blonde poker forum

Sportingbet chairman detained

Sportingbet today announced that chairman Peter Dicks, 64, has been detained by U.S. authorities and a hearing is scheduled for later today. In a statement issued by the London-based online gaming company, which owns Paradise Poker, the Board has sought immediate temporary suspension of Sportingbet's shares pending clarification of the situation.

Gaming shares plummet in wake of arrest

Shares in the major online gaming companies have all plummeted after the announcement of Dicks' arrest. PartyGaming shares fell 12 per cent, to 103.75p; 888 dropped 15 pre cent, to 143.50p with Leisure & Gaming down 33 per cent to 73.50p.

Sportingbet owns Paradise Poker but is original and still other division is sports books/betting


This could therefore be a similar case to BetOnSports which was sports betting not poker related

I think you are right.....they are not as interested in poker but it always seems to suffer as a result of these cases. There are a lot of upset BOS punters!!

Wonder if they said "Welcome to the land of the free" when he landed in the US.

Always makes me laugh when I hear this, given their determination to stop anyone playing online poker over there.

Sheriff

Was tony bloom the founder of sportingbet or am i mistaken?

Mark Blandford was the founder.

Tony Bloom founded and then sold Premierbet

knew it was something like that

Mark Blandford is a very nice guy and a very good poker player too. I beleive tikay knows him well via his relationship with sportingodds

By coincidence (I hope!) I had a meeting with Sporting Odds in London at 6pm last night, & we discussed the way they are re-positioning certain things poker-wise. Big company, & their Sports Book is sizeable.

to be honest if I had enough money to buy shares I would be piling all my money on these companies- they will recover- poker is still huge business and its still not going to change

this is a consolodating industry...but until the USA decides which way it is going to go with on line gaming it is a very risky investment. I agree there is huge growth to come, but there will also be many failures. Be carefull if you are going to invest in any

is it still safe to keep funds in paradise poker?

in my opinion yes, the registration of Paradise and domicile of the client funds is outside the US

Pab with the funds you have in there i recomned you bring it right down. You really don't want to get caught out, move all but what you need for that 100 rebuy, lol

ahh, thatll be why my shares went down 11.5p today then....

BPL accepts American customers but APAT doesn't right?

Did anyone see that program about rape in American prisons the other week? After watching 10 minutes of it I turned it off and decided never ever to break a US law that they could put me away for.

Perhaps it might turn out that DC did a clever thing getting out of BPL? Hope Tikay won't be there bent over in a Vegas prison thinking FFS if only I hadn't let Brian have an account on Blonde...  :-*

lol - maybe this is why Tikay gave the WSOP a miss?

In my opinion, as safe as houses.

Rumbled. Bugger.

Tikay,

why are you so confident about that? From what I can see, the last company to do this was BetonSports, and they still have a lot of client balances locked up whilst they sort it out, and the fundamentals are pretty much the same (poker room with a sportsbook that accepts US clients) so I wonder what seperates this incident from the BoS one

I don't think the fundamentals are similar.

The BoS affair would seem, on the face of it, to be a reasonable case for being suspicious, given the history of certain individuals at the top of the organisation.

ok thanks

I hope you are right, dise is a pretty big player in the poker market, would be a disaster if that got shut-down!

Were BoS on the Prima network?

tribeca

I see absolutely no prospect of that, whatsoever. Just my opinion, mind.

My views on the Online Poker Industry have remain unchanged fior some time now, being.......

Don't buy Shares in Party Poker. The price was a lot higher at the time than it is now. The founding shareholders cashed in a large tranche of shares shortly before the price fell sharply. They must have got well lucky, eh?

Beware of & avoid small sites making "too good to believe" Sign-Up Bonuses & Rakeback offers. The music has to stop eventually, & when it does, many of these sites will fold. They have to run faster & faster to stand still, so offer bigger & bigger Bouses to try & maintain adequate liquidity. Eventually, it catches up with them.

Remember, in business, Simple is best. PokerStars, for example, must be prime examples of this, & they are a classic business model. Simple, straighforward, what you see is what you get, & the best Customer Support in the Industry by a country mile. Compare that to some of the bizarrely complex schemes some sites employ to get you to sign up.

This arrest is an interesting turn of events mainly because (according to the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5326602.stm ) Mr Dick has been charged with "gambling by computer" and fellow directors apparently have warrants against them.  The previous case concerned telephone bets and the Wire Act, so this charge is new territory. 

If the bizarre charge of gambling by computer is in fact a crime, we then move into a nightmare scenario for Mr Dicks's fellow directors - they have been running an enterprise based on the proceeds of criminal dollars.  Under our one-sided treaty - this would be ample grounds for extradition

The political stink over an extradition would surely be enormous - the UK govt has been trying to lure gaming companies to the UK as the Gambling Act will offer licenses and regulation!!!  What are these licenses worth if the US can extradite senior employees and even perhaps shareholders?