As if the April Black Friday were not enough to deal a lethal blow to the online poker industry in the U.S., new breaking news shattered the poker world this morning as the British Channel Islands regulators suspended the licence of Full Tilt, yes, the website that has had such big problems returning money to their former American players. Inspired by the FBI, the commission started investigating deeper into Full Tilt’s activities and found the site in breach of local laws. No more information has been made available so far, however, PokerScout (that track poker action worldwide) found out that on Wednesday evening, literally no one was playing for real money at Full Tilt’s website.

Another player secured a reputation as a real pro at this year’s WSOP. Matt Jarvis might have missed out on the opportunity to win a bracelet back in 2010, but he returned this year to make up for his failure and emerged with his first WSOP bracelet on his wrist from Event 40, a $5,000 six-handed no-limit hold ‘em game. As he said, winning the coveted bracelet is every player’s dream and they dream of it from the first moment they start playing poker. On Sunday, he defeated Justing Flitz, last year’s November Niner who managed to finish in the money even this year and, at 24 years of age, he is very close to his first $1 million milestone in his poker carreer.

The Australian debate on high stakes poker machines is gaining even faster momentum as the passing of the respective bill is looming. Now, the debate revolves around the optionality of the pre-commitment scheme and around whether to limit the scheme to high stakes machines or whether to stop offering high stakes pokies at all – then the commitment scheme would not be necessary at all since only high stakes poker machines present a real danger. A brief trial has already proven that if the scheme is voluntary, it will not work and it will not help problem gamblers. If the limit can be set to whatever you want, problem gamblers will set it too high so that they have virtually no chance exceeding it and play as long as they want. If limits are firmly set, this means loss to the operators whose big money comes from the high stakes machine. There are many stakeholders in the game and at the moment it is very unclear who is going to win it.

About 10 million Americans have (or, to be more precise, used to have) online poker accounts. About 10 million people are interested in online poker so much as to look for a website that offers it, register and create an account, and that means quite some backing to the efforts that are being demonstrated today right in front of Capitol Hill in Washington where online poker supporters summoned to call for legalisation of their favourite game on the internet. Placards they are wielding speak about financial benefits of legalisation, both for the government and players themselves, one of the demonstrators even brought his child with him to show that online poker would make it possible for him to fund his child’s studies. Like most laymen and ordinary people, many of the demonstrators do not understand why online poker should be illegal if sports betting or even doing sports professionally and getting paid for it is perfectly correct from the legal perspective.

Singapore’s regulatory authorities have reminded once again that regulatory provisions intended to alleviate negative social consequences of gambling and safeguard downright social disasters are not to be taken lightly, not even by the best-heeled ones, the casino operators themselves. One of the biggest resorts of its kind in the world, Genting casino, had to pay a fine totalling USD425,497.752 for several breaches that might not seem as serious to a lay observer, however, deemed much more criminal by the Singapore’s Casino Regulatory Authority. The Resorts World at Sentosa failed to keep surveillance footage from some of its CCTV cameras and also reimbursed their entry levy to a team of reporters that came to the venue to write a feature about a local event. The action is disciplinary and no one is going to face charges.

Every three month, the Champions Poker League organises regional finals that allow players to qualify for the big final tournament. Local tournaments are held across Grosvenor, Gala and Genting Casinos in the UK who are partners to the League. At the conclusion of each season points from all casinos are calculated and a list of qualifiers is put together. Right now, one of the local prizes plus the possibility to qualify for the Final was awarded to Pete Stamps, who won his title in Bristol. Pete has been playing pub poker for about three years, however, is not planning to leave his job and earn his living as a professional poker player. He is nevertheless very pleased by his latest achievement and is looking forward to taking part in the Final which will be held at the Star City Casino in Birmingham in September.

The raid on online poker in the United States rendered many online poker professionals jobless and many of them are now considering leaving the federation to live someplace else where they could carry on in playing for PokerStars or FullTilt who are able to offer high stakes games and with them opportunities for the pros to earn thousands of dollars in a very short time span. Whilst Europe is open to all kinds of gambling, there is the language barrier, which presents an insurmountable obstacle for many poker players, and, last not least, is not exactly a stone’s throw away from their American homes. Thus, Canada becomes the targeted spot with Vancouver being the most popular city when it comes to considering relocation. It’s, however, a choice only suitable for a professional high stakes player who is sure to earn big. For an average player, life in Vancouver might prove financially unviable.

Amidst arguments whether poker is a game of skill or chance, a very interesting work has been published by Professor Steven Levitt and Thomas Miles from the University of Chicago. Their paper is called The Role of Skill Versus Luck in Poker: Evidence From the World Series of Poker. The work aims for a very special comparison of poker pros and professional players of the Major League Baseball and supports with ample statistical evidence an assertion that a very similar statistical pattern applies to the percentage of winnings achieved by professional poker players in the WSOP and by the best MLB teams. Investigating the winning percentages at the WSOP, the scholars found out that skilled player would earn 30 percent of their investment and the high skilled players would win 54.9 percent of the match ups. Then, looking at the MLB, they realised that teams that won playoffs in the previous season would subsequently win 55.7 percent of their games in the MLB. Since there is no arguing that baseball is a game of skill, now there should be no arguing that poker is, either.

Between $400,000 and $1 million, that is the worth of losses suffered by the Connecticut Foxwoods casino in a card game fraud committed by two South Koreans who were just sentenced for their fraudulent actions in Macao-style midi-Baccarat where they were using a hold-out device, one of them for 18 months and the other one for a year and a day. The hold-out-device is a hard to spot gizmo that one of them had hidden in a sleeve and that enabled him or her to switch cards to their advantage during the game, whilst the accomplice acted as a shield to make it more difficult for others to see what was actually going on. The couple were able to make thousands of dollars during one session. The most famous frauds ever committed usually concern blackjack and sometimes it could not even be called a fraud, since the players were using solely their own skill and secretly organised team play based on card counting and spotting the best tables of the moment. The most famous groups in this respect are known as MIT teams.

At the beginning of this year, Swedish judges had to go through a lesson of poker and hear a statement of a professional poker player who taught them the game to show that poker has a certain amount of skill involved. Back then, the Swedish court concluded that whilst sit&go cash games were rather a game of chance, winning in a poker tournament required a considerable degree of skill. Now a similar debate is lead in the United States in connection with the shutdown of websites formerly operated in the U.S. by PokerStars, FullTilt and Aboslute Poker. As the big poker operators face charges of fraud and money laundering, it is becoming clear that at least the act that prohibits processing of transactions connected with internet gambling (UIGEA) needs to be revised and clarified, along with several other legal regulations pertaining to poker.