Two California Tribes sue card rooms in the state over “house-banked” games. The Rincon Band of Luiseno Indians and the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians announced Friday that they have filed a lawsuit in San Diego Superior Court against several cardrooms located in Southern California. “I would like to make it clear, we are not challenging the right of a business to operate, but rather the non-compliance with California law,” said Bo Mazzetti, Chairman of the Rincon Band of Luiseno Indians. “If the California Department of Justice and the Gambling Control Commission would have enforced the current laws that…

The ever-tightening restrictions being touted for Japan’s integrated resorts could see skill games including poker and sports betting banned from casino floors. According to national newspaper The Mainichi, a list of recommendations submitted to the government by the Expert Committee last month includes stringent guidelines on the types of games that should be allowed in the nation’s casinos with key features being that they can be easily controlled by the operator, can only be played at casinos and, most significantly, are based on chance. If enforced, the guidelines would limit the games available to the likes of baccarat, blackjack, roulette and sic bo…

The matter of artificial intelligence – or AI – is one that has long been an exciting topic for tech engineers and enthusiasts. Furthermore, in recent times, we have actually started to witness real developments in this field, making AI a reality instead of a science fiction fantasy. AI has been pitted against human intelligence in a number of different tasks, situations and games to find out how it will react to these challenges, with one of the latest examples of this testing being a game of poker in which AI was playing against human beings. Earlier this year, an…

NBC Sports Group is putting down chips on the poker felt. The NBCUniversal sports media division struck an agreement with Poker Central to present Poker Central programming across its TV and digital platforms. The move comes after Poker Central in late 2016 pulled the plug on its own linear network, after garnering only limited distribution. Poker Central programming will debut on NBCSN (formerly called NBC Sports Network) on Monday nights as soon as summer with the Super High Roller Bowl, set to run May 28-31 in Las Vegas, along with other high-stakes poker events. In addition, NBCSports.com and the NBC…

The world’s largest online poker discussion forum, TwoPlusTwo, has again seen its virtual defenses breached. The site’s operators have confirmed that the forum was hacked at some point late in 2016, with the personal data then being offered for sale elsewhere on the Internet. The hacking and theft of the personal information was discovered by prominent British poker pro Max Silver, who disclosed the probable leak on Twitter as well as on the TwoPlusTwo forum itself. Silver reported hearing about the leak from a friend. The hack included the theft of email addresses, IP addresses, birthday, last login date, registered…

Finnish company RAY and Austria’s win2day have agreed a deal to share cross-border poker liquidity on Playtech’s online poker-powered network. Under the agreement, which Playtech described as an industry-first, the two firms will launch a joint network using liquidity from both player bases, with customers of each brand able to access omni-channel poker products on the Playtech network. Playtech said the deal represents the first time that two regulated entities have joined forces to share cross-border poker liquidity. The Finnish Ministry of Interior has approved the liquidity sharing agreement, with RAY previously limited to offering its online poker service to…