Fox Hunting -- Peter Hain, leader of Britain's House of Commons, plans to introduce a bill on Wednesday to ban fox hunting--an action that could delay the passing of the Gambling Bill. "A vote banning fox hunting in the Commons will have serious consequences for any gambling bill," Gambling Consultancy's Steve Donoughue explained. "If the Lords rebel against the use of the Parliament Act, this will probably mean upsetting the government's timetable and peers not responding to the party line, all of which could impact on the passage of the Gambling Bill through the Lords."
Licensing Agent -- First Cagayan, the master licensor of online gaming in the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Free Port of the Philippines, has appointed G-Master Technology Company--a Macau-based provider of online gambling solutions to companies interested in entering the Asian market--as its agent for contracting restrictive Internet sports book licenses to companies in Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Macau, China, Tawain, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and Cambodia. The restrictive licenses permit companies to operate soccer and basketball books without paying any gaming tax beyond the annual licensing fee to First Cagayan.
Hold'em Buddies -- Macrogaming LTD, a company that develops free-to-play multiplayer games for the instant messaging environment, has created the Web site Buddyplay.com, from which surfers can download multiplayer blackjack and Texas Hold'em games for MSN Messenger. Players can initiate games with friends on their buddy list and then invite more buddies to play. The company plans to launch more games in the near future.
Predictions -- Most Australian sports books have shortened the odds on the Coalition winning the Oct. 9 election after the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Centrebet has shortened the Coalition's odds from $1.50 to $1.30, while SportOdds also puts the odds at $1.30 and Sportingbet Australia puts them at $1.33. Prices for Labor meanwhile are $3.20 at Centrebet and SportOdds and $3.00 at Sportingbet Australia. Within roughly 24 hours of the bombing, Centrebet received $70,000 worth of wagers on the Coalition and just $100 on Labor.
Raking in Millions -- Pokerpulse.com, a Web site that monitors and collects data on the Internet's top poker sites, reports that poker rooms are taking in a combined revenue of nearly $2 million per day. On Sept. 9, sites received a rake of $1.93 million, with PartyPoker taking more than half of that figure. That same day Internet poker players staked $131 million.