Tag: Gambling

Big Fish Casino Offers Illegal Online Gambling, Rules Court

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Last Wednesday, Judge Milan D. Smith of the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned a 2015 district court ruling filed against then Big Fish Games’ parent company Churchill Downs Inc. by Cheryl Kater.

Kater’s lawsuit claimed that she bought and lost Big Fish Casino’s virtual chips worth over $1000. While the chips do not have any monetary value, players require them in order to play the online casino’s suite of games that includes roulette, slots and blackjack. Players who run out of these chips will either need to wait until the game offers or free chips or hasten things up by purchasing more. Cheryl Kater hoped to recover the lost chips arguing that the said chips represented “something of value” under the Washington Gambling Law. Her lawsuit was junked by a Seattle U.S. District Court judge.

Judge Smith, however, overturned the earlier ruling on March 25 on grounds that “the virtual chips extended the privilege of playing Big Fish Casino,” which implies that it fell under the Washington state law’s definition of “something of value.”

“Without virtual chips, a user is unable to play Big Fish Casino’s various games,” Judge Smith wrote in his opinion. “Thus, if a user runs out of virtual chips and wants to continue playing Big Fish Casino, she must buy more chips to have ‘the privilege of playing the game.’ Likewise, if a user wins chips, the user wins the privilege of playing Big Fish Casino without charge. In sum, these virtual chips extend the privilege of playing Big Fish Casino.”

Based on this opinion and the definition of gambling according to Washington state law, the appeals court pointed out that Big Fish Casino constituted illegal online gambling.

A Wake-Up Call for Social Casinos

Online gambling is still deemed as an illegal activity in most U.S. states but operators such as the now Aristocrat-owned Big Fish Casino have been providing online gamblers in the country with legal alternatives. In the wake of this Court of Appeals ruling, it is possible that the spotlight might shift to other online gambling operators through similar lawsuits from displeased players – federal law gives anyone who loses “a thing of value” to an illegal gambling operations legal grounds to reclaim whatever they have lost.

Meanwhile, Cheryl Kater’s lawsuit will be returned to the Seattle district court where Big Fish Casino’s former owner, Churchill Downs, will be given another opportunity to argue the case.

UK Gambling Commission Unveils Plans for Intensified Checks

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UK’s Gambling Commission has unveiled plans to make online gambling “safer than ever before”. This follows on from details that the commission revealed last week as part of the advice that it submitted to the UK government’s review of gambling.

So far, the Remote Gambling Association (RGA) has confirmed that it would work constructively with the Gambling Commission once its finals become known. The online gambling review that the commission released last week included details of its consultative efforts on proposals for age verification checks for players. This regulation will apply even to dem0 games.

Even though the fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) that are operating in the UK will probably be the most affected by the forthcoming government crackdown on gambling, online gambling operators are not completely clear of the line of fire.

Other than banning the operators from offering free-to-play demo games until customer age has been verified, the commission also proposed that the speed and effectiveness of age verification processes should be improved. On the same note, operators will be forced to set limits on consumer spending until affordability checks are carried out. The commission further made it clear that it would deal with unacceptable marketing while at the same time tightening the requirements for operator interaction with customers that are more susceptible to harm.

“Britain has the largest regulated online gambling market in the world and we are continually looking for ways to make it even fairer and safer for consumers,” commented Neil McArthur, the Gambling Commission’s chief executive. “The proposals we have announced today are intended to protect children better, reduce the risks to vulnerable consumers and build on the measures we already impose on operators to know their customers and intervene at an earlier stage before consumers experience harm.”

Ensuring Safety and Sustainability in the Gambling Industry

The UK government, through sport and civil society minister Tracy Crouch, says that it is committed to providing a safe and sustainable gambling industry. Crouch also mentioned that the proposals for additional regulations would go a long way in strengthening the controls that are already in place while at the same time ensuring that children and vulnerable people are protected from the risks of online gambling.

The Remote Gambling Commission (RGA) has already laid the groundwork for the desired UK gambling industry through such efforts as advertising restrictions, the introduction of a national online self-exclusion system as well as advocating for the introduction of a new and independent statutory social responsibility levy.

Casinos Rove into Virtual Reality in a Bid to Excite Players

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Casinos are always looking for new and innovative ways to attract new customers and to get their existing customers excited about gaming. Online gaming was just the beginning and a lot of fresh ideas have sprung up since then, some successful and others entirely bizarre. Still, more and more innovations are being pursued in a bid to revolutionize casino gaming in the same way that online gaming did.

One of the newest innovations in casino technology that is currently being tested is virtual reality (VR). This admittedly exciting new concept will allow players to “compete against each other for cash prizes in spirited VR tournaments.” This was through the efforts of both International Gaming Technology (IGT), a game developer and HTC Vive, a renowned virtual reality hardware developer. The two hardware developers collaborated to launch the new Virtual Reality product referred to as “Virtual Zone” at Boyd Gaming’s, The Orleans in Las Vegas which makes the casino the first and only operator with such an offering.

The pairing is a rather strong selling point for this new idea – HTC delivers the amazingly-engineered immersive virtual reality headgear that takes players into IGT’s Virtual Zone, the virtual reality competition arena that pits the players against each other in a series of skill-based gaming tournaments. Obviously, the winner gets to walk away with a prize.

Is This the Future of Gambling?

While it is certainly too early to tell which direction this will take, it is quite clear that casino gaming is diverging from the traditional casino floors and virtual reality might be a fresh extension of that trend. This is especially because of the fact that the casino industry has been trying to engage with the millennial generation that is not very fond of traditional casino gaming.

Esports is a great reference – casinos are slowly catching on to the reality that gladiatorial nature of competitive video gaming is far more appealing to younger markets as when compared to the one-dimensional and strategy-devoid slot machines.

With virtual reality, it is safe to say that virtual reality might end up redefining gambling games and make them work as spectator sports. Most casino games have been perfected for decades, and even centuries, which makes them ripe for a bit of innovation. The ultimate goal is to keep the players excited about a casino’s offerings. In the unlikely case that this goes south, there are a number of great alternatives, some of which have not even been thought of yet.

The Relationship Between Online Gambling and Match Fixing

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Sporting events are a big deal in all parts of the world even though there are variations on how a sporting activity appeals to members of given demographics. This is just the reality of human culture. However, despite the diversity and difference of the elements of different sports, there is a constant that plays a huge role in all of this – sports wagering.

The World Cup, for instance, draws nearer and being one of the most sporting events of the year, it is certainly drawing a lot of attention. This piece is however mostly interested in the examination of the financial stakes pertaining to online gambling. Thanks to the spread of internet and the proliferation of online gambling operators, the online gambling market has been on a roll for quite some time now. Global sporting events such as the World Cup are a huge boost to this particular market and this is the focal point of a number of discussions about match-fixing. Case in point, in 2016, the France UEFA European Championship and the Rio Olympics had online gambling profits go up 45 percent which summed up to €2 billion.

This is not a bad thing. In fact, it is great. However, the whole thing gets tainted by the looming threat of match-fixing where the outcome of games – including the big global ones – are known or determined by ill-intentioned and money-hungry people. In many cases, these individuals target lower division teams where player salaries are not that huge and they are thus more susceptible to being bribed. Generally speaking, match-fixing has been rather rampant in the last couple of years or so. It has even gotten so bad that it not only affects the poorly published matches but even grand ones such as the World Cup qualifiers.

This kind of fraud extends all the way to other sports as well; tennis, American football, baseball and even basketball. So, can this be fixed? If so, then how?

Online Gambling Is Not the Problem

Well, I was obviously going to lean towards this fact especially because this is a pro-gambling site, but come to think of it, it is actually a true sentiment. Online gambling is a multi-billion dollar industry with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of employees and in most part, it is legal and straightforward. Even if online gambling is banned due to its reputation for tempting individuals into match-fixing, people would still find workarounds, mostly illegal ones, to wager on sports.

Many things here boil down to ethical standards that have been put in place so as to ward off sports fraud. This has had very little success since it is dependent on willingness to adhere to laws and regulations. Apparently, getting rich quickly is far more tempting.

The takeaway here is that maybe we should look at online gambling from a different perspective in order to make match-fixing nothing more than a word in the dictionary. Efforts such as the formation of anti-match-fixing conventions could be useful. Still, there might be no definitive answer to the question about what the best solution for this would be but one thing remains clear – match-fixing certainly has the potential for ruining the global cohesiveness that sporting events foster.

Russia’s New Online Gambling Laws Raises Stars Group Concern

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As part of 2017’s earnings reports, renowned gambling operator Stars Group pointed out that the Russian gambling market would be a potentially troublesome one in 2018. The earnings report also included what the online gambling operator is expecting to make this year with the figures further including assumptions that Russia would be introducing and implementing new online gambling rules that will essentially make it harder to process payments for Russian players.

There has been no official explanation from Russian officials in regards to the implementation of the new law that is likely to be enforced as from May 25. However, it is expected that the regulations will restrict banks from partnering with foreign payment processors or gambling operators that have been blacklisted by the Russian government.

While the new atmosphere will certainly not kill the Russian online gambling market, it undoubtedly has the potential of clamping down on the size of the gambling industry in the country. This is we put into consideration a similar scenario in the United States where the online gambling industry was clamped down after the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was passed back in 2006. In the likely case that this occurs, the Stars Group will take quite a hit especially because the Russian online gambling market accounts for a huge chunk of its global market.

Stars Group Working on Contingencies

The effects of the changes that the Russian government is going to make is off-putting for investors but Stars Group is not giving up so easily. Rafi Ashkenazi, the Stars Group CEO said that he and his team are already working on contingencies that will help the company to deal with anything that the Russian government throws at them.

“We have plan As and plan Bs and plan Cs for every type of scenario that may happen in the market,” Ashkenazi told analysts. “We are monitoring, we are assessing, and we are ready.”

The concerns that were raised about the Russian gambling market were shared as part of an overall earnings reports which showed a steady 2017 for Stars Group – this encompassed both PokerStars as well as the group’s other online gambling sites. Total annual revenue went up 13.6 percent for fiscal 2017, summing up to over $1.3 billion. The same goes for other earnings as well – the net earnings rose by over 25 percent within the same period.

Dafabet Closes UK-Facing Online Casino amid Regulatory Heat

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Renowned online gambling operator Dafabet has recently announced that it will be exiting the United Kingdom’s online gambling market, a move that is speculated to have been triggered by the ongoing regulatory pressure within that particular field.

Dafabet’s United Kingdom-facing online casino stopped accepting deposits from its customers last week on March 8. The players now have up to Tuesday, March 20, to withdraw their funds from the online betting site. Fortunately for the operator’s customers, their player balances will be automatically returned through the deposit methods they used to register if the will not have made withdrawals by the specified withdrawal deadline. Also, sports betting fans have nothing to worry about as Dafabet also assure their users that the sports betting operations will not be affected by the closure of their casino business.

As it stands, Dafabet is the most popular and the biggest brand of Philippine-based AsianBGE, its parent company. Its operation in the United Kingdom is backed by a license from the UK Gambling Commission but this is not the only place it excels at – the operator also sponsors Premier League’s Burnley F.C. Dafabet signed a £2.5-million sponsorship deal with the football club for the 2017-2018 football season which represents a £0.5 million increase from the previous soccer season.

UK’s Prevailing Storm Regulatory Atmosphere

The UK Gambling Commission recently discovered multiple violations by a number of its licensees and now, in conjunction with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), it has begun a regulatory crackdown that targets the erring operators as well as their affiliate partners.

The nature of the violations that the UK Gambling Commission range from breaches of advertising codes to inadequate anti-money laundering controls among a few others. The CMA has taken action with the most recent being in the form of a written warning that was addressed to a number of online gambling operators. The writing specifically pointed out the terms and practices that the operators have put in place to obstruct their customers from accessing their funds. These included the unreasonably low withdrawal limits, the short deadlines for players to verify their identities in order to be allowed to withdraw their funds as well as the so-called “dormancy” terms that allow the operators to confiscate customer funds after a given period of time when the customer accounts have had no activity.

The UK Gambling Commission will be working with other regulators in changing the rules and ensuring that both new and existing operators are probed more stringently to ascertain that they truly are capable of fully complying with all the laid out regulatory laws, terms and conditions.

Second Annual Live Gaming Summit: What to Look Forward To

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Since its rather humble pioneering start over a decade ago, live casino gaming has grown to be a vital component of the online gambling industry – the revenue statistics are proof of this. In fact, according to data provided by H2 Gambling Capital, by 2014 over 60 percent of the European Union’s regulated market’s Gross Gaming Revenue was generated by live online gaming. This already impressive revenue stream is expected to increase by 50 percent by 2020.

Owing to these outstanding financial statistics mentioned above as well as the tremendous market developments in the recent past, the Live Gaming Summit was conceptualized so as to bring together operators, providers, experts and many other stakeholders in the gambling community. This year on April 26th, the second ever annual Live Gaming Summit, is set to be held in Barcelona and will extend beyond discussions on online gambling to other key components of the gambling industry such as TV betting fantasy sports and land-based among many others.

It Is Getting Bigger

Many of the operators and suppliers who attended the recent ICE Totally Gaming Conference showed a great deal of interest in 2018’s Live Gaming Summit. Last year, close to a hundred visiting parties from over fourteen countries participated in the maiden edition of the annual Live Gaming Summit and they got to enjoy a number of sterling presentations as a well as an all-night networking opportunity.

As it stands, participating speakers from Ezugi, Evolution Gaming, Mr. Green, Unibet, and LeoVegas have already confirmed their attendance. With the diversity that the summit is promising this year, the summit has confirmed the attendance of representative from a number of AR and VR suppliers, fantasy sports providers, TV betting companies as well land-based casinos. Also confirmed to be attending are a decent selection of sponsors and media partners even though they are yet to be officially announced.

This year’s annual Live Gaming Summit will be hosted at the elegant Casino Barcelona which will still be running live action of its blackjack and roulette games. so, there is really so much more to look forward to.

U.S. Senator Demands Government Oversight over Loot Boxes

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Many gambling addiction experts, psychologists and state lawmakers in the United States are of the opinion that loot boxes are essentially a form of gambling hiding in plain sight and targeting minors. Loot boxes refer to the random assortments of prizes purchased by video game players who hope to acquire certain desired – and virtual – powers. This can be likened to the way people play at slot machines with the hope of hitting the jackpot. It is perhaps because such a comparison can be drawn that various experts are calling for government oversight as far as loot boxes are concerned.

It, therefore, did not come as a surprise when New Hampshire Democrat, Senator Maggie Hassan, made the first move towards the proposed loot box initiative in the U.S. It begun with a letter that she wrote to Patricia Vance, the president of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board which is responsible for designing the warning labels for parents and guardians on video game products. In the letter, Senator Hassan asked Vance to not only consider having a warning on product packages pertaining to the presence of loot boxes in the video games but also to have an in-depth look at the practice.

Senator Hassan further took up the issue with four nominees to the Federal Trade Commission during a hearing at the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.

“In the past, the FTC has looked at video games, specifically the impact of violence in games,” Hassan pointed out during the hearing. “Do you agree that children being addicted to gaming and activities like loot boxes that might make them more susceptible to addiction is a problem that merits our attention? And depending on how the ESRB responds to my inquiry, would the FTC be willing to look at loot boxes as an issue independently?”

All the Four Trade Commission nominees agreed to look into the possibility of examining federal oversight of loot boxes. This move has been hailed as a highly ethical and considerate one, especially by the gambling addiction community who have always considered loot boxes in video games to be dangerous predatory forms of gambling that target minors.

Here Is Why It Might Actually Go Through

Loot boxes came under the spotlight last holiday as a result of consumer outrage caused by Electronic Arts’ Star Wars Battlefront II players who complained about the way people who bought loot boxes had an upper edge over other gamers. The player backlash had such a huge impact on the sales and that it led the company to a damage control mode that saw it temporarily disable the loot box purchases.

However, both the ESRB and Electronic Arts have maintained that loot boxes cannot be likened to gambling since people who purchase them are not left empty-handed unlike in gambling where players are even given prizes that they are not interested in. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Hawaii have already begun to move legislation that will impact the way loot boxes are used. One of these legislations, if passed, will restrict the sale of video games with loot boxes only to person above the age of 21 and the other intends to make it necessary for special labeling to be included on the games that offer loot boxes.

Artificial Intelligence Transforming Online Casino Gambling

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The age of artificial intelligence (AI) is upon us and its impacts are already being seen with the significant waves of disruption that it has been casting in various industries and sectors. Many businesses are scrambling to capitalize on this new frontier in a bid to understand and utilize it especially in the field of technology. However, these are not the only people who have their sights set on artificial intelligence.

The gambling industry and the online casino operators have not been left behind and they are now part and parcel of the AI transformation or revolution. This has been the case for quite some time – artificial intelligence and casino gaming had been paired as early as 20 years ago when IBM’s Deep Blue computer which was considered to be the epitome of artificial intelligence at the time, beat renowned pro chess player Garry Kasparov 3.5 to 2.5 in a six-game match.

Last year, artificial intelligence once again demonstrated the sheer power it holds as far as gambling is concerned. This was elaborated by Carnegie Mellon’s Libratus AI which (or who) won several thousands of poker hands over master poker players in Heads-Up No. In many ways, it may seem like this how big it can get, but the truth is, the influence of artificial intelligence on casinos and how they operate is just beginning.

Re-imagining User Experience and Protection Against Addiction

The gambling industry has always been at the helm of analyzing and studying customer behavior. In many cases, this is often done through programs that involve the utilization of sophisticated systems that are aimed at deriving meaningful information that will help the business understand their customers better. The data that can be collected is so diverse that eventually the opportunities to collect and leverage this data explodes when it is taken to the online space. As it stands, more people gamble online than in brick-and-mortar casinos.

With AI, casinos can now tap into the benefits of this valuable insights to take users experience (UX) to higher levels. AI allows for this by making it possible to easily track the activity all online casino customers based on their user accounts instead of relying on data from fractions of the total number of players.

Other than tracking customers, artificial intelligence has been used to further improve user experience (UX) customer service touch points. New breeds of AI have proven to be way better than impersonal and often frustrating customer service bots that were part of many online casinos.

Also, thanks to AI, operators can now detect and prevent gambling addiction through the analysis of player behavior that may be problematic or erratic spending. Evidently, artificial intelligence is going to leave a mark on the gambling industry as a whole.

Leveling the Playing Field

What this implies is that AI is a great tool for rooting out unscrupulous players for the good of both other players and the operator using insightful data analysis and machine learning capabilities. AI has been able to quickly identify and eradicate cheating schemes. Malicious individuals will still always find ways to cheat, including their own versions of AI but in the end, the playing field will be evened out which is the most important thing.