicle for laundering criminal proceeds at the relatively obscure 'layering' stage of money laundering," the report read, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "The volume, speed and international reach of online transactions and the offshore locations of Internet gaming sites make the Internet particularly vulnerable to money laundering."

Some in Congress, however, only want a federal bill that would regulate wagering over the Internet and not ban it completely. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan introduced such a bill in November but it has not been considered by the Senate.

[Handy Harry]

¤ Bookmakers William Hill revealed that they had been 'inundated' with calls to place bets on an Internet rumour concerning David Beckham. However, Beckham has denied the rumor.

William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe told the Daily Mirror newspaper: 'We have received scores of requests.' But, he added: 'We have no intention of taking bets of that nature.' E-mail users around the UK and beyond have been circulating claims about the Manchester United star which first appeared on a web site a couple of weeks ago. But in a statement Thursday, Beckham’s spokeswoman denied the rumors and said that repeating the rumors could result in legal action.

The spokeswoman said: 'We are aware that there are malicious rumours circulating in the media about David Beckham. 'There is absolutely no truth whatsoever in these rumors and the web site we believe to be the source of these rumors has been contacted and all defamatory material has been removed.

'No publication of these rumors should be made as it would result in legal liability for defamation.' The website is believed to refer to Popbitch, the gossip site that has provided a steady flow of celebrity stories to the tabloids over the last two and a half years. At present, even if a website or internet service provider removes a defamatory statement as soon as they are notified, they still face the prospect of legal action - although the swiftness with which they acted will be taken into account.

If a site delays in removing a defamatory posting, even on its public message boards, then the site and the ISP that hosts it can both be sued. Aware of the speed with which gossip can mushroom thanks to the proliferation of email and the web, organizations and celebrities are increasingly taking the unusual step of denying stories that have not been published in print but are widely known thanks to the internet.

Last week Manchester City football club was forced to issue a statement denying that Kevin Keegan was set to quit as manager after rumors of his departure swept the web.

[Handy Harry]

¤ The latest reports state that there are now over 1,800 online casinos on the internet. Online Sportsbook proliferate and there seems to be a new online Poker site launching every day. One aspect of online gambling that doesn’t grab the headlines, but is becoming a vibrant, growing and commercially important market is online bingo.

Land-based bingo is huge, and it’s not only played by little old ladies. In fact, there are more visits to bingo halls in USA than there are visits to the cinema. In 1999, the US bingo industry alone had a turnover of $5.1b. Add to that the fact that the rules are simple (everyone knows how to play bingo) and that most people don’t even perceive it as gambling and you can see it’s potential.

Little wonder that online bingo is growing and set to become big business. Multi-player Bingo on the internet (as opposed to single player, ‘Keno-Bingo’) falls into three basic groups; Free Bingo, Game Sites with Bingo and Pay to Play Bingo.

Free Bingo is offered by a small number of specialist sites. Game play is free and prizes are usually points or small denomination cash prizes. The operators’ business model is built on banner advertising sales and/or data mining.

This is the same model as operated by those sites offering a range of games, one of which happens to be bingo. These sites include places like Pogo, Gamesville and the Flipside Network. The core of the industry, however, is the Pay-to-Play bingo sites. Compared to the 1800 online casinos, the bingo market is small, but it’s growing quickly.

There were only ten credible pay-to-play online bingo offerings in April 2000. A year later this had increased by 50%. One year later, by February 2002, this had double to 30 sites. As of December 2002, this figure has risen by more than 60% in less than year and the current count is at 52 sites. All these numbers exclude white label sites and affiliates etc.

The structure of the industry is similar to the online casino industry. Software is licensed to operators and costs are usually based on an upfront fee plus and on-going, turnover-based royalty. Up to recently the software was supplied by bingo specialists only. However, recently two of the online casino world’s ‘big boys’ have entered the market.

Both Boss Media and Cryptologic have commenced supplying bingo software. Again, as with the online casino market, the games come in download, Flash and Java versions, with the download option seemingly returning to favour after an up-turn in Java and Flash in the last year. All pay-to-play bingo sites offer slots games (as per their land-based cousins) but recently there has been a surge of new additional games on offer including Video Poker, Keno and other card based games.

[Handy Harry]

Technology Thwarts Sneaky Gamblers


According to casino gambling consultant, Andrew Glazer, the good old days, when gambling experts could "fly below casino radar and ply their trade" are over. At the 2000 World Gaming Congress and Expo, an industry-only trade show, he found himself intrigued by the ever-widening array of countermeasures casinos can take to fight schemes players have developed to beat them.

He doesn't encourage player efforts to become card-counters, because "real card-counting takes a great deal of skill, focus, effort and emotional control, as well as a large bankroll and a good collection of disguises. This doesn't fit into most people's idea of a relaxing vacation." Nonetheless, some players still want to beat the casinos at their own game in other ways as well, and casino support industries are busy making sure they can't.

There were a wide assortment of automatic reshuffling machines, all of which pretty much finish off the card-counters, or do they? Could shuffle machines actually be violating Nevada Gaming law? Do they alter the "random selectivity" that determines the outcome of the game?

Shuffle-tracking, an unproven strategy, could get knocked about by some new machines that randomly raise and lower the dealer's discard tray. Spooks -- players who try to peek at the dealer's hole card, either by themselves or with an associate -- have been thwarted for some time by card-scanning technology that lets a dealer check for blackjack without looking at his or her cards. Competition will make these machines cheaper and thus more widespread.

Computer-aided visual player-identification systems are growing more and more sophisticated. Wigs or beards won't help as much as they used to. But, is this technology really an invasion of privacy, especially when a player is not breaking the law by cheating?

Another area of concern is the players who like to beat the casino out of comps by placing higher wagers when the floorman is looking and then substantially lowering their bets when he wanders elsewhere, in order to create an impression they are higher rollers than they actually are. They won't like the new technology that will insert microchips inside player chips and allow the casino to track each player's true action electronically, without a floorman watching. Again, who's looking out for the player's privacy rights? Should someone be able to record what a player bets on every hand?

As exciting and interesting these new developments may be, the growing national concern about privacy rights is clearly being challenged by these new devices. We predict a legal clash is in the future should these devices become ubiquitous.

[Handy Harry]

January 16 2003


A gang of conmen has won hundreds of thousands of dollars from an Austrian casino by planting a remote-controlled magnetic roulette ball on a table.

Police said the five-strong gang used a concealed device near the table, possibly hidden in a watch, to create an electromagnetic field and manipulate where the ball went to within three spaces.

They did not win on every spin, but improved the odds sufficiently to pick up about $A685,000 over several weeks of regular visits to a Casinos Austria gambling house in Velden, Carinthia.

The group, believed to be four Germans and an Austrian, were discovered only when a croupier reached across the table to pick the ball up and it stuck to his cufflink. He immediately notified his superiors, but by then the gang had fled.

Analysis of surveillance camera footage indicates that the gang was made up of one gambler, two people controlling the roulette ball and two more keeping watch and trying to distract attention from their associates.


Officials believe that they may have struck elsewhere, moving on every three months to avoid arousing suspicion. This week police and the casino management were trying to work out how the conmen had managed to swap their ball with the casino's.

Once they had done so, they could take advantage of it again and again because the balls are kept in a safe overnight and returned to the same table.

Leo Wallner, the head of Casinos Austria, said: "I am pleased that we have exposed this con and can now act against it."

Magnetic field detectors are to be installed at all Casinos Austria premises.



:eek: :eek: :eek:

[cheesebeast]

Gambling in football: Does it really need this many big losers?
After a weekend of lurid allegations, does the sport have the courage to face up to the scale of its problem?

By Jason Burt
20 January 2003


As the BA Boeing 747 reached its cruising altitude, the seat belt signs were switched off and the England footballers settled down for the 12-hour flight from Osaka to Heathrow. Some read, some dozed, some listened to music.

For a handful of others – although the World Cup was over for them, as they had lost the previous day to Brazil – there was one more game to play. Another hand of cards. And, at the end of it, they added up their losses.

It was then that Michael Owen – nicknamed "Lucky" for his ineptness at cards – reached for his cheque book and wrote out the sum of £30,000 to be paid to his team-mate, Kieron Dyer. The amount covered his cumulative losses since the "England card school" had started at the training camp in Dubai several weeks earlier. The young Newcastle United midfielder was so delighted with his winnings that he brandished the cheque up and down the aisle during the rest of the flight.

True story? Who knows. But after a week of lurid media allegation and speculation the myth has passed into footballing folklore, along with many other, well-documented tales of players' spectacular losses. By yesterday, a startling picture had emerged of the vast, often obscene, amounts of money that are routinely gambled – frittered – by some of Britain's young football players. It all felt slightly sordid, slightly nasty, immoral even.

Take the case of the Chelsea striker Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Last October, he strolled into the Connoisseur Casino at the five-star Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, west London. It was past 1am and Hasselbaink, allegedly, quickly lost £50,000 on the tables. Hours later, he was with his team-mates on a bus to play away against Liverpool. They lost and he was substituted.

Or Jesper Gronkjaer, another Chelsea player who, it was claimed by the Sunday Mirror, has lost £112,000 at the same casino, working his way up from bets of £100. The list goes on with Eidur Gudjohnsen, an Icelandic striker, coming clean last week and admitting that he had lost £400,000 on roulette and blackjack.

It is not just foreign players. Indeed, they are believed to be "more disciplined" than the British footballers who, some say, will bet on almost anything. Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Manchester United's Dutch striker, exposed the betting culture at his club last week and Sir Bobby Charlton, a United director, said yesterday that gambling vast sums was "vulgar".

Unsurprisingly, the spotlight now is firmly on Owen, 23, who vehemently denies being the big-money loser on that England flight and losing other similarly large sums of money that were quoted yesterday. It was claimed he had placed bets worth £2.2m over the past few years, including several on the results of football matches.

Owen did, however, admit to "occasional" gambling and said in a statement: "I fully accept that high-profile sports people like me are a role model for youngsters and I would never encourage anyone to gamble."

As part of the Liverpool striker's response, a spokesman for Owen added: "Michael's father, Terry, has confirmed that he opened an offshore betting account [with bookmaker Victor Chandler] two or three years ago and has used this to place bets for friends and family, occasionally including Michael. Michael's gambling losses probably total around £30,000-£40,000 over the last couple of years." £40,000? A tidy sum – but nothing for a man whose wealth is estimated at between £5m and £9m.

However, in a clear sign that Owen and his handlers are concerned about the effect the gambling allegations will have on his clean-cut, boy-next-door image – and the lucrative endorsements that brings – the spokesman added: "Although the sums represent a tiny percentage of his earnings, Michael and his family know how important even £100 is to a normal household. It was not long ago that their family of seven lived together in a tiny house in a north Wales village."

Owen's management company, SFX, also released a statement which stated the player had raised "hundreds of thousands of pounds for charities" and was a devoted family man. Clearly they feared damage was being done to the earning power of Britain's second most marketable footballer after David Beckham.

The story – true or otherwise – of what happened on that England flight emerged last Monday, after Gudjohnsen's admission, in a newspaper column written by the former Ireland player Tony Cascarino, himself a big gambler. Cascarino did not name the England player but remarked matter-of-factly that £30,000 had been handed over. Within days, the rumour mill was naming Owen, who owns horses and was known to like a bet.

More importantly, it raised the debate over the effect of gambling in sport. It is nothing new, of course. There have always been card schools, there have always been long hours to kill on the way to games and there have always been wayward players such as Stan Bowles, who even tried to take a bet on whether he would stop betting, or more recently the Millwall striker Steve Claridge.

What was different this time was the eye-catching amounts involved – obviously fuelled by the astronomical wages footballers now earn – and the intervention of the former England captain Tony Adams, who raised the level of the debate on Wednesday by describing gambling as an addiction reaching alarming levels in the game.

Adams – who was to be honoured at the Football Writers' Association's annual dinner last night – said: "They [the addicts] lose their self-respect and before you know where they are, they are nicking money out of their kids' savings to have a bet." It was the kind of statement that made headlines – and blew a hole in the claim by another former player, Andy Gray, who said: "Players have always gambled relative to the amount they earned."

Adams – a recovering alcoholic – has established his own charity, Sporting Chance, which treats sportsmen suffering from addictions. Its chief executive, Peter Kay, said one of the problems with gambling was that it went unrecognised – partly because the signs were less obvious than with alcohol and drugs and partly because it was so ingrained in football. "In truth, some football chairmen would gladly drive the players to the casinos as long as they played well the next day," he said.

Paul Merson, a former team-mate of Adams and a man who has admitted to problems with gambling, drugs and alcohol, said it was unsurprising that more players were betting. "What can footballers do? They can't drink, they can't take drugs, they can't smoke.They have to have something to do. Some people can have a bet and walk away and then you get other people like me who have to keep on chasing, chasing and chasing."

And the number who are chasing is on the increase. Graham Taylor, the Aston Villa manager, said: "I saw a quote from David Davies of the Football Association the other day saying that he and Sven Goran Eriksson will deal with it. But real gambling is an addiction. With all due respect to David and Sven, it will take more than a few words to deal with it."

Taylor, unlike managers such as Liverpool's Gerard Houllier and Arsenal's Arsene Wenger, allows gambling on the team coach – although he insists it be for small amounts. Even this, according to former manager Tommy Docherty, can create a problem. "If a player has lost a lot of money to another it cannot do too much for team spirit," he said.

The FA said yesterday it had no intention of taking any action against Owen as he had not broken any rules. Players are only banned from betting on matches in which they take part or influence.

But as for the player himself, the question was clear. Does he really want to gamble on causing any more damage to that carefully cultivated image?

[hobbes]

Austrian gamblers who lose large amounts of money in casinos may be able to claim back some of their losses if they prove they are addicted to gambling.

The Supreme Court in Vienna is ordering the country's leading casino chain to refund £33,000 to a compulsive gambler.

The court ruled Casinos Austria did not investigate the man's financial situation and therefore neglected its "obligation to protect" its clients.

The gentleman, who has not been named for legal reasons, is a student when he first began to play on the tables at the casinos.

Generally, students, the unemployed and those claiming state benefits are not allowed to gamble.

Following his graduation from university in 1997 he visited the gambling dens over 700 times in two years, during which time he lost almost £70,000.

The court says Casinos Austria should have noticed the man was in jeopardy because he visited so often and should have taken steps to protect him from his own compulsion.


Story filed: 10:33 Sunday 19th January 2003

http://www.orange-today.co.uk/news/story/sm_741340.html?menu=news.quirkies

i wonder how this might apply to telebet accounts with the HKJC. maybe they should monitor same so they don't suffer a rush of lawsuits in years to come.

[Handy Harry]

By Geesche Jacobsen
February 6 2003


A woman employed to accompany high-rollers across the world has been charged with stealing almost $200,000 from one of her clients at Sydney's Star City casino at the weekend.

The 29-year-old woman, who was not employed by Star City, was staying at the casino's hotel with the VIP gambler.

On Friday night she allegedly left the man playing at the gaming tables. When he returned to his room, the cash - understood to be in a range of currencies including Japanese yen and US, Hong Kong and Australian dollars - had disappeared from the safe in his room.

Hotel security found the room had been entered with an electronic key.

Police said the money was retrieved from a safety deposit box at the Bank of China on Monday.


The woman was charged with breaking into the room and theft of the money. She was granted bail to reappear at Downing Centre Local Court later this month and was ordered to surrender her passport.

A spokesman for Star City would not comment because the matter was before the courts. However, he confirmed that the floors and rooms in the casino's hotel were accessible only with electronic keys. Surveillance cameras were located in the lift lobbies on every floor, he said.

Andrew Scott, the president of the Responsible Gaming Association - which represents gamblers - said the incident highlighted the need for more thorough checks of casino employees.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


A former baccarat dealer at Crown Casino in Melbourne was yesterday sentenced to 15 months' jail after she pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the casino of $1.8 million in what County Court judge Graeme Crossley called a sophisticated scam.

Tiffany Moss, 32, was paid $20,000 to take part in a scheme in which she was shown how to shuffle cards slowly in such a way that the face could be seen by gamblers. After meeting with a man she recognised from the casino, she was filmed shuffling her cards incorrectly.



This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/05/1044318669399.html

http://www.apackofcards.com/images/logoanimpoc3.gif

[imaufo]

Date: Wednesday, February 12
Topic: Racing News


A legal precedent that New Zealand and Australian tote authorities have been looking for to block betting turnover to offshore bookmakers may have been found in Holland.

Government and TAB officials, will be happy about a Dutch court ruling declaring that UK bookmaker Ladbrokes must block Dutch residents from placing bets through the company’s online sports betting site.

The court has ordered that Ladbrokes will be fined 10,000 euros per day if it does not comply to the judgement immediately.

The Dutch ruling was based on the court finding that Ladbrokes holds no licence to operate in Holland and makes no social or charitable contribution to the local economy.

Recently the New Zealand TAB as well as their counterparts in New South Wales made the headlines with their opposition to bookmakers located in Darwin, Canberra and Vanuatu saying that these bookies, like Ladbrokes, are accepting bets while making no financial contribution to the local racing industry or government tax coffers.

However the argument that the act of placing a bet with an Internet bookmakers not locally licensed as "illegal" has been treated as a joke by punters big and small. They bet with offshore bookmakers of their choice and most feel that any attempt at prosecution has little hope of succeeding.

However the Dutch judgement suddenly changes that and there is little doubt that calls will be made for copies of the ruling for closer scrutiny.

Already the Hong Kong Jockey Club, which also sees its monopoly on local betting being eroded by UK bookmakers has taken an interest in the ruling.

"The case establishes a precedent and is going to impact on how internet operators are able to do business," said Hong Kong Jockey Club director Winfried Englebrecht-Bresges. "This is a significant step in Europe and I expect other racing authorities will be looking at a similar solution."

In the UK the response from Ladbrokes was both predictable and very much in tune with the public view of global online betting.

Labrokes intends appealing the court ruling.

[imaufo]

By Fleur Leyden, Carol Nader
February 20 2003


Smoking bans in gaming venues appear to have taken their toll on the gambling industry, with Tabcorp yesterday blaming the laws for a sharp dip in revenue.

Tabcorp, which controls about half of Victoria's 30,000 poker machines, said revenue from its gaming operations had fallen since the bans came into force last September.

Tabcorp said gaming revenue was 10.4 per cent lower in the four months from last September, compared with the same period in 2001. The decline has continued this year, with revenue down 12.3 per cent up to February 15 on the corresponding period last year.

Smoking is no longer allowed in restricted gaming areas - defined as an area where there are poker machines. The ban applies to any place where there are poker machines, including pubs and sporting clubs.

Smoking is still allowed at the bars of pubs and clubs that are not within restricted gaming areas.


A spokesman for the InterChurch Gambling Taskforce, the Reverend Tim Costello, was delighted.

"I think the whole community should rejoice," Mr Costello said.

"The link between problem gamblers and smokers is absolutely clear, and the fact that people are walking away and keeping their savings and potentially having a break in play that saves their self-respect and maybe even their life I think is really good news."

Despite the fall in gaming revenue, Tabcorp said its overall group revenue for the six months to December 31 had risen slightly from $991.2 million to $993.4 million, with net profit rising 2.4 per cent to $131.2 million. Gaming revenue over the period fell 2.2 per cent to $449.2 million.

Tabcorp managing director Matthew Slatter said the company was implementing smoking areas and a machine reservation system for smokers to tackle the financial drain.

"Although this remains a challenging period for our gaming division, we now believe we have experienced the worst of the impact of the smoking ban," Mr Slatter said.

Mr Costello said almost all problem gamblers were smokers and 48 cents in every dollar from poker machines came from problem gamblers.

"The industry depends for nearly half its profits on people with no free will, people who are addicted," he said. "That addiction we've known for some time extends to smoking. If you weren't a smoker when you developed problem gambling, you soon become a smoker."

Mr Costello said suggestions that machines could be reserved while a gambler went outside to have a smoke were "manipulative, unethical and morally wrong".

"All the evidence says that the most important thing to help problem gamblers is regular interruptions, not reserving machines," he said.


This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/19/1045638359659.html

Smoking bans in gaming venues appear to have taken their toll on the gambling industry, with Tabcorp yesterday blaming the laws for a sharp dip in revenue.

the Reverend Tim Costello, said almost all problem gamblers were smokers and 48 cents in every dollar from poker machines came from problem gamblers.

Does this mean that Tabcorp actually support problem gambling? Because if they have programs in place to help those problem gamblers ( and those programs were successful) their profits and share prices would fall.
Tabcorp managing director Matthew Slatter said the company was implementing smoking areas and a machine reservation system for smokers to tackle the financial drain.


well done Tabcorp...suppporting the community ( not!)

Sounds like they also support smoking, as " almost all problem gamblers smoke"

[imaufo]

Dealing with issues ranging from race planning to international classifications, delegates at the 29th Asian Racing Conference in Auckland, New Zealand, today learned of structural changes to the sport that will in the near future further improve Asia's standing in world racing.

The Asian Racing Federation's (ARF) Grading and Race Planning Advisory Committee (GRPC) has been formed with the goal of establishing common ground between racing jurisdictions when grading races globally, and discussing developments matters like an ARF Series, or World Series.

Comprising of members from throughout the Federation, the GRPC will not yet be responsible for deciding the status of Group races, as that role will remain with the International Cataloguing and Standards Committee (ICSC). Rather, it will make recommendations to the ICSC concerning promotions or demotions to different events in the international calendar.

"Pattern races should be comparable and this advisory body will harmonize the process by which races are graded. One of the main goals is to consider the terms of reference of the Federation's GRPC – that is, to establish the criteria on how member countries formulate their Pattern races, and how we can raise these to a higher profile internationally," said Mr Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, the Hong Kong Jockey Club's Executive Director of Racing, who was chairing today's session, and who also will act as Chairman of the GRPC, for which the Hong Kong Jockey Club's Senior Handicapper, Mr Ciaran Kennelly, has been appointed Secretary.

Delegates were also informed of the recent work by the Intercontinental Thoroughbred Classifications (ITC) committee, which operates under the ARF banner. The ITC comprises representatives from Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Macau, Malaysia New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, along with South American racing nations.
In time, the ITC will merge with the long-established International Classifications Committee, which already counts ARF nations as members, said Mr Kennelly.

"There is a desire amongst many to widen the International Classifications and introduce consistent criteria for top races. This will be of great benefit to Asian racing, as ARF countries will have a louder voice in the overall decision making process."

Mr Kennelly added that the ITC and ICC are due to analyze weight-for-age systems in an international context to see if they can be improved upon in any way.

"It is imperative that racing jurisdictions pull together to allow greater transparency in the way we work and to better promote racing," he said.

http://www.hongkongjockeyclub.com/english/news/images/20030305_news_p1.jpg
Mr Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, Hong Kong Jockey Club Executive Director of Racing, who was chairing today's Asian Racing Federation's (ARF) Grading and Race Planning Advisory Committee (GRPC) session at the 29th Asian Racing Conference, listens to the Hong Kong Jockey Club's Senior Handicapper, Mr Ciaran Kennelly, addressing the delegates in Auckland, New Zealand. Mr Englebrecht-Bresges will act as Chairman of the GRPC, for which Mr Ciaran Kennelly, has been appointed Secretary.