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MANILA, Philippines - Summer continues to sizzle at Casino Filipino (CF) as its various branches and satellite arcades nationwide feature hottest performers.

According to Bong Quintana, AVP of PAGCOR’s Entertainment Department, the series of CF shows for May 2014 is guaranteed to our delight casino guests. “With our loaded entertainment calendar for May, our guests and patrons will have a great and unforgettable time in Casino Filipino. They can enjoy all these shows for free, on a first come, first served basis,” he said.

CF branches in Tagaytay, Cebu, Davao, Angeles, Iloilo, Hyatt, Parañaque and the satellites in Malabon, Ronquillo and Madison will have a simultaneous nationwide theme launch of the Huling Hirit sa Tag-Init on May 2 and 7. Among the featured performers during the launch are stand-up comedians Le Chaz (CF Cebu and CF Iloilo), Osang (CF Davao), Eva Eugenio (Malabon Satellite and CF Angeles), Carlos
Agassi (Ronquillo and Madison Satellites), Jennifer Lee (CF Tagaytay), Paolo Santos (CF Parañaque) and Jun Polistico (CF Hyatt).

Meantime, Dulce will grace the Quarterly Celebrity Show for Bingo VIPs at Casino Filipino Pavilion also on May 2.

On May 3, the wacky duo of Brad Pete and Long Mejia will make everyone roll in laughter as main highlight at the Casino Filipino Game Show in Casino Filipino Parañaque. On the same day, Frenchie Dy will be the celebrity guest at CF Davao.

Rico Blanco will also be spotted in several CF branches on May 7 (CF Pavilion), May 16 (CF Tagaytay) and May 21 (Malabon Satellite).

The Ministry of Finance has once again turned to the Attorney General (AG) for legal guidance, this time on a casino resort bid that went astray in the ministry and was not counted among the proposals officially opened last December 6.

The ministry confirmed Thursday that a bid for Approved Integrated Resort Development (AIRD) status from Spanish hoteliers, Fiesta Jamaica Limited, was tendered at National Heroes Circle on November 29, a day ahead of the deadline.

The proposal failed to reach the team handling the bids as it was not addressed to the Project Coordinator as requested, the ministry said Thursday.

The clarification sought by Sunday Business followed the disclosure by Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips in Parliament on Tuesday that the Government was reviewing five applications.

Only four bids were opened on December 6 when, following the deadline of November 30, the Ministry asked all participants to attend the public opening of the casino resort proposals.

The four were Casino Royale Limited proposed for the Drax Hall Estate in

St Ann; Amaterra Jamaica Limited in Trelawny; Harmony Cove Limited, Trelawny; and Celebration Jamaica Limited, Montego Bay.

Fiesta's casino operation is proposed for Point in Lucea, Hanover.

"The fifth proposal was received by the ministry on Friday, November 29, 2013. The envelope was not addressed to the project coordinator, and hence, did not reach the relevant section in the ministry in time for the opening," the finance ministry said.

"Given that the records show that the document was received before the deadline, it was forwarded to the project coordinator pending further legal guidance."

This makes the second time the ministry has looked to the Attorney General for advice.

While all bids have been passed to the agent APEC Consultants for review, the ministry is unsure of its footing, because of delays in paying over the mandatory application fee of US$150,000, and has asked the AG to offer an opinion.

Only one bidder, Harmony Cove, presented the full payment at the bid opening, while Celebration said it had prepaid five years before but later cut another cheque to avoid disqualification.

The finance ministry said Friday that the AG's legal opinion on the fees and other issues was still pending.

It's unclear whether Fiesta's application fee has been paid. The ministry directed the query to APEC, whose responsible officer had not returned calls up to press time.

APEC Consultants is expected to complete its review of the bids by September for the finance minister to decide which projects will be issued with AIRD orders.

The AIRD order will qualify investors to apply for a casino licence from the Casino Commission of which only three are up for grabs.

Attempts to reach Dimitris Kosvogiannis, country manager for Fiesta and project coordinators APEC Consultants were unsuccessful.

Fiesta is a part of the Palladium Hotel Group, which covers eight brands and 48 hotel properties worldwide, and is owned by the Matutes Group of Companies.

Locally, Fiesta Jamaica operates the Grand Palladium and Lady Hamilton with 390 junior suites, 78 suites, and 48 villa suites; and the Grand Palladium Jamaica Resort & Spa, which has 540 suites on beachfront property at Point in Hanover.

The group has plans to add another 805 rooms at Point.

The casino resort licences require investors to develop 1,000 hotel rooms initially, before the licence is issued, and to produce a business plan for the additional 1,000. The investment should be no less than US$1.2 billion.

Kosvogiannis said previously that it was unreasonable for Jamaica to demand that type of capital outlay without any assurance that the investor would be issued a casino licence.

The latest report from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement was released this week, revealing that online poker revenues have remained relatively stagnant month-over-month. Online poker turned over $3.2 million in March versus $3.1 million in February; this is in contrast to online casino revenues which showed continued growth, with overall revenue of $11.8 million, up $1.5 million on the previous month.

While the figures for online poker are disappointing, they’re not utterly alarming – yet. The growing gap between these two sectors in the virgin US market does mirror the current trend in online gaming around the world, where casinos are outstripping poker, the latter having largely plateaued. However, the reality is that revenues are falling far short of initial projections in New Jersey, which ranged between $250 million to $1.2 billion annually.

With Regulation Come Constraints

At the recent iGaming North America Summit in Las Vegas, Ultimate Poker execs Tom Breitling and Tobin Prior admitted as much, but remained upbeat about the future of online poker in the state. People have been slow to adopt to the new regulated market, they said, for several reasons, and some of those reasons relate to regulation itself. With regulation, come constraints, such as a strict age verification process, which requires customers to negotiate a far more difficult sign-up process that they would have been used to when playing on unregulated sites. The software can be tweaked and improved in this field, they admitted.

“We had incorporated way too many clicks in this process, and so people who had played online poker in the past never had to go through this detailed process filled with all these extra clicks,” Breitling said. “Some people are taking a wait-and-see attitude about playing online games.”

There are also payment processing issues which need to be developed too. For example, Visa still refuses to process online gaming transactions for New Jersey residents, even though they are legal. The reintroduction of e-Wallet Neteller into New Jersey will help matters. Neteller was once the poker player’s online payment method of choice in the US, but it beat a hasty retreat in the wake of UIGEA, the bill that banned all Internet gambling transactions in America. Neteller has recently announced its return to the US market, and should become the stepping stone between Visa customers and New Jersey’s online poker sites.

A Problem Shared…

Breitling also cited geo-location issues in New Jersey as one of the challenges ahead. Nevada has been easier to control in this sense, because the majority of the population lives primarily in concentrated metropolitan areas of the state, whereas in New Jersey more people live around the state line. These are technology issues that will improve, incrementally.

But still, while revenues have been flat, liquidity levels have actually dropped slightly over the last two months, and that suggests New Jersey will have to look towards sharing its player pools with other states sooner rather than later. While Nevada and Delaware have declared their openness to the sharing of liquidity and already established the first-ever such compact, New Jersey has been strangely reticent on the subject. It’s estimated that sharing with those states would boost liquidity by 30 percent. New Jersey simply must accept that having enough games to retain customers and attract new ones is the blueprint for success in the online poker industry.

We must remember that it’s still very early days for legal and regulated Internet poker in New Jersey, and month-on-month stats are fairly irrelevant in the long-term scheme of things. The nosebleed figures initially predicted may indeed be attainable, but it will be a gradual process. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

New Jersey casinos brought in 15 percent more from online gambling in March over the previous month, but it wasn't nearly enough to offset the diminishing revenue from Atlantic City's long-struggling brick-and-mortar casinos.

The state Division of Gaming Enforcement reported Monday on casinos' gambling winnings in the latest edition of a monthly report where the news has been mostly discouraging for years.

Online gambling, which was launched in November as the latest hope to reverse Atlantic City's fortunes, hasn't brought in the revenue that was expected.

But it has grown each month. In March, the casinos won $11.9 million from online bettors, a 15 percent increase over February, when the casinos' take was $10.3 million. The state says 292,000 people are now registered to bet online in the state, an 18 percent increase over February.

Atlantic City's casinos, which are partnering with online gambling companies, have been using billboards, direct mailers, Web ads and other means in relentless promotion of the new option.

Including the online revenue, Atlantic City's 11 casinos won a total of $233 million in March 2014, down 2 percent from March 2013, when there were still 12 casinos operating. The Atlantic Club Casino Hotel closed in January of this year.

Winnings for the physical casinos dropped faster. The $221 million brought in was 7 percent less than the same period last year.

Most of the individual casinos were either big winners or big losers in March compared with the same month last year.

Revel Casino Hotel saw its winnings at its physical casino jump 50 percent to $14.7 million. The Golden Nugget Atlantic City, which has gone after former Atlantic Club players aggressively, and Resorts Casino Hotel each had increases of just over 20 percent. The Golden Nugget's winnings were $12.9 million; Resorts' were $11.2 million.

Tropicana Casino and Resort ($22.2 million) posted an increase of more than 10 percent.

Meanwhile, four casinos had winnings that were down by more than 10 percent from last year.

Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the city's least prolific casino, brought in $4.7 million, a decrease of 31 percent; Bally's Atlantic City, at $17.9 million, was down 18 percent; Trump Taj Mahal won $19 million, down 19 percent; and Showboat Casino Hotel, at $14 million, was down 17 percent;

The casino with relatively stable winnings compared to last year was the city's biggest, The Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa, which made $51.5 million, a decrease of 1.2 percent. Harrah's Resort Atlantic City was down 5.5 percent to $29 million, and Caesar's Atlantic City won $24.3 million, an increase of less than 1 percent.

The biggest share of the Internet gambling revenue went to Borgata, with $4.4 million; Caesars Interactive New Jersey was next with $3.7 million.

In order to keep their gaming collections fresh, it is common for online casinos to frequently add new games released by their software platform developers. The online casino game developing world is very alive and thus it always provides new games to online casinos, with said games becoming more technologically complex, and immersive to benefit the players.

Winner Casino is a prime example for an online casino which constantly adds new games to its already vast gaming portfolio. Most of Winner Casino's games are available in demo versions giving interested players the chance to try them out or hone their skills in practice mode. Let's have a look at games to Winner Casino's Playtech game portfolio.

The Money Drop

Based on the popular UK TV game show, The Money Drop is a 5-reel, 20-payline video slot featuring expanding wilds triggered by the Golden Wild Scatter symbol alongside two unique bonuses: The Drop Bonus which has players try to keep as much cash as they can through 8 rounds and the Security Pass Bonus where players click on falling cash bundles to collect freespins and multipliers.

Sunset Beach

Sunset Beach is a 5-reel, 20-payline video slot with a summer theme featuring a sun washed beach with symbols consisting of beach balls, cocktails, surfer girls, waves and the traditional letters and numbers. One of Sunset Beach's highlights is its stacked wilds represented by three bikini-clad girls, which clone themselves to enhance winning potentials.

The Three Musketeers and the Queens Diamond

The Three Musketeers and the Queens Diamond is a colorful 5-reel, 50-payline video following the world's most famous musketeers on their search for the Queen's diamond. The game's highlight is its unique Queen's Diamond Bonus which lets players go through 5 distinctive levels where they earn game lives and win cash points.

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The possibility of a casino on North Broad Street, near Callowhill, is prompting a move in Philadelphia City Council to stave off new pawn shops, payday loan operations, and other shady credit businesses in that area.
Developer Bart Blatstein’s Tower Investments is one of five firms hoping to land the second Philadelphia casino license. Tower’s proposal is for a $700-million gambling emporium in the former headquarters of the Inquirer newspaper, at Broad and Callowhill.
City Council’s Rules Committee has now approved a measure driven by that proposal: a zoning overlay for the area bounded by Spring Garden and Callowhill, Broad and 18th Streets.
The committee chair, councilman-at-large Bill Greenlee, says the overlay specifically prohibits new businesses that would prey on gamblers.
“The communities involved really do not want to see these kinds of establishments — pawn shops, checking cashing agencies,” Greenlee said. “And also, with a possible casino coming there, that would not seem to be appropriate uses to be that close to a casino.”
While the measure prohibits new personal credit businesses in that area, existing ones would be allowed to stay, though they would be barred from expanding.
The measure now goes to the full Council for a vote. A decision by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board on the city’s second license is expected later this year.