Online Gambling News

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.

When online slots developers started to incorporate elements of skill into these games, we started to call them “Sklots”, basically a marriage of the two. But it was only a matter of time until MMORPG developers realised that monetizing their games could create a new stream of revenue for them. Whether or not all Virtual World developers will create gambling games stills remains a moot point, but one MMO has done this, and has done it with the title of Dragon Tales.

Role playing gaming is über-popular online, and this classic MMORPG has been created at great cost by lead designer of eGenesis – Andrew Tepper. His comments on the release of Dragon Tales basically that he was struck by the idea that gambling online can be lonely, and this could be the truth, as so many community slots games and such are actually being developed today.
The typical online slots player simply seats themselves in front of a 2 or 3D slot and whiles away the time. Despite the fact that online casinos also offer a chat feature, we don’t know the number of players that take advantage of this form of social interaction. We do know that online bingo players are a chatty lot.

So, Tepper has taken the experience he has garnered building MMORPG’s over the last 15 years, and has given this game a gambling application. He believes he has created an “intensely social world” where players can get together online, and not take the journey alone. Exploring this game world together means sharing skills or techniques, as well as being able to rely on each-other with each completing gambling quest in order to level up.

Credit cards and Bitcoins are the in-game monetary systems, and Tepper has said that every game inside Dragon’s Tale is “novel.” It has been designed for a 3D environment, and includes running monkeys through mazes, dragon egg hunts, cow tipping, fishing, and feeding the ducks. So far sixty games have been created, and new games are being continually added. They are apparently all a new take on gambling, with half being based on sheer random good luck, and the other half being skills-based.

eGenesis has featured a tournament system, in Dragons Tale, as well as student/teacher system, with player-controlled governance similar to that of their other claim to fame – A Tale in the Desert. If you fancy taking Dragon Tale for a test run, they start Beta testing this week on Friday the 12th of July.

The fundamental concept of any online business, is that business can take place on a global scale, and this concept applies to online gambling. This type of business without borders is also a model that is intrinsic to the freedom of trade principles adopted by law-makers of the European Union (EU). However, when it comes down to online gambling and EU free trade principles, many EU countries still practice monopolistic approaches. This is frowned upon by the EU.

Now Dr Christos Dimitriadis – Intralot’s Head of Information Security has spoken at a Berlin conference, and said that “it is inevitable that new types of mobile games that could incorporate gambling features will become legal across the European Union”. Intralot builds lottery systems, terminals, and so on, and has a presence in fifty-five countries globally.

He was a guest speaker at the ISACA Insights World Congress 2013, when he made clear that their firm would be both keen, and able to investigate new business breaks, if the entire EU were to make mobile gambling legal. The gambling sector is currently merging mobile services and the cloud, which is proving to be incredibly popular with punters, and is showing exponential growth with many UK-based operators.

The problem with this form of gambling for EU member countries, is that they are not all on the same page, when it comes down to legalising games of chance that are internet based. As we said in the first paragraph – even though the European Commission has drafted an across-the-board framework for the online gambling industry – member states are being very reluctant to come to the party. It is unfortunate that regulatory changes have to be made country-by-country, but it is what it is.

The belief is that eventually there will be a way in which each member state controls e-gambling. They must play a regulatory role because of the “responsibility” factor. Gambling is believed to be best when it is controlled by law, or otherwise unscrupulous operators are able to take advantage of the public. The problem is that the EU has a great business model to follow in the UK, but don’t seem to be able to apply the lessons learned by the UK into their own situation.

Great Britain is home to the most mature sector of the global online gambling industry, and their legal framework seems to work, although like times, technology changes, and laws should be tweaked to compensate for this change. Mobile gambling in the UK, has hit the ground running in the past couple of years, and consistently appears to be enjoying an exponential growth swing.