Mobile Poker -- Sweden-based PokerRoom.com announced that on April 11 it will launch a mobile poker platform that will enable players to compete with live human opponents for real money. Players will also have the ability to use play money or to compete against computer-simulated opponents. They will choose from three different table views: the normal view, which has graphics similar to those seen on PokerRoom.com; the symbol view, which gives a view over the whole table with simplified graphics; and text view, which gives history of how a hand was played.
Basketball Lottery -- Reuters attributes this week's launch of a basketball lottery in Shanghai to an increase in the sport's popularity ever since Yao Ming joined America's National Basketball Association (NBA). Lottery tickets cost about $0.25 each and will be issued three times a week for NBA matches that are televised live in China every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Participants will try to predict the results of each quarter of play, the sum of both team's final scores and the point spread. Soccer lotteries are also legal in China but most other forms of gambling are not. The government has begun investigating and shutting down traditional and online gambling services with renewed zeal this year.
No Incentive -- A new report commissioned by the Association of Remote Gambling Operators and conducted by Europe Economics, a London-based independent economics consultancy with experience in the gambling industry, concludes that if the U.K. Treasury does not reduce the level of taxes for online gambling companies then there will be little or no incentive for those companies to relocate their offshore operations to Great Britain. A new bill aiming to overhaul gambling regulations is working its way through the British Parliament, but according to ARGO Chairman Ian Spearing, "Britain could have the best gambling legislation and regulation in the world, but it will be to no effect if the tax regime acts as a fundamental disincentive for gambling operators to be based in this country." A full copy of the report is available at www.argo.org.uk.
Changing Ship -- Tony Cabot, a founding member of the International Masters of Gaming Law Association and the author of several reference books on traditional and interactive gaming law, has left Las Vegas-based law firm Lionel Sawyer & Collins to join the firm Lewis and Roca, which is based in Phoenix, Arizona but is committed to growing its Las Vegas office. Cabot worked 23 years for Lionel Sawyer & Collins, which is not only the largest law firm in Las Vegas but also has the largest gaming law department in the world. Cabot told the Las Vegas Sun that he welcomed the opportunity to head a gaming practice at one of the most prominent firms in the Southwestern United States and added that Lewis and Roca is looking to hire additional gaming attorneys to fill out its practice.