Автор: genom

The King of Pop is back for an encore.

Bally Technologies Inc. has unveiled a follow-up to its Michael Jackson King of Pop slot machine. The new game, expected to hit casino floors in Las Vegas within the next two months, is called Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.

Featuring new bonuses, the machine is loaded with five more of Michael Jackson’s most popular tracks: “Bad,” “Billie Jean,” “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” “The Way You Make Me Feel” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.”

Hit the right bonus and you’ll be treated to a personal concert by a digitized King. During free games attached to the songs Billie Jean and Bad, Jackson’s music video pops up on the screen.

The game offers some carry-over features from the original Michael Jackson slot, including a surround-sound chair.

“This encore to the hit Michael Jackson King of Pop game is sure to thrill players and fans of the widely beloved artist,” Bally Technologies’ Vice President of Product Management and Licensing Jean Venneman said in a statement. “We are excited to deliver a game that features some of Michael Jackson’s most iconic songs, along with unprecedented player interactivity and the chance of a life-changing wide-area progressive top jackpot.

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A new high-end gaming lounge is opening at the MGM Grand.

Set to open Aug. 28, Whiskey Down will take over the former space of Tabú.

The 24-hour lounge will feature six blackjack tables, seven video poker machines and a 64-seat bar.

Whiskey Down’s drink menu is flush with a huge collection of brown spirits, including American, Canadian, Irish and Scotch whiskies, as well as specialty cocktails.

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Caesars Entertainment’s online poker website, using the World Series of Poker brand, will launch Thursday morning, company officials said today.

Caesars Interactive will capitalize on the brand with online tournaments feeding into the company’s annual competition at the Rio that runs from late May to mid-July.

The site, WSOP.com, will launch with a variety of poker games, including stud and Omaha hi-lo as well as Texas hold ‘em. And unlike its lone competitor — Station Casinos’ Ultimate Poker — it will offer Mac-friendly computer compatibility.

Only residents or visitors to Nevada will be eligible to play, but Caesars is supporting efforts to enable “shared liquidity” that would involve compacts to allow players from others states to play in Nevada’s games.

The site will launch at 9:19 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

Company officials said there was nothing significant about the 9/19 launch at 9:19 a.m., other than it makes it easier for people to remember the time and date of the start-up.

The start-up marks the beginning of the state Gaming Control Board’s field trial of the WSOP.com site, during which the public can play and regulators oversee all aspects of the game. Final approval of the site is expected by the end of the year.

Caesars is banking on its World Series of Poker brand to attract players. Company officials said 12,000 people — many of them from out of state and who could only play when visiting Nevada — already have signed up.

Caesars Interactive, the corporation’s online poker subsidiary, is partnering with 888 Holdings Plc., a Gibraltar-based company with online poker sites operating in the United Kingdom for 16 years, to produce the site.

Mitch Garber, CEO of Caesars Interactive, said the company’s lengthy wait for licensing was the result of Caesars and 888’s widespread network of offices and not because of any technical problems with the site.

“I think this is really the beginning of a domino effect, the same way that the state of Nevada started licensed land-based casino gaming and it proliferated across the United States, North America, Australia, Macau and Singapore,” Garber said in a conference call this morning.

“We believe that the digital age is going to repeat that very same pattern, and Nevada will once again play a leadership role,” he said.

“Already, we see that the state of New Jersey has legalized online poker and online casino games and we have made an application for a license in the state of New Jersey as well,” Garber said. “Delaware has legalized online poker. This momentum, we believe, is real, and the state of Nevada is at the very cutting edge and the beginning of what we think is going to be a very large wave of future legalization of online poker and online gaming.”

The company had hoped to be operating before the start of the 2013 World Series of Poker, which culminates with the final table of the Main Event in November. Regardless, the company took advantage of having thousands of poker players in town for that event to generate interest and sign up players.

Players must be at least 21 years old, age verified and vetted through responsible gaming screening.

Players must set up accounts and transfer funds through credit and debit cards or automated check-handling accounts, but players can’t deposit or withdraw cash from casino cages.

At the launch, here’s what the site will offer:

• Cash games, sit-and-go’s, satellites and multi-table tournaments.

• Buy-ins for cash games that start as low as 1 cent and tournaments that start at $1.10.

• Daily $100 and $25 freerolls for players of all levels.

• Limit and no-limit hold’em with full table and short-handed games. Omaha also will be offered, including Omaha hi-lo, as well as seven-card stud.

Caesars not only will leverage the World Series of Poker brand but also the Caesars properties and the company’s Total Rewards loyalty club, which has 43 million members.

The site will also have its own loyalty brand, called the Action Club, that will reward players for their online play and can be converted to Total Rewards points that can be used for rooms, dining, show tickets, merchandise and World Series of Poker buy-ins.

Caesars will advertise the site with television spots during sporting events and late-night television, as well as with building wraps, LED screens, branded key cards, banners at Caesars properties and in the company’s casinos and poker rooms.

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People call him the "sheriff of online gambling," but Rip Gerber says he's more like border patrol.

As CEO of Locaid, a San Francisco technology company, Gerber makes sure gamblers are where they say they are. Locaid verifies the location of online gamblers for Ultimate Poker, William Hill and the newest entrant into Nevada's online poker industry, the World Series of Poker.

On what Locaid does ...

We are the world's largest location company. We created what's known as "location as a service." We provide location information to all industries, from financial services to health care to hospitality and gaming.

What the regulators are saying about mobile and Internet gaming is, "I'm OK with it as long as you can verify that that person placing the bet on that device is in my state." What we do is locate those devices.

On how his company locates devices …

We can locate more than 5 billion devices anywhere on the planet through multiple location sources.

It could be through the cell towers you see dotting the countryside or through wireless carriers, such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. It could be off the device, through an IP location from your Internet connection or from a third-party database. We bring all those location sources together.

On his nickname, the "sheriff of online gaming" …

I'm not the cop. I provide information to the sheriff's office, which might be 888 Holdings or Verify or GTech or Bally, who provide the platforms. I'm more like border patrol.

An online gaming company will come to us to see if a player is in the state of Nevada.

Basically, we draw a line around the state and ping the device they are wagering on. If the dot is red (outside the border), the transaction doesn't go through. If it's green (inside the border), it's OK. That information is provided to the sheriff's office.

Caesars Entertainment, for example, takes our information into their system to ascertain if that wager can go through. They also use a lot of other information for authentication, such as age verification and identity verification. We focus solely on location.

On how often people try to trick the system …

There's a very small percentage.

Most of the applications don't let you get through to the end of the registration where my location fix would be utilized if you're trying to log in from, say, Virginia. You can't even register if you're not in the correct state.

A spoofer app can get in and trick the platform. Some of the gaming apps, like Cantor's, for example, do a pretty good job of trying to detect if a spoofer app is in place. But hackers and blackhat guys are very savvy about jailbreaking the phones and getting around them.

On the challenges of verifying location …

We use multiple technologies for authentication.

For example, one interesting requirement in New Jersey is that a bet can't be placed by the pool or in the parking lot. So we can authenticate that you're in the state with one technology, but to get highly accurate to see if you're inside a particular wall, we use a locale-based technology like Wi-Fi networks.

The challenge becomes that all of our customers have their own twist on what they require. It's not like you just plug in and everyone drinks the same water. There's a little bit of mix and match that goes on.

On whether online gaming will change brick-and-mortar casinos …

A good example is the retail industry. Has the mobile phenomenon stopped retailers from existing? No.

There is a sense of community and sharing and entertainment that happens inside a casino that you cannot replicate online. Most people want to interact with other humans. That's never going away.

As long as casinos provide an amazing experience and brand, and as long as they mean something to their community, this is going to be a major enhancement.

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Saturation has arrived in the gaming industry and except for a few outposts — namely the state of Texas — there aren’t many places in the United States where a player can’t drive three hours or less to get to a casino, a panel of gaming industry executives concluded in a wide-ranging panel on industry issues.

“New England is saturated,” said Penn National Gaming President Tim Wilmott. “The market is crowded in Ohio. It’s a little underserved in Florida.”

So what does that mean for companies in the business? Panelists said it means growth will occur by acquisition and mergers and possibly diversification into the online world.

Even international markets are getting crowded, with Southeast Asia still the best option for new venues. Wilmott said Japan and South Korea have casinos in their future.

The CEOs agreed that Europe is already home to a mature casino industry and that Mexico and South America could be new frontiers.

But the saturation of the industry has resulted in more longing looks at the online industry, even though it comes with a host of other issues.

One of the biggest concerns about online poker had a familiar ring — will federal lawmakers ever get around to developing a national regulatory plan?

Like most people attending the four-day 2013 Global Gaming Expo that ends today at the Venetian and Sands Expo Center, the CEO panel was pessimistic about the federal legalization of online poker.

Panelists were satisfied that the state-by-state regulatory strategy is the next best way to pursue the legalization of gaming in cyberspace.

But with more states on track to legalize poker play after Nevada and New Jersey, another issue was raised. What effect will online play have on existing brick-and-mortar casinos?

“That’s the one thing that keeps me up at night,” Wilmott said. “Right now, what’s going to happen is as clear as mud.”

Many industry leaders expect online gaming will create more bricks-and-mortar customers in the future, the way riverboat and tribal casinos expanded the market for Las Vegas in the 1990s.

Panelist Tobin Prior, CEO of Ultimate Gaming, Station Casinos’ entrant in the online poker world, expects the company to generate revenue and stimulate local play through cross-marketing.

But what other ways are there to assure shareholders a healthy return on investment in the casino industry?

Panelists said it’s in consolidation and mergers.

Pinnacle is wrapping up a $2.8 billion acquisition of Ameristar Casinos. Other recent industry deals include Scientific Games acquisition of WMS for $1.5 billion and Bally Technologies absorbing Shfl Entertainment for $1.3 billion.

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A well-known professional gambler accused of cheating at cards at a Southern California casino has agreed to be extradited from Nevada to California.
Chryste Domingo, executive aide to Justice of the Peace Joe M. Bonaventure in Las Vegas, says Archie Karas agreed to the extradition on Thursday.

Karas, 62, was arrested at his Las Vegas home in September. He remains jailed at the Clark County Detention Center pending his transfer in custody to San Diego to face charges that could get him up to three years in prison if convicted.

The San Diego County district attorney alleges the 62-year-old Karas won $8,000 in July by marking blackjack cards at the Barona Casino.

Karas is a high-stakes gambler known for a 1992-95 winning streak that earned him $40 million at Las Vegas tables before he gambled it away.

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