With the preliminary approval of the Nevada Gaming Control board, there’s only one transaction left before Harrah’s can own Planet Hollywood. Last September of 2009, Harrah’s paid Planet Hollywood’s debt amounting to $70 million with a stipulation that on January of 2010, Harrah’s will be in charge of Planet Hollywood. Unfortunately, this will also mean that Harrah’s will acknowledge the remaining debt of Planet Hollywood amounting to $554 million.

This step Harrah’s is taking in controlling Planet Hollywood would save a lot of job when possible at the same time put a stop to Planet Hollywood in failing and file bankruptcy as explained by Dennis Neilander, Gaming Control Board Chairman.

The Nevada Gaming Commission is expected to grant it’s final approval in favor of Harrah’s control over Planet Hollywood on Feb. 18 of this year. By this time, Harrah’s will employ Planet Hollywood’s employees. According to its executives, Harrah’s will hold on to the 2,300 existing staff members of Planet Hollywood. This is around 95 percent of Planet Hollywood’s employees. Harrah’s also owns Bally’s and Paris Las Vegas casinos and Marilyn Winn, president of both casinos will also be the new president of Planet Hollywood.

Party Gaming PLC is the parent companies of PartyPoker, proclaims its financial results for the 4th quarter of the previous year. They announces that they have an increase in the financial results for the last quarter but still not enough to pull up the overall results for the fiscal year. The overall decrease for the company is due to the company decisions as well as purchases of the organization.

The total revenue of Party Gaming was $13.2 million for the year 2009. It showed an increase of 32% compare to the profits last 2008 that was only about $100.4 million but showed an increase of 17% in the 3rd quarter of the year 2009.

Party Gaming reached a total of $446.2 million revenues for the year but drops 6% from their profit last 2008 due to the World Poker Tour that they purchased in 2009. Along with their announcement of their total revenues, they also announce its new Chief Operating Officer, Per Widerström. This new executive has been in the online gaming industry for the longest time already and had been the Chief Executive Officer and Director of Mangas Gaming Malta, Limited.

Widerström has also previous jobs as the head position at Expekt.com Ltd and Telenor Mobile Sweden and was a Vice President and COO at Kyivstar GSM. In addition, he was the one-time Director of Operational Marketing and Business Development with Coca-Cola.

Las Vegas Hands is planning to bring the gaming action in Florida according to the Miami Herald. The giant casino is planning to build a $3 billion resort casino in Miami.

Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas Sands CEO has been very busy for the past few days and for being hired as a Tallahassee lobbyist. He has made a lot of important contributions in Florida in regard to the pro-casino political campaigns.

Recent reports confirmed that Ft. Lauderdale legislator Ellyn Bogdanoff left with the plan of the expansion despite his early disagreement on the expansion of the State. He seems to side to the other side now.

The poker gaming industry has been looking for different markets to help them survive the stress they are undergoing for the meantime. Stress was brought about by the major investments that gaming industry has provided in places like Las Vegas and Macau.

In recent times, Miami has been attracting more and more companies to invest in their state. Miami is becoming on the target market of other big companies who wanted to invest in a different state. Big companies are targeting Miami in order for them to increase their stock values due to Miami’s economy at this point.

Arizona Republican Jon Kyl blocks 4 Treasury position because of the delay of the implementation of the UIGEA. He blocks the Treasury appointments in his protest against the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve for delaying the prohibition of the gambling on the internet.

Everyone is wondering the logic behinds Jon Kyl protest considering the financial crisis in the society. It shows that Kyl’s political temper tantrum has again slows down the action at the federal level. Taking into consideration the Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that was left without any support of political appointees from the policies on the dollar and international reform.

On the other hand, Anurag Dikshit sold his share in one of the top online gambling sites. Dikshit was the former Partygaming PLC founder and his final move of selling his assets drop the stocks of Partygaming by 5.4 percent in London according to the Bloomberg report.

Anurag Dikshit made 105 million pounds off the deal when he sold his assets to 270 pence per share to institutional investors. Compared to other Partygaming founders, Anurag Dikshit travelled back to United States to pay $300 million fine after pleading guilty to illegal Internet gambling.

Doyle Brunson was known to be a Twitter Aficionado. He has been twitting to feed updates about the happenings in the DoylesRoom. Through his Tweeter feed, he can update the poker industry with his prop and sports betting and providing everyone a seemingly endless stream of blonde jokes.

Brunson, ten-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner made a comment to President Barrack Obama made from his twitter account. In response, he received a barrage of Tweets in response to his post that say “The Democrats say ‘give Obama time.’ Us Republicans [sic] agree, 25 to life seems appropriate!”

Some persons commented on Brunson’s post that it was stemmed from racially motivated feelings towards the President. However, after a couple of hours, Brunson made a new statement that his post has nothing to do with the color of the skin of the President. He also added that he may not like the 1st year of ruling of Obama but this has nothing to do with his physical features.

As of the moment, Brunson appears to be laid off the political Tweets for a while. The Full Tilt Red Pro and the 2006 WSOP Player of the Year Jeff Madsen disagreed with the Tweets of the poker legend.

The Morongo Band of Mission Indians formed a group called the California Tribal Intrastate Internet Poker Consortium. It is one of the largest casino gaming tribes. According to recent reports lately, the California Indian tribes will be pushed next month.

The deal from the Commerce Casino together with the Bicycle club is being worked out by the Morongo to pursue the online poker in California. According to the Morongo’s spokesperson, Patrick Dorinson, they have been asking added support from different tribes to pursue with the deal that fell apart due to the issues that risen that it was rush through the legislative process.

One of the most influential groups, California Tribal Business Alliance has shown their disagreement in the proposal. They claim that it could violate the exclusivity clauses in gaming compacts with the casino tribes.

There are around 1.4 million Californians enjoying poker in an online poker via offshore websites. The proposal seems to gather potential revenue streams for the state and the Senate Governmental Organization Committee will take up all the questions about this online poker on the 9th of February.
Invitations have been distributed and speakers for February 9 are all ready to support the hearing. However, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIEGA) prohibits the use of credit cards and all fund transfer for the illegal online gambling except for the intrastate internet gambling.

In the poker industry, it is a remarkable sign for poker players to have an online room named after them. This will mark their legendary tracks in the online poker world like DoylesRoom after Doyle Brunson and Devilish Poker after David “The Devilfish” Ulliot. more…