Sometimes karma can bite you in the butt.

World Series of Poker Executive Director Ty Stewart [recently] experienced that pain.

Recently, Stewart made light of early troubles that befell Ultimate Poker, the first legal pay-to-play online gambling website in the U.S., which launched April 30.

First, Ultimate was caught using an unlicensed and much maligned service provider to identify new players. Then, a glitch in the website caused two 9 of spades to appear on the flop in a game of hold’em.

“I think the market is ready for a first-class product,” Stewart told Case Keefer of the Las Vegas Sun while touting the World Series of Poker’s planned Nevada-based pay-to-play website.

Last week, the World Series of Poker suffered its own glitch. The unlicensed website briefly went live, letting players gain access to the pay-to-play area.

Caesars Interactive Entertainment, which owns the World Series of Poker, caught the mistake, shut down the site, and notified Nevada gaming regulators.

The laughter you’re hearing emanates from the corporate headquarters of Station Casinos, majority owner of Ultimate Gaming, which operates Ultimate Poker.

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Black plus white generally equals grey, or at least gray.

The arrest questioning of Norbert Teufelberger in Belgium on Tuesday seems as good a time as any to post about something that may seem obvious to many but still gets asked often enough (and perhaps too often): how to build an Internet gaming business that’s onside the laws of the jurisdictions in which it operates.

The detention of Teufelberger, co-CEO of Bwin.Party, concerns the continued operations of a publicly traded online gaming company in Belgium and its presence on that country’s so-called “blacklist.” Bwin.Party is “whitelisted” in other jurisdictions, and contends Belgium’s laws restricting foreign-based operators run afoul of European Union law. But with that matter yet to be resolved, people are already wondering what Belgium’s legal interpretations mean for Bwin.Party’s licensing prospects in Nevada — and its partnership with US casino companies, MGM and Boyd Gaming. (On that subject, I defer to @BrianPempus‘s tweets, comments, and queries.)

But the Teufelberger-Belgium affair raises the question I still get asked all the time: What jurisdictions should I stay away from if I’m an Internet gaming operator?

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