We’ve long believed around these parts it’s all about slots. Not that we play the no-armed bandits, but more and more often it seems like we won’t get fully legalized online poker in the United States until we have legalized online slots.

While play-for-free slots are nothing new in our gaming space — Zynga’s been getting 13-year-old kids to learn the gambling foundation that is slot play for more than a year now — what is new is attaching your pulls to casino comp points, which effectively serve as a casino corporation’s own private currency. And you can see that advancement in some of the ads Facebook is serving up to at least a few of us.

Station Casinos LLC posted its third consecutive profitable quarter on Tuesday. The locals gaming company’s bottom line continued to benefit from its aggressive marketing efforts, despite a competitive Las Vegas market and a sluggish economic recovery.

The privately held company also announced it will acquire a 50.1 percent ownership stake in Fertitta Interactive LLC, which operates Ultimate Gaming. Fertitta Interactive launched Ultimate Gaming’s free-play site on Facebook earlier this year, with a real money site expected to launch in Nevada by June 30.

Marc Falcone, executive vice president and chief financial officer with Station Casinos, declined to disclose the purchase price. He expected the all-cash deal for Fertitta Interactive to close by the end of the month.

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Excuse me while I shed my Union Jack trousers and put this flag back into its pouch. The Olympics are over and the unseasonal wave of athletic patriotism that has washed over the UK is finally abating. It’s a relief, let me tell you. Now we can get back to moaning about the transport network and being rained on. If only the sun would stop shining.

Worldwide Tournament Update

We start this week with some glorious victories. First up there was Robbie Renehan proving true the maxim that ‘Wherever you go, you will always find the Irish’. He somehow managed to outlast a horde of locals to win the Colombian National Poker Championship, which forms part of the Latin American Poker Tour. [OnlinePoker.net]

Doing even more winning is Marvin Rettenmaier, who has garnered praise for becoming the first person ever to win back-to-back WPT events. PokerNews have even penned this paean to his glory, detailing his recent results and tournament strategy. [PokerNews]

Fresh Scandal on 2+2

A slew of worrying, but frankly engrossing, cheating accusations are unravelling on 2+2. It all begins with an anonymously posted chat log which alleges that poker pro Matt Marafioti and reported hacker Samer Rahman had been colluding to steal money from other online pros by installing a program on their computers that revealed their hole cards. The discussion has now evolved into claims by several Swedish pros that they have been scammed and threatened by a notorious biker gang with ties to Rahman. [2+2]

Euro Council Enshrined

PokerStars has set up a European Players Council to look out for the needs of its EPT competitors. It follows the example laid down by the WSOP equivalent, whose founding members included such trusted names as Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer. [Card Player]

Facebook Gets Real Money Bingo

The online gambling world has been going all social lately, so it was only a matter of time before the social media sphere went all gambley. Facebook has allowed the first ever real money gambling app onto its platform. The horrifically named Bingo Friendzy has only launched in the UK so far. [The Telegraph]

London Poker Festival on the Horizon

The London Poker Festival is on the horizon, featuring a cavalcade of card-slinging endeavours, including the (sort-of) prestigious British Poker Awards. London’s various casinos and poker clubs are running a huge number of tournaments, including the English Poker Open and various GUKPT events. [British Poker Festival]

Bye-Bye Blom

Despite completing their Full Tilt takeover, it’s not all been roses for PokerStars, as they this week bid farewell to volatile high-stakes phenom Viktor Blom. After rocketing into the spotlight with his insane swings as the anonymous Isildur1, Blom has gone on to become one of the online game’s most captivating players. [PokerNews]

Ah! I forgot that we still had the Paralympics to come. It’ll take me a full week to reaffix all my British paraphernalia. Which is conveniently just about the right amount of time for the wider world of poker to generate enough news for another post. Serendipity at its finest.

This week, Facebook launched a real money bingo game, with slot games close behind. What could this mean for affiliates? Also, New jersey gets sued over sports betting, and Maryland abandons thoughts of online gambling.

Maxx Dansky
Photo: CardPlayer.com

Today’s Boxscore

Galen Kester $165,000 – Gold Strike World Poker Open
Maxx Dansky $152,008 – Card Player Choctaw Main Event

It’s not poker and it’s not in the States, but there are now a few games on Facebook where you can gamble with honest-to-god cash money. For now there’s just Bingo and Slots available for wagers and only if you are of legal age in the United Kingdom. The door is now open for people to lose their money while posting inane drivel for the rest of the world to see.

Still no word from the big C-level suits at Facebook or Zynga concerning their entry into the market though the latter has shown interest in the past and could use all the good news they can get. Zynga has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons including their stock taking a nosedive and getting sued by EA for copyright infringement.

Link Dump

Colorado Club Fed for Absolute Poker’s Brent Beckley – Haley Hintze reports AP vice president Brent Beckley is scheduled to enter a minimum security prison in Colorado after his plea deal with the DoJ. Most disturbing part for me was finding out Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were held in a Club Fed during their trial for killing 168 people.

Bodog Poker to Exit 20 Countries by September 2012 – Per PokerNews, Bodog is saying goodbye, la revedere, ardievas, zbogom, ???????, and ?? ???????? (thank you Google Translate) to 20 countries by the end of the month per an email sent out to customers.

Zokay Entertainment Acquires Global Poker Index – Another part of the Epic mess put to rest with the fire sale of the GPI. No one thought Pinnacle was going to give a crap about a poker ranking system and they sold it off.

WPT Merit Cyprus Classic kicks off WPT Season XI in style – Lynn Gilmartin seems to be having a horrible time in Cyprus, can’t image why anyone would want to go there. Besides the perfect weather, lovely views, and bottomless bottles of booze.

Be sure to check out our new sponsors at Face Up Gaming. Legal, subscription-based online poker with plenty of great prizes including cash, WSOP seats, and poker trips. Sign up with Bonus Code pokerati.

This week we’re heading back to Macau – the Las Vegas of the Orient – to discover why Phil Ivey was really hanging out at the APPT. Here’s a clue: It has to do with playing poker for stupid amounts of money. Plus, a social media development that will surely plunge my homeland into an endless spiral of degeneracy or, alternatively, transform the nation into a utopia of Teutonic smugness. Depends on how the cards fall.

Megabucks in Macau

All eyes turned to the East last week, as the global poker media witnessed the long awaited return of Phil Ivey. Turns out, he’d been there all along, sat in a $1,300/$2,300 cash game chocked full of rich Chinese businessmen. Apparently ‘The Big Game’ has permanently moved continents and if the high rollers are still in town come 2013, they’ll be first in line for a 500 player tournament organized by Macau big wigs. The event, which has the support of local businesses, is mooted to feature an incredible $100 million prize pool. [Poker News]

PokerStars Join Soccer Brawl in Germany

PokerStars has recently joined soccer on the list of things the rest of the world enjoys more than Americans. To commemorate this fact, the world’s largest online poker site have recently announced a sponsorship deal with the German football team, VfB Lübeck. However, this not only a straightforward business arrangement. PokerStars have been vocal supporters of planned gambling legislation introduced by the state of Schleswig-Holstein, in which Lübeck is located. Rules which would fly in the face of those proposed by the German government. [CardPlayer]

Gambling on Facebook coming to the UK

Our final news nugget for today is undoubtedly the shiniest. Social networking megaliths Facebook have made detailed plans to provide real money online gambling in the UK. Soon, the denizens of this sceptred isle will be able to ‘like’ an inane photo of their gurning acquaintances and then stack off their entire bankroll all on the same platform. The likes of 888 are reportedly in talks to acquire a Facebook license, with FB credits being used in place of the pretend dollars we’ve been playing with up until now. [Tech Crunch]

At the end of this column I often say something like, ‘if I’m still here next week’ preceded by a flippant comment about one thing or another, but this time, I’m genuinely concerned for my well being. My fiancée has passed into another hemisphere for two months and there’s a very real chance that in seven days time I will be buried under my own ineptitude. So, if I’m still here next week…

I knew early on that Zynga was gonna be kinda a friggin’ big deal, with plans to get even bigger. While just about every other online poker entity has struggled with receding revenues of late, Zynga has seen theirs take off. But how? You don’t even play for real money there (yet) …

In an effort to better understand the secret to Zynga’s success, I went to the Texas Hold’em Poker Facebook fan page for preliminary research, and omg, here’s what I found:

Zynga Poker fans: It’s a good bet that the majority of commenters and likers here aren’t familiar with the phrase “don’t tap the aquarium”.

Yeow. Is this what poker has been missing all along? Power Hours and Free Kitties!?!

So simple, so brilliant … how did PokerStars or Full Tilt not think of it? Forget rakeback, black cards, rush poker, final-table patches, re-entry and cashout tournaments … just give away a few cartoon images and let the people play! And that’s when they rebuy?

OK, maybe I don’t have the Zynga equation down exactly yet, but that’s some of what I’ll be looking into as Zynga’s inaugural PokerCon comes to Las Vegas, March 18-19, at the Palms. I’ll be part of a team covering Zynga PokerCon with Michele Lewis and BJ Nemeth.

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WPT Texas Hold ‘Em Poker is FREE to play on Facebook. Get a $20K chip package when you join the game and play with your friends and poker buddies on Facebook.

You can create your own poker persona by using the Avatar Shop and play any range of table stakes.

With nearly 2 million WPT fans already playing the game, it is a great place to practice your poker skills and have some fun.

For tournament lovers we offer a 3-round Shootout Tournament where 2,000 chips can get you 500,000!

Come check it out and have some fun…for free. Visit and Like the official application fan page here or go directly to the game here.

In last Friday’s twitfeed, my favorite tech-biz site Tech Crunch tweeted about their post  “Is Zynga Trying To Patent Virtual Currency?” Apparently, the leviathan of multiplayer gaming networks — and big wildcard in the future of real-money online poker — filed a US Patent Application in March of this year in an effort to corner the virtual currency market.

At least that’s my take. After reading the actual legal document, “Virtual Playing Chips in a Multiuser Online Game Network”, I gather what they are really trying to do is define and patent the purchase and flow of “Non-Redeemable Virtual Currency” as it pertains *specifically* to gambling on social networks.

 

click to enlarge

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I swear I’m not the Facebook police any more than I am a Harrah’s attorney … but when the shit just gets served up while I’m busy liking stuff … it’s kinda hard to miss! Yet another example appeared on Tuesday night of a rather blatant misappropriation of WSOP trademark on Facebook. It always seems to happen on Tuesday nights … hmmm.

First, before I get into the new offense … to be fair and clear, the WPT did acknowledge their error almost immediately after we mocked their maiden foray into Facebook marketing. On September 21 a WPT spokesman said:

“We would like to confirm that the Facebook ad mentioned in your September 17, 2010 post was indeed a mistake on the part of a 3rd party advertising agency used by our “WPT Texas Hold’em on Facebook” licensee. The ad was placed by the advertising agency without the knowledge of WPT or our Facebook game licensee.

Please be assured that we acted immediately to rectify the situation and that the advertising agency has pulled the unapproved ad. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.”

Cool, yeah whatever, like we said, we’re not the Facebook police, but you’re welcome — Pokerati is always happy to help. We did notice the replacement ads that appeared the following Tuesday:

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I think we all understand the nature of the WSOP’s use of SMM services like Social Zinger to push for their play-money online poker game on Facebook and Instagram. It is also being heavily advertised on commercials during ESPNs broadcast of the WSOP main event. People seeking more information, however, could be mistakenly led to the Facebook page promoting action with the WPT, arguably one of their biggest competitors for this market.

Check out the potentially confusing appropriation of the WSOP logo in an ad currently being served up to hundreds of thousands of fans of “poker” on Facebook:

Sure enough, it takes clickers to the official WPT Texas Hold’em Poker page.

Careless mistake by a WPT social media intern … or conscious effort on days the WSOP is airing on ESPN such that they get the “likes” before Big Casino corporate lawyers make someone say “oops, sorry” and change the ad to something that doesn’t use tactics usually reserved for fly-by-night operations looking to make a quick buck?

UPDATE: On 9/21, the WPT issued an official statement on the matter:

“We would like to confirm that the Facebook ad mentioned in your September 17, 2010 post was indeed a mistake on the part of a 3rd party advertising agency used by our “WPT Texas Hold’em on Facebook” licensee. The ad was placed by the advertising agency without the knowledge of WPT or our Facebook game licensee.

Please be assured that we acted immediately to rectify the situation and that the advertising agency has pulled the unapproved ad. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.”

This isn’t particularly new — has been out there since August — but it’s the first I noticed … Zynga, the free Texas Hold’em game on Facebook and MySpace and therefore one of the biggest online poker communities out there, apparently has bots growing out the ying-yang. And now, as of about a week ago, after some fixes and revisions, it’s finally working well.

The code for it is publicly available on Google-code:
http://code.google.com/p/zynga-poker-bot/

It’s already had more than 88,000 downloads. If even just 1 percent of those are installed to fruition … well that’s a lot of bots competing for your fake chips and theoretically feeding the imaginary rake.

And here’s a rockin’ video showing exactly how to install it.

Hmm, interesting. More confirmation that bots are a real issue, and will be a major factor in future online poker operations. Also kinda funny to think that bot armies are essentially being trained playing free poker … where they theoretically can eventually work their way up in stakes like a human player who gets better and better.

The concept of Poker Patience is simple enough … arrange 25 cards to make the best poker hands vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. About 14 25 40 plays later, you start to think you’re starting to understand proper strategy:

http://www.thecodezone.com/games/pokerpatience.php

Facebookers can play (repeatedly, and compare scores with friends) here.

[via DealerZach]

Kinda-sorta. Zynga’s Texas Hold’em was the most popular game on all of Facebook — more popular than its sister games Mafia Wars, Yoville, and that farming game — which was all fine and dandy until people started hocking play-money chips on eBay.

http://tweet.pkrrd.com/news/posts/zynga-texas-hold-em-maybe-a-little-too-popular

So now they’re apparently in the midst of a Facebook poker crackdown, looking to lock out multi-accounters, for example, and take play-money pushers to court. Conspiracy theorists say it has more to do with black-market undercutting of Zynga’s chip-selling business … but regardless, kinda effed up, not just because of poker, but because of the inevitable hubbub that seems to spring up whenever you see any semblance of a free market on the internet leading to unregulated virtual finance transactions.