Phil Ivey’s bad week at the Full Tilt high stakes cash game online tables perked up as the week closed with a profit on Pot Limit Omaha of over a million - mainly at the expense of Tom Dwan, who hemorrhaged over a million through the casino gambling night.

Ivey’s cards and talent enabled him to hammer his $500/$1,000 PLO opponents into submission over 627 hands of serious action, earning him some $800 000 in the process.

Ivey’s good fortune did not extend to the NLHE and 7-Game tables, though. On 515 hands of NLHE the ice-cool American pro dropped $377 000, leaving him with a profit for the night of around $420 000 despite his earlier windfall courtesy of Dwan.

Dwan battled all night on the NLHE tables to recover some of his losses, but was only able to claw back around $100 000.

Sympathetic online gambling railbirds will be pleased to hear that French pro David Benyamine at last managed to end his disastrous losses this week, finishing the night up over $407 000 after playing almost 3 600 hands on the 7-Game tables. Patrik Antonius also enjoyed a profitable night, leaving with $700 000 from PLO and 7-Game to add to his already substantial 2009 bank balance.

November 2nd will see he advent of a new online poker show on Sky Sports television in the UK, sponsored by the giant online poker provider PokerStars.

Branded ‘Bounty Stars of Poker’ and filmed by Emblaze Productions, the show takes amateur online gambling qualifiers from PokerStars into a live TV environment where they will have to beat other members of the public to progress to the next stage of the show.

If successful, the online qualifier will then face either a Team PokerStars pro or a sporting celebrity for a GBP 5 000 cash prize. Players won’t know who they will face until they take their seat at the table.

The sportsmen who will be standing between the amateur players and a cash windfall are ex-England test cricketer and former ‘King of the Jungle’ Phil Tufnell, England rugby star and talented poker player Mike Tindall, and Welsh football legend Gary Speed.

The Team PokerStars pros include Peter Eastgate, 2008 WSOP Champion; Victoria Coren, the first woman to win a European Poker Tour event and Marcel Luske, one of Europe’s most feared and respected players.

Commenting on the new show, Coren said, “This is an excellent opportunity for previously unknown poker players to make a name for themselves and play against some of the best in the business.

“The PokerStars Bounty Stars of Poker will expose these guys to the unique pressures of playing in a live environment with thousands watching.”

The first episode airs on Sky Sports 2 at 22h00 on Monday, 2nd November 2009.

After less than a year of actual operational use, the mobile phone giant Nokia is to close its controversial - and developmentally expensive - mobile gambling service.

The service, which at one time was thought to hold some online gambling potential will close next (2010) year, a move widely seen in Europe as an acknowledgement of failure in the company’s first major services offering.

Casino games and music were Nokia’s first targets in the service sector as the group looked for new income sources to compensate as its traditional handset market matured. However, Nokia’s dedicated gaming phones proved unpopular in the market despite a massive global advertising campaign.

“We will no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform,” Nokia said on its N-Gage blog this week, adding that the games would be available until the end of September 2010, and the supporting community site would remain in operation throughout 2010.

Nokia’s leading position in the cellphone market had attracted all the top mobile game makers — including Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Glu Mobile and Digital Chocolate to create special games for N-Gage.

After closing the N-Gage service, Nokia will continue to sell mobile games at its Ovi Store.

The massive success of online gambling group Betfair has again been reflected in the latest business accolade for founders Andrew Black and Edward Wray, who earlier this month were again honoured at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards in London.

The duo’s success was recognised in the UK’s Media, Entertainment And Communications section of the awards, one of the most prestigious top online casinos business honours in Britain.

Betfair was launched in 2000 and has twice been named as the Company Of The Year by the Confederation Of British Industry. In addition, it remains one of the only betting companies to win a Queen’s Award For Enterprise twice after being recognised in 2003 and 2008.

Licensed in the UK, Australia, Germany, Austria, Italy and Malta, Betfair employs over 1 500 people and its founders won Ernst And Young’s Emerging Entrepreneurs Of The Year Award in 2002.

The 2009 ‘UK Overall Entrepreneur Of The Year’ award went to Michael Spencer, chief executive of interdealer broker ICAP plc, a familiar figure in online gambling investment circles. He founded ICAP with four people 23 years ago and now employes over 4 000 people in a FTSE 100 company with annual revenues in excess of GBP 1.5 billion.

Diligence and attention to detail have been the watchwords during the development of Cake Poker’s new mobile gambling offering, and this thorough approach was again evident this week with further improvements to the online casinos software.

While the Cake Poker Mobile software is still technically in beta testing, it’s been continually refined, according to the company’s blog.

The latest tweaks unveiled by the Cake tech gurus working on the Cake Poker Mobile product have been based on casino gambling player feedback and include:

• 4 colour decks

• Total Pot indicator

• Table Position indicator

• Re-buy in-game (with re-buy time indicator)

• Sound effects

• When choosing your table selection options, you can now filter for desired Flop percentage

• Enhanced Performance and architectural improvements

Players who are already on Cake Poker Mobile, will be prompted to download and install the new version automatically when they launch the old version.

For those who haven’t yet tried the new product, all you need is a Windows Mobile device, and a visit to http://mobile.cakepoker.com/m.

This new update also irons out a few small bugs:

• Disconnections are handled better

• Table action can now be seen while player is sitting out

• Error logging for troubleshooting

• Hole cards face down bug

• Application loading issues

• Action button improvements

• Table joining improvements

Players have an open invitation to partticipate in the development phase by communicating their thoughts and suggestions to feedback@cakepoker.com.
A company spokesman said this week that there are exciting new features imminent, including:

• Blackberry/Symbian support

• Top-down view of the table

• Real lobby table list w/ table stats

• Mobile cashier and account management

* Mobile tournaments

It appears that the Russian based online gambling software provider, Connective Games is trawling for partners to help achieve its ambitions in setting up an Asian facing internet gambling network, judging by press release material this week from its marketing outlet Game-On.

Tomsk-based Connective Games has been providing gaming solutions for online casino and poker operators for the last three years and partners with several of the leading poker networks and independent operators, the press material advises without specifying the companies concerned.

In pursuing its Asian goals, Connective Games will use its expertise to build an Asian network with a range of popular traditional games for Asian players such as Mahjong, Chinese Poker, Badugi, Big 2 and Rummy.

CEO Konstantin Zubarev says: “Asian games are undoubtedly some of the most exciting and this market is a huge opportunity for operators seeking to diversify. We are ready to target this fast growing market and seeking partnerships with companies and individuals that have a valued interest and understanding of Asian games. Connective Games’ aim is to become one of the biggest players for both existing and “new to market” operators. ”

Austrian online gambling group Bwin has secured a three-year extension to its sponsorship agreement with the top Spanish football club Real Madrid.

The new online gambling agreement represents an extension of the current sponsorship deal, which was scheduled to expire next year with the end of the European casino games season, and will take the relationship through to 2013.

No financial details of the latest agreement were released, but it is likely to at least equal the reported Euro 45 million attached to the previous three year arrangement.

EiG discussions suggest that Playtech is about to launch the first of its two Marvel licensed branded casino games this week in the form of online slots themed on The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man.

Playtech casinos secured licensing for the brands from Marvel earlier this year and the releases will present some competition for licensees of major provider Cryptologic, which already has the super heroes on its gaming theme roster.

Big news from Ongame?

Could an important announcement be due from Ongame Network today? It would seem that EiG has been the vehicle of choice for several major deal announcements in the industry this week, and it would the ideal vehicle.

The still unconfirmed rumour is that online betting giant Betfair is about to join the Ongame Network for its poker offering. If true, such a deal would bring both liquidity and prestige to the Ongame service.

Site requested comment from Ongame poker chief Martin Lerby this (Thursday) morning, although it was appreciated that unless this agreement is set to go right away this may difficult for him to confirm or deny.

Lerby responded, saying: “I cannot deny or confirm [the Betfair move] and I prefer not to comment on this rumor.”

Lerby also clarified the position regarding Gioco Digitale’s acquisition by Ongame’s parent Bwin, saying that it has not yet been decided if or when the Italian company will migrate to Ongame’s P5 poker network engine.

More Texas Hold’Em

Microsoft wasn’t at EiG, but its latest product offering was discussed by some delegates as the Seattle software giant released its Zune HD upgraded personal media player designed to challenge Apple’s iPod Touch.

The reason? The available games include yet another Texas Hold’Em offering.

Zune is an all-singing, all-dancing product that plays music and video, and can surf the Internet via Wi-Fi as well as playing games. Thus far the Zune Marketplace offers only seven free game options, but the potential for growth is obvious. Opinions on the quality of these games seems divided, with the preponderance of critics disappointed with the ad-supported final product. Many abhor the requirement to watch an advert before being able to play the game.

Texas Hold’Em is the poker addition to the Zune HD games roster, but it has been panned as uninteresting although basically functional. Surprisingly, there is no multiplayer action; no cool table themes; no tournaments, and a very basic AI that plays a bland, cautious game. The consensus appears to be that Microsoft will have to do some serious upgrading before this can be regarded as any sort of competitive threat.

Online gambling scratchcard development company NeoGames Partners, has used its presence at EiG to announce the launch of its brand new 9 line slot game Bon Appétit on Internet scratch card websites, Scratch2Cash and Hopa.com.

Players will come face to face with a huge variety of very appetising food and drink such as pizza, waffles, ice cream and lemonade positioned across a 9 line slot machine.

The objective of Bon Appétit is to match a minimum of two identical icons on the same line to win.

There is a $/GBP/Euros 200 000 Jackpot to be won, so players may find themselves craving to get the five matching ice cream symbols to win the big prize.

A rather depressing assessment by the Poker Players Alliance is quoted in the respected online poker magazine Cardplayer this week, surmising that HR 2267- Congressman Barney Frank’s attempt to legalise and regulate online gambling in the United States - could again be pushed aside as Congress concentrates on the financial issues resulting from the global economic debacle.

The PPA opined that the bill was running out of time and was unlikely to be progressed this month, pushing it out to October 2009.

However, a second and related bill, which would delay the implementations of the Unlawful internet gambling Enforcement Act for one year, could still stand a chance of making it through a busy Congressional session, and the PPA will put its weight behind that measure.

“The feedback we got (from a meeting with Representative Frank’s staff this week) was that it’s unlikely that we will hold a hearing in September; however, the door is not closed on that,” PPA Executive Director John Pappas told CardPlayer, speaking about H.R. 2267: The Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act.

CardPlayer reports that with that reality in place, the PPA is actively moving on Frank’s other poker-related bill, H.R. 2266: Reasonable Prudence in Regulation Act:, a piece of legislation that would delay the full implementation of the UIGEA from December 1, 2009 to December 1, 2010.

“Quite honestly, the preference of the PPA is to move [H.R. 2266] sooner rather than later, and not wait until October,” said Pappas. “We believe that the bill as it stands right now faces some opposition if it’s a simple delay. However, we’re working with the opposition to see if a compromise could be drafted.”

“We’re hopeful that if we can present to Chairman Frank a compromised bill that could easily go through his committee without too much fighting and debate — that we could get that done possibly in this month,” said Pappas.

“Hopefully, we wouldn’t even have to have a hearing. It could be a mark-up. A hearing is where you sit and talk about the bill. A mark-up is where you actually vote on it,” said Pappas. “The hope from our side is that if we can craft a non-controversial compromise, it is something that could be heard and voted on by the committee this month.”

If it were approved by the committee, the bill could be passed by the House as a typical corrections bill.

Pappas told CardPlayer that the PPA was disappointed to learn that Frank’s main legislative attempt aimed at legalising online gambling probably wouldn’t be the subject of a hearing until at least October.

“Obviously, that’s not what we wanted to hear, but it’s the reality of the Congress and the reality of their schedule,” said Pappas. “What the PPA is going to do is continue to push for it as soon as possible, but in the meantime, build as much support for the legislation both on the committee and off the committee.”

Rep. Frank had previously told Card Player that he hoped to hold a vote on The Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act by this [September] month.

That act has 55 co-sponsors in the House, but Pappas expects that number to move “closer to 70” in the next few weeks.