American Gaming Association President Frank Fahrenkopf told me last week that if online poker players are confident they can persuade Congress to pass a law that would define poker as a game of skill, they’re sadly mistaken.
The poker players, online poker rooms and poker publishers hope that the recent changes in congressional leadership will prompt legislators to reverse the impact of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which caused the leading online poker room to stop taking action from Americans and made funding and withdrawing money from online poker accounts more cumbersome.
A law that defined poker as a game of skill would exempt online poker from the UIGEA.
The climate on Capitol Hill is not favorable for any pro-Internet gambling legislation, he said.
“They don’t have a chance in hell,” Fahrenkopf said.
The AGA supports a congressionally mandated study of online gambling to see whether technology exists to make sure customers are playing from jurisdictions that allow betting, keep underage bettors from wagering and limit problem gambling. If the study determines that the technology exists to provide those safeguards, then a law could be passed allowing individual states to decide whether to offer online gambling.
Fahrenkopf acknowledged that even if those two hurdles are cleared, it is unlikely that states would set tax rates low enough to compete with the barely regulated and taxed casino and poker sites that now proliferate.
• • •
Before he left for Macau last week, I spoke to Steve Wynn by phone as he took a break from skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Wynn said he’s had a couple of feelers from companies that would like to combine operations with Wynn Resorts to compete more effectively with the industry’s biggest operators, but he told them he’s not interested in diluting the strength of the Wynn brand.
“I won’t say never, but it would have to be an incredible deal,” Wynn said.
Wynn said he expects gaming regulators in Nevada and New Jersey to OK competitor MGM Mirage’s Macau casino partnership with Pansy Ho, daughter of controversial casino owner Stanley Ho.
“I expect MGM to open the MGM Grand in Macau,” Wynn said. “There will be some finger-pointing and finger-wagging here, but MGM’s partnership with Pansy will be allowed.”
Wynn said he was returning to Las Vegas from Macau before the Chinese New Year because he wants to attend a Friday event being held in conjunction with the NBA All-Star Game, the Touching a Life Gala, which is run by a group of NBA wives.
His wife, Elaine Wynn; Magic Johnson’s wife, Cookie Johnson; and NBA player Dikembe Mutombo are being honored at the event for their community-service efforts, with proceeds to benefit the Greater Las Vegas After-School All-Stars and Communities in Schools of Southern Nevada.
Elaine Wynn told me the NBA All-Star Game and its associated events are signals to the rest of the world that Las Vegas has arrived.
“I think we’ve earned the credibility before this, but fabulous events like this allow people to come and sample the menu of diverse attractions in Las Vegas,” she said.
Source: Las Vegas Sun

The NBA’s elite descend on Las Vegas next weekend, forced to squeeze in an All-Star Game and skills events between all the frolicking and cavorting around town.
The question is whether this will be a one-shot deal for Sin City, or the harbinger of something bigger.
Despite luring All-Star weekend, Las Vegas faces considerable odds to secure a major professional team of its own. The obstacle, naturally, is the issue that has fueled the city’s popularity: gambling.
Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman said Friday he doesn’t consider next weekend’s festivities an audition and remains ”very optimistic” about landing a team in the future, more likely an NHL or NBA team.
But in comments to reporters last year, NBA commissioner David Stern made one thing very clear about the possibility of placing a team in Las Vegas: “We’re not going to go there while they have betting on NBA basketball games.”
In fact, in order to get the All-Star Game, Goodman and the Las Vegas sports books had to agree not to allow wagers on next Sunday’s game. But Goodman said he would not consider eliminating betting on NBA games in order to secure a team.
”I will not budge on our position,” he said. “David Stern is a great guy. We’ll sit and discuss it.”
All of this leads to a larger issue: If the NBA isn’t ready to put a team in Las Vegas, why is it placing its marquee midseason event there?
”We’re going to Las Vegas because we think it’s a great destination city,” Stern, who was unavailable for an interview last week, said in a news conference last fall. “They have removed the All-Star events from the betting line and . . . we have no problem with people who want to go there and gamble.
“It’s state-sanctioned, state-sponsored, state-regulated. They have great hotels, great shows, great restaurants, great family events. It’s a great entertainment place. We don’t think it’s a stigmatized city in our view.”
Las Vegas has its share of pro sports — minor-league baseball, Arena Football, marquee boxing and tennis events — but Goodman wants something bigger, something sexier. He believes it’s warranted for a city that draws 37.4 million visitors annually and has seen its population triple, to 1.8 million, in the past 20 years.
Goodman at one point said he expects a team from one of the four major leagues to relocate by 2010. He didn’t offer a new timetable in a phone interview Friday, but said he hopes to have serious conversations with one of the leagues “before spring.”
Goodman said he has spoken with several NBA teams, but declined to name them. He reportedly inquired about the New Orleans Hornets when they shifted games to Oklahoma City after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
MARLINS BLOCKED
Two Marlins officials met with Goodman in December 2004, but Major League Baseball would not permit the Marlins to have more serious conversations because of the gambling issue, The Miami Herald reported last year.
‘I’ve been told by [commissioner] Bud Selig to stay out of the Marlins’ business,” Goodman said Friday. ”He indicated [last year] he prefers I don’t speak with them and that the team stays in South Florida.” He said he did not push the issue because he wants to preserve a good relationship with MLB.
Last week, MLB president Robert DuPuy voiced concerns about any team relocating to Las Vegas.
‘We had very productive discussions with Las Vegas about a baseball team in that city during the Expos’ relocation process,” DuPuy said in an e-mail. “And the mayor and local leaders were very enthusiastic and committed. As a rapidly expanding city, Las Vegas offers interesting professional sports opportunities. The television market there is quite small, but the growth is intriguing.
“However, the gaming remains an issue, particularly the fact that baseball is on board with the other sports. While gambling has become more pervasive in other forms in many states, the difference in Nevada is the sports betting. Given the history of the Office of the Commissioner and the sensitivity to the issue of gambling, this would be a significant obstacle.”
Because of that, Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson hasn’t made progress in his efforts to bring a team to Las Vegas, though he reportedly pieced together a deep-pocketed investment group.
Meanwhile, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell expressed serious concerns when asked at a Super Bowl news conference how he would react if an owner approached him and said he wanted to move to Las Vegas.
”I feel strongly about keeping a very strong line between the NFL and sports gambling,” he said. “I think it’s a real issue. I have my personal views about gambling, and I don’t think it’s in the best interests of the NFL to have any association with sports betting.”
Goodell said he has not had any dialogue about moving a team to Las Vegas. Twice in the past nine months, Goodman has made inquiries to the San Diego Chargers, who want a new stadium. But the Chargers have said they will concentrate their efforts on San Diego. Goodman also once offered to build a stadium to play host to all Monday Night Football games, but the NFL declined.
”I don’t have the best relationship with the NFL,” said Goodman, who was unhappy when the league rejected some of the city’s broadcast advertisements in the past.
The NHL won’t rule out Las Vegas, but said changes would need to be made regarding sports gambling issues.
”Las Vegas we’ve had talks with — it’s a great sports town and certainly could be considered,” NHL spokeswoman Bernadette Mansur said. ”There would have to be restrictions with gambling. But it’s all speculation. We are not considering any expansion or relocation of clubs.” Mansur reiterated the NHL hopes the Penguins — whose future is in question — will remain in Pittsburgh.
To Goodman, the reluctance to bring a team to Las Vegas is mystifying. He consistently has called gambling concerns a “red herring.”
”Tonight, [the Heat] is playing in Cleveland,” Goodman said Friday. “There will be more bets taken in Cleveland for that game than in all the sports books in Las Vegas. . . . Sports betting is good. We’re the only state that regulates it.”
This won’t be the NBA’s first foray into Las Vegas. During the 1983-84 season, former Utah Jazz owner Sam Battistone scheduled 11 games at Thomas & Mack Center, which will play host to next weekend’s festivities. In one of those games, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar surpassed Wilt Chamberlain and became the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. The U.S. national team held training camp in Las Vegas last summer, and the league holds summer league competition in the city each July.
Stern suggested last year that if NBA games weren’t wagered on, he would have no qualms about placing a team in Las Vegas.
`WHAT AMERICA DOES’
”Forty states have lotteries,” he said. “Those that don’t have lotteries, there’s Indian reservations that have gambling establishments or video poker or all their eating establishments. So everybody gambles now. Whether that’s right or wrong, that’s state government policy that’s been left to the states. And that’s what America does.”
Even beyond gambling, another drawback is the lack of a state-of-the-art baseball/football stadium or an arena to replace Thomas & Mack, which doesn’t have enough revenue-producing luxury suites to support an NBA team.
Goodman has said he is proceeding with plans to build a $404 million arena, potentially without using public money, but hasn’t offered details.
”No one is going to privately build a stadium unless a team is there,” Goodman said in a November news conference in comments published by The Las Vegas Review-Journal in November. “But if the NBA is going to come here, I have ways I believe it could be built without taxpayer dollars.”
Goodman isn’t alone.
Gavin Maloof, whose family owns the Sacramento Kings and the Palms Hotel, told The Associated Press he expects an NBA team in Las Vegas within the next five years, despite Stern’s position.
”Every owner that I’ve spoken to loves Vegas,” said Maloof, who helped facilitate the All-Star Game going to Nevada.
Marc Ganis, president of Chicago-based Sportscorp — a sports business consultancy firm that works on franchise relocations — said he expects a pro team in Las Vegas ”well within the decade, perhaps within three or four years.” He said he easily could see an NBA team move to Las Vegas if Stern ever changed his mind on the issue.
”Hockey needs Vegas the most,” Ganis said. “If there was not the sports gambling element, it is the most viable market in the country that is available.”
For now, though, a weekend of NBA All-Stars will have to suffice.
Source: Miami Herald

There is a glimmer of hope the Alexander First Nation can successfully fend off a showdown the government has threatened over the band’s attempts to create a haven for online casinos, legal experts say.
The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission is investigating the Edmonton-area band, which is offering licences for online poker, casino or sports-betting houses, but has apparently not started operations. The provincial body deems that any gaming schemes taking place outside its regulations is against the Criminal Code.
“Being illegal — we will take every action to ensure that it doesn’t happen in Alberta,” said Solicitor General Fred Lindsay, minister responsible for the AGLC.
Just as other aboriginal groups have established constitutional self-governing rights to logging, fishing and hunting, the Alexander band could get a legal OK to host offshore Internet gambling firms if it can prove that wagering was a major part of their ancestral heritage, gaming-industry lawyer Michael Lipton said.
Several bands have failed at the Supreme Court and lower courts to have gambling declared as an inherent right. However, the most recent high court case in 1996 that upheld convictions against Ontario bands has helped set the test for what Alexander or other groups must prove to qualify for sovereignty over gambling, he said.
“If the facts exist to demonstrate that a rudimentary — very rudimentary — form of gambling exists, be it in the form of stones and sticks or beads or whatever the case may be, the law says that if they’ve got the facts, this is the law, they have to follow it,” said Lipton, head of an international association of gaming lawyers.
Morden C. Lazarus wrote an article last summer in the journal Gaming Law Review about the legal case behind the longstanding online casino venture run by the Kahnawake Mohawk of Quebec.
Although authorities have never cracked down on the Kahnawake scheme authorities believe is illegal, Lazarus argues the Mohawk have centuries-old traditional gaming practices they can prove should they ever be hauled into court. “It’s the entitlement test,” he said. “If they can survive the entitlement test the Supreme Court of Canada set out, then they would have the ability to succeed.”
Officials with the upstart Alexander Gaming Commission did not return calls seeking comment for the third successive day. The group wants to charge up to $40,000 annually, plus startup fees, to offshore companies which set up computer servers on the Alexander reserve’s new data centre.
The chief of the Enoch Cree Nation, which has longtime cultural links to Alexander, said the region’s aboriginal people organized wagering games long before contact with European colonizers.
Law professor Moe Litman of the University of Alberta acknowledged the possibility that Alexander could succeed where other bands have failed in getting courts to view gaming as an inherent aboriginal right.
“But the technicalities of doing that make it a very, very uphill battle,” said Litman, an expert in aboriginal self-government law. “You have to essentially prove that … it’s the kind of activity that was an integral part of pre-contact culture. It’s a pretty difficult thing to do.”
Litman suggested a band would likely have to find documentary evidence of the activities and their cultural importance, such as explorers’ journal entries, oral tradition and other documentary proof.
Meanwhile, Alberta Justice is working with the AGLC on the Alexander band investigation, ministry spokesman David Dear said.
Last March, the AGLC’s Gaming Investigation Team raided and shut down an illegal gambling house in Edmonton and charged 12 people under the Criminal Code. In a news release announcing the shutdown, the director of investigations said such illegal operations take money away from the charities that benefit from legitimate gambling.
Source: Edmonton Journal

The government agency that regulates gambling in Alberta is deciding whether it should get into the game.
Global TV reports the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission is considering creating websites for people to play poker, blackjack or to bet on sports online.
The commission has ordered two polls to gauge how Albertans feel about the idea.
Marilyn Carlyle-Helms, spokeswoman for the commission, says they’re in the early stages of player research.
She says they’re “moving slow and steady” on the idea.
But Liberal member of legislature Laurie Blakeman called the concept “one of the dumber ideas” conceived by the Conservative government.
“Internet gambling — nobody’s been able to control it, or regulate it, or even follow it properly,” she said.
Source: Edmonton Journal

The FBI has frozen funds held in customer accounts at Neteller, the “virtual wallet” payment processor, as part of its case against the firm’s two Canadian founders who were last month arrested and charged with racketeering and money laundering.
Neteller refused to disclose how much had been frozen but company filings make clear huge sums were flowing between its United States customers’ “e-wallets” and online merchants — particularly gambling websites — up until the firm was pressured to close its US operations in the wake of last month’s arrests. Over a six-month period last year the company processed transactions worth $5,1-billion, with about 85% involving US customers.
Less than three weeks ago, Neteller said in a statement to the stock exchange: “The funds of US resident customers are held in segregated trust accounts and are fully secure and will be available for withdrawal by customers on demand.”
Since then, advice on the group’s website makes clear customer withdrawals have now been blocked. “As a top priority, we are working to resolve all withdrawal issues but in the meantime we continue to maintain these funds in trust on your behalf,” customers are told. “Please check this page regularly for more updates.”
The US Congress passed tough anti-gambling laws last October but several rogue operators based in off-shore tax havens have continued to target US punters, flouting the new legislation. They relied heavily on Neteller.
In the past five years, Neteller came to dominate gambling transactions in the US because its e-wallets allowed users to get around credit card blocks on gambling sites. Following the arrests of founders Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre, who face up to 20 years in jail if convicted, the decision was quickly taken to shut down US operations. Trading in the company’s shares was also suspended and remains so.
The FBI claim JSL Systems, a US-based payment company owned by Lefebvre, received customer funds in the US for Neteller and then transferred them to accounts held by a Neteller company in Canada. Last month Neteller told the Guardian that wagered money no longer passed through JSL.
It is unclear whether the FBI will treat some or all of the funds as proceeds of illegal gambling. One US newspaper report cited Neil Donovan, an FBI agent, saying the funds were being held in court as potential evidence. Some money may be returned to Neteller customers but no timescale was forthcoming, the report said. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice on Monday night refused to confirm details in the report, as did Neteller.
Source: Mail & Guardian