Change100 at PokerWorks

Some interesting rumors are circulating through the intertubes this morning. The London newspaper The Financial Times is reporting that Rep. Barney Frank (D) who chairs the House Financial Services committee, is planning on introducing a bill to repeal the UIGEA. In the FT article, he calls the online gaming ban “one of the stupidest laws ever passed.”

Go Barney! Rock on with your bad self. Work that Democratic majority.

Another piece of potential good news that should be FIRMLY placed in the category of unconfirmed rumors revolves around a Gambling 911 report that the Department of Justice is about to drop the charges against the Neteller founders who were arrested January 15th. Gaming stocks have seen a nice uptick on the London stock market today based on this speculation. The date to really watch is this Friday, March 16th, when a hearing will be held to determine whether or not the DOJ will continue to pursue its case against Neteller.

Finally, this morning news is leaking that Harrah’s has awarded Bluff Magazine a multi-year deal to be the exclusive provider of digital content at the World Series of Poker. This sweeping agreement allegedly includes the rights to audio/radio broadcast, video content, online pay-per-view, live updates, and chip counts (what about Pokerwire?). This turn of events is sure to irk the folks at CardPlayer, whose Craigslist interns did an appallingly bad job as last year’s “exclusive content provider” and were routinely ridiculed in the internet poker press. (Wicked Chops’ hilarious “Card Player’s Like You Were There Moment” comes to mind). Or perhaps CardPlayer already had an inkling that this shit was going down when Rich Belsky decided to bust on a Bluff tournament reporter on-air a few months back.

Keep in mind that this story is still developing and nothing official has been announced yet. Then again, we all knew Al D’Amato was going to chair the PPA weeks before the official press release came down. Stay tuned…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 9:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized.