Microgaming is expanding its multi-player portfolio with the addition of two new tournament slots, Leagues of Fortune and Karate Pig.

Leagues of Fortune is a five reel, 1024 ways to win video slot which sends players on a deep sea exploration. The game contains a free spins bonus feature which can award a player with up to 35 free spins and a 5x multiplier.

Martial arts themed video slot Karate Pig is a five reel, 40 payline game which offers stacked wild substitutes and free spins. Providing substantial winning opportunities, the slot also includes a scatter bonus feature which unlocks a three-level karate bonus game.

Karate Pig Slot

Leagues of Fortune Slot

With these new slots, Microgaming’s portfolio of tournament games now totals 17. These tournament games are utilised for a variety of tournament types across the Microgaming network, providing operators with plenty of exciting events to market to their players. New addition, Karate Pig, will be utilised for the networks midweek, 3-day, Survivor tournament which is a multiple round knock-out competition. This tournament commences weekly from Wednesday 24th July and has a $2,000 prize pool which is shared equally among the top 10 players.

David Reynolds, Spokesperson for Microgaming’s multi-player games, comments: "In recognition of the growing popularity of community-based gaming, we are expanding our multi-player platform to ensure we deliver the most diverse multi-player experience to our operators’ players. Tournament enthusiasts can look forward to additional new games in the coming months."

The price tag is a massive €38.3 million, and the acquisition is the online poker affiliate business known as PokerStrategy – this business specialises in poker coaching, and teaching strategy. The purchaser is Playtech, and it looks as though they are rather keen to generate new revenue streams. Online poker has not been performing as well as it did in the past, so, it makes sense for a company as large as Playtech to look at new ways to strengthen its position in this market place.

Playtech is an Israeli-owned software company that is massively prominent in the UK online gambling space. A number of the very large brand name gambling ops in Britain, partner with this turnkey software developer for their online operations too. The announcement of this acquisition was recently made by Playtech, where they made it clear that the company is optimistic about diversifying their business profile. The aim of the game appears to be to open up an independent poker school – but not just any online poker school – the largest independent one in the world.
They are looking into including community licensees, as well as "cementing existing relationships". It is their belief that incremental opportunities will be created for both PTTS marketing and software development. In other words they believe the new acquisition to be a sound move to enhance their earnings.

PokerStrategy.com, together with affiliates, own assets worth something like €18.5 million, while profits before taxes are somewhere around the €19.5 million mark in 2012. As we said earlier online poker earnings have been dropping, but not only for Playtech partners, for many other internet poker firms. So, this indeed could just be the right thing to do to create more revenue generating synergies.

Playtech has also announced that they are of the opinion that no re-branding exercised needs to take place. So, PokerStrategy.com will remain as it is, as well as preserve its independence in the online market place. Interestingly enough their management team will also remain the same. Having PokerStrategy on-board will allow for more breaks for Playtech to rethink, and adjust their poker business.

PokerStrategy is expected to assist in upgrading the Playtech poker software, and we believe this is not before time. While Playtech continues to work with their existing partners, they will be able to add new poker rooms to choose from – this is relevant to the iPoker Network which is one of the largest networks of its kind in the world.

It is not the first time that online poker has been given the film treatment, it has already gone out in documentary form, as well as the subject matter for a recent Hollywood release of fiction. Now apparently this story is getting the Jay Rosenkrantz (Executive Producer) treatment, and he is debuting "Bet Raise Fold" to the broader public.

This story of a much maligned subject in the USA, premiered worldwide, on the 13th June, 2013, and being a high-stakes poker player himself – Rosenkrantz got the idea from his personal journey. Approximately seven years ago, the concept of creating a documentary on living the online poker lifestyle came to him, and now it’s been done. Rosenkrantz was a poker pro for an online website, and a regular contributor to Two Plus Two poker blog.

In commentary that Black Friday really made online poker a very big deal – he realized that this story was for real. The film itself has been produced together with some of the biggest names in this game, and production actually started before the fateful day. For those of you who don’t know, Black Friday took place on the 15th April 2011. It saw the closure of the biggest and most popular poker websites in the USA – PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute, and Ultimate Poker. Only PokerStars survived.

This occurrence caused the producers of "Bet Raise Fold" to almost complete re-think their game plan in terms of making the film, creating a rather stiff challenge. As a result of this Rosenkrantz and Director Ryan Firpo landed up telling the historic tale of online poker. It has taken them three years to complete the project, with a great deal of collaboration, but for the most part all of the hard work was done by these two protagonists themselves – from directing, editing, watching hours, and hours of footage, to the actual filmmaking.

The original concept came about when Jay met another Two Plus Two’er called Dean Strachan, who was an economics student from the UK, and obviously also a poker player. They went to Atlantic City together and had a really great time. But they also thought that the characters who exist in this world that is online poker, would make really good material, and it is all history from there. The idea stayed put, and they started to make a documentary about this bunch of insane people.

The end goal is to get this film out to everyone who has ever played a hand of poker. There you have it, if you have played a hand of poker or online poker… this is the film to see. Actually, even if you have never played poker, it is still something to see.

It is only recently that we have been online gambling games, and getting them in three D. Now, because technology changes so quickly in the well… technology business, a new generation of games is already being released by probability. When we talk about game, we mean in the sense of online gambling games that can be played to win real money.

It is all over the press that Probability is "Supercharging the player experience with HD graphics, responsive interfaces, smooth animation and crystal clear sound", and all of this is for mobile gambling which is the largest growth sector that the online gambling industry is taking advantage of right now. These are the best in their class products for mobile gambling, and are compatible with many Android tablets and smartphones, as well as the iOS platform.

Now that mobile gambling is HD (High Definition), other software developers are going to have to come up with similar products, and come up with these aggressively. There are six HD slots for iOS, Android and Blackberry users that have already been released in the next generation format.

These games are developed and based upon new HTML5 and server frameworks which have been developed in-house by Probability during the last twelve months. The technology is as good, if not better than native apps, and can be used on the most sophisticated smartphones and tablets available today, over all major operating systems.

We immediately took note of scale accurate, much sharper graphics, with synchronised sounds to screen action. These high resolution displays offer much smoother animation, as well as a highly responsive interface, in much faster download times than we have ever experienced before. Customers are going to love this, and won’t want to play any other games, of this we can be reasonably sure.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Probability – Charles Cohen – commented that customer expectations have become that high, while HTML5 has not necessarily been able to deliver. Not in comparison to native apps. However, upgrades to the iOS and Android systems in the new breed of smartphone, have allowed for this company to deliver a product that is arguably even better than native apps.

They call this new technology the Slot-O-Matic development platform, which allows them the ability to offer the highest quality of games in even more markets than any other developer/provider. New releases include; Poseidon’s Kingdom HD, Long John’s Silver HD, War Zone HD, Way of the Slot HD Pots of Plenty HD, and Samurai vs Zombies HD – under license from Glu. All that is left for you is to simply give them a try.

It is no secret that the offshore territories of the UK have done really well out of the fact that the offer tax havens to the UK-facing online gambling industry. This applies to Alderney, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, Malta and recently even the Isle of Jersey, although Jersey seems to have come on board rather Late.

Now that the British Government has been looking for ways to tax online gambling services, rather than making taxation more attractive for existing as well as start-up operator, they are thinking of a point of consumption tax. This seems quite a sensible move, as offshore operators benefit from offering gaming to UK customers, but only paly local license fees and taxes.

The introduction of a point of consumption tax seems ready to go ahead, and should be in place by December 2014. The remote gambling industry are obviously keen to find out how this tax will affect them so, neighbouring gambling jurisdictions need to be thinking ahead regarding these new regulations.

The Economic Development Minister of the Isle of Man’s – John Shimmin – is already rolling-out a new five-year plan of strategy to ensure they keep on top of things. He is quite rightly of the opinion that the sooner they take a pro-active approach, the better off they will be. We have to bear in mind here that the online gambling industry revived the economies of these island states to a great extent. It creates highly paid, highly technical jobs, generates tax income and has seen many professional relocate to be closer to where they work. Their spending stimulates these economies too.

The planned tax regime for 2014 has John Shimmin concerned that with better taxation regulation in place, firms may be tempted to relocated back to the UK. This would mean the Isle of Man (and the others) may lose some of their licensees. It is obvious that they should be prepared for this, and that they should also be able to offer incentives for firms to remain. They have already signed a tax sharing agreement with the UK, and met with the UK Gambling Commission.

Shimmin has guaranteed their support their to e-gaming operators, and confirmed that they fully understand any implications that may affect their regulatory regime. They are still seeking to attract even more new licensees, so, business must be good. Currently big names such as PokerStars, Paddy Power, and the new Full Tilt Poker, amongst others are firmly entrenched in the Isle of Man.