I realize every home game has a maniac, so I’m going to try not to exaggerate about this. We had a guy in our $20-$40 Omaha game who raised every bet for five years. Sure he lost, but no one ever had a bigger time doing it. He used to come with a grocery bag full of money and cashier’s checks talking about how he just knew nobody was going to gamble; that everybody was going to “play the nuts” except him. And he was right. “The last of the big-time gamblers” he called himself; but he didn’t say it braggadociously, at all. He said it in a pensive, reflective sort of way – like he was trying to understand himself, or something. He was the real thing, and no one ever gambled harder. “Richard the Lion Hearted” I called him.

After playing in that game, there is no such thing as a game that is too fast. You just had to put your seatbelt on, grab a hold of the overhead hand grips – and tokyoslot88 gamble. You know the type of game. You can’t check along and get the nuts and then charge somebody, you had to pay out the lungs to even make a pair. The pot odds got so out of whack no one could fold, and you would take the most vicious beats imaginable all night long. “Help your hand on every card or lose” was the name of the game. The show went on around the clock, and Richard was the show.

He was the coolest, most good-natured guy in the world, but he would come in and talk a blue streak for 48 straight hours while he played, and if anybody else said anything, he would say that there was too much “jibber-jabber” for him to concentrate. Above all, he would insist that no one would gamble except for him. He was “gambling” and everyone else was “playing the nuts” – that was his constant refrain from the beginning of the game until the end. It was fascinating. The thing that was fascinating about it is that it was absolutely natural, it was not an affectation at all. He was living out some internal drama that insisted on seeing himself as the only gambler, and his behavior at the table was simply an expression of that. In his heart of hearts, he was fighting some battle with the world that insisted that no one would gamble but him, that it was all just a bunch of nut players and him – that that was his lot in life.

Being fairly new to poker at the time, I had to wonder just how rare a bird he was. I got my answer when we took a trip to the Horseshoe, soon afterward. He got in a $50-$100 hold’em game with Sklansky and some of the boys, and when they got a look at his action, the place went berserk. This confirmed my suspicions. Richard was a natural born poker star, in any pond. I had sensed that about him, but I had lacked the experience to be sure. Here is the hand that convinced the Vegas crew that he was something special. Of course he had capped virtually every pot he was in for hours, gambling wide open just as hard as he could – the only way he knew how. Then he was dealt the 10S JS in the big blind, and went to war. The flop came Q-8-2 rainbow, a “monster” flop for Richard. Some sparring ensued, and a 3 offsuit came on the turn, leaving a board of Q-8-3-2, rainbow. Sklansky, holding Q-Q, was ready to take the best of it. With a five raise limit and seven way action, he and Richard capped it. Anyone who knew Richard, from the excited nature of his raising, would have known he was on the come – spotting somebody the nuts. That’s his favorite play. But they didn’t know him at Binion’s – yet.

When the 9¨ came on the river he and Sklansky went to war again, blowing everyone else out of the pot. Sklansky the theorist could not possibly put Richard on this hand because of the play on sixth street. When Sklansky finally “backed down” and quit raising, he was looking at stone cold Richard the Lion Hearted. The nuts. It was vintage get them in the middle and outdraw them, or as Richard called it, “play like you got something.” Poker’s foremost theorist looked a little fuzzy for a minute, but he recovered like a champion. “What nights did you say you play in Kentucky?” he asked King Richard. “Every night, right after the lottery drawing. Sorry I burned your money up. I’ve been clocking it, and a nine hadn’t hit the board in almost two hours.” “I see,” Sklansky said dryly as he scribbled something in his notebook, “I figured I must have overlooked something.”

A few hours later they upped it to no limit, and Richard had another little surprise for the boys. Cash played, and everyone had gone into their pocket to get stacked up a little. Richard’s stack looked modest compared to everyone else’s. It looked like he had about twenty hundreds on the table, along with his chips – a little over $2000 in play. And he had shifted gears. Now he was laying low, and still talking loose, but playing tight.

After a while he caught a group one hand on the button, and raised a couple of hundred. The whole table called, and one of the pros, eyeing Richard’s short stack of bills, reraised another thousand. You can be damn sure the floor man was called over when Richard went over the top for another twenty thousand. Don’t you know, hidden in his “short stack” of hundreds, were a couple of ten thousand dollar bills. No one saw that coming. Not Edgar Cayce, not Nostradamus, and surely not any of the grizzled poker veterans at the Horseshoe that night. King Richard was moving on the boys. When the floor man scolded him, he said “If you can put them in that display case, I can gamble with them. Now cut out all the jibber-jabber and let’s gamble.” Nobody wanted to argue with that, so the raise stood. Every one got out of his way, and he took the pot down. Before long he was over at the $100 a pull slot machine, and the poker game broke.

“They won’t gamble” he told me, “they’re all just playing the nuts.” “I know, baby, you’re the only gambler,” I consoled him. “How about the slot machine, is it giving you any action?” “A little bit,” he said sheepishly. “I’m winners.” He hit several big jackpots on that $100 machine, and now he was on to a new game, figuring up a system on which reel was “due” to hit. My buddy Richard – man about town in Vegas, oil baron, and natural born gamblero. He never did confide in me how much he won on that trip, but when we got back to Kentucky, he posted up cash for a new home over on easy street. I figured he came out.

Our home game was never quite the same after that trip. Whenever we didn’t gamble enough to suit Richard, he started in on how he “could get 6-to-1 on his money in Vegas,” and that’s where he “ought to be.” He never resolved his issue that he was the only one with any gamble to him. But he had a point. It was hard to match his action. Between Vegas, OTB’s, riverboats, and the lottery, our home game started to break up. But none of the regulars in our game ever forgot Richard. From Cowboy, Goose, Cat Doctor, Johny Pineapple, Cut Rate, Mo, Doug Douggans, Reese Cup, Wraparound Vic, Godfather Ray, Billy Battaglia, Web-site, Smitty, Grease, Doc Greenbacks, Hard Rock, Tommy O, Glen the Shark, Kanu, PeeWee, Bobby Telephone, General Mac, Speed, Roscoe Anthony Eugene, Fast Freddy, Misty, Oaklawn Jim, Daddy Les, and (yours truly) Cinch – you raised our #$&! and we raise our glass.

A toast to you, Richard the Lion Hearted – “Salute!”

 …

The book begins with the obligatory introductory section which describes the basics and mechanics of the game. The bulk of the book lies in the second section, titled “Advanced Concepts.” Here is where Carson details the strategies he uses to win at Texas Hold’em poker. While much of this information has appeared in other books, there are new ideas here. Further, some familiar notions are communicated from a fresh viewpoint, which may be of benefit even to well-read players.

The author writes in a very vigorous style. Carson doesn’t qualify his strategic ideas with, “in my opinion”, and he is often a little relaxed about communicating under what situations his ideas would be more or less applicable. This does not mean that these ideas are bad ones by any means, but I fear that evaluating their appropriateness in different UFA games and situations probably requires skills that a less experienced player does not yet possess. This might make some of these ideas dangerous in the wrong hands. The remaining brief sections cover topics such as cheating, playing for a living, poker information on the Internet, etc. I think Carson might alarm readers about cheating more than he probably intends, but most of the information in this section is well considered. Still, I would have appreciated even more information on several of these topics.

I think the book would have benefited from another editing pass to smooth it out, provide some additional balance between sections, and present some of the overriding themes more consistently throughout. Nonetheless, The Complete Book of Hold’em Poker effectively communicates the author’s ideas about how to play a winning game, and at a refreshingly reasonable price for a poker book of this length. There are enough good concepts in these pages that experienced players should expect to find something that will improve their play. I fear that less experienced players who haven’t developed the tools to think critically about poker strategies might not always be able to easily adapt Carson’s ideas to their game.

American Casino Guide—2002 Edition

by Steve Bourie

Published by Casino Vacations; 2002; ISBN: 1-883768-11-X; 464 pages; $14.95.

The American Casino Guide is divided into two parts. The second part covers the material that gives the book its name. It’s a listing of information about more than 600 casinos located throughout the United States, plus some in Canada. Grouped by city within each state, each listing includes just about everything someone would want to know about the casino.

The first half of the book contains a set of essays providing advice to the prospective gambler; written by people whose names will be familiar to even the moderately well read casino enthusiast. I believe that this part of the book is very much overlooked. Not only does this book contain a great deal of information on casinos, it also contains some of the best introductory information on basic casino gambling, with pointers to excellent books from which one can continue their education.

Not everyone will want to buy an updated edition every year, but I do, and will be more than happy to! In my opinion anyone who plans to travel to casino destinations in the United States will find this probably the single most useful book on the market. I consider it to be an indispensable source of gambling information for both the tourist and the serious gambler.

 …

A while back I read a story about the spread of product placement advertisement in TV shows. Product placement is the practice of slipping visuals of branded goods such as foods, beer, autos, etc., into programs and charging the makers a fee, much as if they were running regular paid ads. This has been going on for a long time in films.

For example, there’s a scene in my favorite movie, Superman, where a young Clark Kent is eating breakfast in his family’s farmhouse with a box of Cheerios clearly visible on the kitchen table. Ever since I watched that scene, I’ve eaten Cheerios for breakfast every day of my life. I still can’t fly, but I haven’t given up hope yet.

There are several reasons why sneaked-in ads are now cropping up on television: partly it’s because audiences are turned off by all the commercials cluttering the airwaves; partly because new electronic technology will let viewers zip right past them; but mostly it’s due to simple greed. Not only will more and more branded items appear in new programs, they will also pop up in rerun programs as TV producers take classic old shows and digitally insert commercial products.

So don’t be surprised if you see Jack Webb with a Nokia cell phone in a 1954 Dragnet episode, or Lucille Ball, in an I Love Lucy show filmed nearly 50 years ago, checking her AOL e-mail on a Toshiba laptop.

Reading about this insidious practice really upset me. As an ethical journalist, I oppose any compromise of media integrity. For example, I used to stew every time I saw ads for crappola movies that invariably featured gushing quotes from a certain critic for a minor radio station. When I read that he sometimes wrote rave Sbobet88 reviews without even bothering to see the films and was rewarded with lavish junkets for his favorable reviews, I sent him increasingly annoying e-mails. Not long after, I heard about his death and wondered if my harassment contributed to his demise. Oh, well.

Anyway, as I said, because of my journalistic morals I was repelled by the inherent dishonesty of blatant product placement on television. That is, until I began to wonder if I couldn’t pick up a little extra dough myself for plugging things in my column.

I realize this sounds tacky, but please consider my circumstances. The magazine remuneration I receive for my Pulitizer Prize-level writing does not exactly place me in the top tax bracket. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t even get me into the the poverty-level bracket. While it’s true that I make a handsome living from my poker playing, I also have heavy expenses, mainly for my charitable contributions to railbirds.

So I cast around for products and places that could benefit from a mention in my column. Deciding that the Barstow Card Casino was the place most in needed of good publicity, I sounded out Big Denny. What could he offer, I asked, in return for a nice mention?

“I kin give ya a comp ta our four-star buffet,” he replied. “I got a good deal on some cows dat died from somet’in dey ain’t figgered out what it wuz yet, but it probably ain’t nuthin’ catchin’.”

I thanked Big Denny profusely and promised to consider his offer. Next I contacted my good friend Lou Krieger. What could I expect to get, I asked, if I wrote that reading his books made me the player I am today? His answer was terse: “A letter from my attorney.”

Wise guy. I never saw him listed in the Overall Player Rankings in the back of poker magazines like I once was. Perhaps a touch of humor would do the trick, I thought. So I made up a poker joke (OK, I stole it from Reader’s Digest and changed it a little, what’s the difference)? It went like this:

The first time I met my sweetie, she asked me to drive her from Commerce to the Bicycle Casino. As we drove, I placed my hand on her knee. “You can go farther if you like,” she said coyly. So I drove her to Hollywood Park.

I tried peddling the joke to the three casinos by asking Nancy Friedman at Commerce, Kelley O’Hara at the Bike and Phyllis Caro at Hollywood Park what they would do if I promoted them that way. All of them said they would pull their magazine advertising.

Even Oklahoma Johnny Hale, who would do anything to promote his book, up to and including dropping his pants and hanging upside down from the Stratosphere tower, wasn’t interested.

In fact, the only nibbles I got were from Ralph the Rattler, looking for a plug for his home poker game for kiddies, and from a sleazy character peddling a book on how to mark cards. I indignantly turned them both down when they wouldn’t pay me up front.

Ah, well, perhaps it was for the best that my scheme misfired. After all, the last thing in the world I would want to do would be to divert ad dollars from poker magazines into my pocket.

 …

Recent years have brought something I never thought I’d see in my life, the true professional slot machine player. In their quest to be ever more seductive and appealing, the slot manufacturers have begun producing machines that will “bank” some sort of credit that is accumulated until it pays off. If enough of these credits have been banked, the slot machine will turn from a negative expectation game to a positive one. Robbing the One-Armed Bandits is a book about how to find and exploit these machines.

Lund, a frequent contributor to Blackjack Forum, starts the book with a basic introduction to banking slot machines, slot clubs, and casino responses to this new breed of “slot pro”. The information is brief, but sufficient, and the reader is recommended good sources to obtain more detailed information.

Next, the author begins listing banked slot machines, and indicates at what point he believes they yield a positive expectation. Lund freely admits that his math is based on estimates, which he explains in a little more but not overly technical detail in the Appendix, but I find his methods sound. Frankly, I think he could have risked getting even more mathematical for those who are inclined that way, but this is not a major gripe.

The listing of each type of machine gets more than a little repetitive, though, with many games being functionally identical to each other despite some variation in name and outward appearance. However, due to a convenient table at the end of the book, the reader doesn’t need to constantly refer to the text, but even the first time through it can get to be a bit of a chore.

The book then provides a section on “clean up” material, covering slot ป๊อกเด้ง ไฮโล machine anomalies, cheating scams, etc.. There is certainly a continuum of experience ranging from ethical opportunist on one end, passing through legal angle shooter in the middle, ending up with cheating criminal on the other end. For my tastes, Lund drifts further into the gray area than I would like, but he’s careful to not recommend outright cheating. Even though early in the book he tells the reader that he’s not a legal expert, he does present some legal opinions on some of his tactics as more factual than might be prudent.

Nonetheless, this is a breakthrough book that exposes a new realm of profitable casino play. While not always a great read, it is far and away the best book on the topic and worth looking through. There are a few more flaws, Lund’s extremely brief, yet, in my opinion, inappropriate, coverage of video poker and video blackjack, and I believe he understates the amount of effort necessary to find profitable machines, but I recommend the book for the good information it does provide.

Capsule:

Lund’s book is a breakthrough into a new realm of profitable casino play. There is much about the book I would have written differently, but his observations are solid and his methodology seems very valid. Some of his suggestions get a little more ethically murky than I’m comfortable with, and the text filled with lists of machines gets dry after a while, but the charts showing when which machines become advantageous are worth the cost of the book alone.

 …

Chartwell Technologies – Motorola, Inc. and Chartwell Technology Inc. today announced plans to demonstrate casino-style games on Java™ technology-enabled mobile phones from Motorola. Play for fun version of baccarat, slots and casino war will be used to showcase this exciting combination of new hardware and software designed to expand the entertainment frontier. Chartwell Technology’s games, will be demonstrated at the World Gaming Congress (Booth #2419 and #3033– October 17-19) in Las Vegas.

Earlier this year, Motorola announced the Motorola i85s, i50sx and i55sr handsets, the first Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME™) technology-enabled mobile phones in North America. J2ME technology allows phones to be customized with business and entertainment applications to meet users’ individual needs, while providing a rich user interface and portability across devices.

“We are excited to demonstrate casino games, for the first time, on Motorola wireless phones with Java technology,” said Peter Aloumanis, vice president of Motorola and director of U.S. Market Operations for the company’s iDEN® Subscriber Group. “This further illustrates the power of J2ME technology and the functionality of these multiple communication handsets. Chartwell’s play-for-fun games demonstrate the richness of content these Motorola devices are capable of delivering.”

Chartwell Technology specializes in the development of Java technology-based gaming software. Motorola’s new generation of Java technology-enabled mobile phones represent an exciting new platform for wireless gaming entertainment Toto SGP .

“We are very proud to be working with Motorola in the development of our casino-style games for Java technology-enabled mobile phones,” said Darold H. Parken, President and CEO of Chartwell. “The tremendous potential of our unique gaming software is readily apparent when playing on these fabulous new devices.”

Boss Media Sells License to Victor Chandler

Boss Media – Boss Media is pleased to announce that it has sold an online license to The Victor Chandler Group. Victor Chandler has been established as a bookmaker for over 50 years with operations throughout Asia, as well as the U.K.

“We chose Boss Media because of the quality of their market-leading product,” says Victor Chandler, who currently chairs the Group and is the grandson of the founder by the same name. “Boss Media will help us to achieve our strategy of continued growth and build upon our established online business. We will now be able to offer multilingual and multicurrency versions of the online casino, thus enabling us to move into new markets.”

“This is an important order for Boss Media,” says Peter Bertilsson, Chief Executive Officer at Boss Media. “Entering into a contract with a company with such vast experience in the gaming arena is also of great importance to us. It gives us the opportunity to refine our product even further in order to meet the needs of our customers.” Bertilsson also refers to the fantastic opportunities which combining a casino and a sportsbook entail.

The first version of the online casino will be launched later this year.

Victor Chandler is the U.K.’s leading independent bookmaker. It was established in London in 1946. The group’s operations office is in Gibraltar, and it employs 350 members of staff. The Group currently covers all major sports worldwide including, soccer, golf, horse racing, rugby, NFL, NHL, NB, and baseball, and it operates across Europe, Asia. More information can be found on VictorChandler.com.

The Boss Media Group is a leading provider of solutions for casino operations on the Internet. Potential licensees are offered a selection of customized client-server system, an integrated payment system, and the maintenance and administration services necessary for the successful operation of an Internet casino. Boss Media AB (publ) is a publicly traded company listed on the OM Stockholm Exchange’s O-list (Attract 40). More information about the company can be found at BossMedia.se.…

The tussle over when to host the 2022 World Cup rumbles on.

Days after potential FIFA Presidential candidate Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the Chilean with the oh-so English name, proposed moving the tournament back a month to May 2022 and kicking off as late as 1am to temper the effects of the summer heat, Europe’s clubs seem to be moving in that direction.

The European Club Association which represents the continent’s top clubs is set to back a switch to April or May of 2022. Their initial preference for January and February now seems to have bitten the dust after the International Olympic Committee, which counts FIFA President Sepp Blatter as a member, refused to contemplate moving the 2022 Winter Olympics to accommodate FIFA’s cock-up.

Blatter has gone on record saying the winter is his ideal date, which would put him on a collision course with Europe the financial heart of football. “We cannot play the World Cup in summer,” he reiterated this week.

Yet the Association of European Professional Leagues has also stated it is dead against any disruption to its winter schedules and reluctantly maintains that summer 2022 is the only option.

European players’ unions, whose Judi Online members made up around three-quarters of the footballers at the last World Cup, are yet to get involved in the dispute although former Australian custodian Mark Schwarzer said earlier this week about a summer tournament in Qatar, “It’s ridiculous to play at that time of year. I don’t know why there is a debate.” Their clubs might favour the minimum disruption to their businesses, but how many players will want to kick-off in an average of 35 Celsius, three degrees above FIFA’s own threshold for extreme risk?

Underlying the latest developments is a suspicion that the climate-cooling technology promised in 2010 may not materialise, as it has never been tested on a large-scale before. English firm Arup’s Showcase Model (left) got the temperature down from 44C to 23C, but little has been heard about their ambitious plans recently.

FIFA’s taskforce dealing with the 2022 headache, lead by Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman Ebrahim al Khalifa, reconvenes on the 3rd of November and again in February 2015.

At their first meeting in September FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke appeared to insist they were legally bound to host in 2022. With the IOC’s rebuttal, this leaves November-December 2022 as FIFA’s preferred timeslot, though this week’s calls in favour of the Spring will surely now be brought to the table.

No final decision is expected before next summer. Meanwhile the sorry saga goes on.

 …

Bush Wins Poker Poll

A recent stateside survey asked people whom they would most want to ante-up against in a game of online poker. The American public selected President George W. Bush as their most-preferred celebrity poker competitor, followed closely by Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton.  Just as well we are not all the same!

The Good Gambling Guide

With no shortage of poker on television in the UK and around Continental Europe, www.thegoodgamblingguide.com is proving to be an invaluable guide for armchair poker fans.

The site features full TV listings of forthcoming programmes that feature gaming and, more importantly, poker. Furthermore, thegoodgamblingguide.com normally boasts first-class coverage from the World Series of Poker.

Bravo Billingsgate

The World Poker Exchange, described as “one of the world’s fastest growing online poker sites,” has announced it will host The London Open at the Old Billingsgate Market in August.

The offline poker tournament will be held in partnership with FHM UK Magazine and The Bravo Channel, the UK’s leading men’s entertainment network, Aug. 3-6.

Gimmicks Galore by the Marketing Men

It’s been a fun time on the poker gimmick front, with marketing managers showing no shame in the depths they will sink in order to obtain exposure.

The folks at EmpirePoker.com announced that they hired a trinity of clergy — a Christian minister and a rabbi in the United States and an imam in the Middle East — to pray for bad weather.

“The numbers, in terms of players, increase significantly when there is cold weather, snow, or rain — anything that causes people to stay home,” said Ron Burke, vice president of marketing at EmpirePoker, when explaining the move.

Not to be outdone, SunPoker.com was the highest bidder in an online auction, paying $8,900 for the advertising rights of and on the stomach of a pregnant former Miss Hawaiian Tropic Beauty.

Nick Melrose, poker manager for SunPoker.com commentated: “We do realise that people like to see and feel a pregnant woman’s belly, so we thought we would use the space as a form of print media!”

The belly’s purchase price makes the $3,000 paid by AbsolutePoker.com for a man to be “branded” with the site’s logo at a live tattooing party in Las Vegas an absolute steal.

Poker 425 Launches Poker Magazine Show

William Hill TV, Channel 425 (on the Sky platform), recently announced the launch of a new-style poker programme, Poker 425 for the burgeoning late-night poker viewer.

Poker 425 is a weekly Situs pkv games magazine-style programme aimed to bring the poker aficionado the most “recent and relevant” news from the European Poker Tour. At the helm is a fresh “poker” face in 5TV presenter Johnny Gould and professional player Tony Kendall. Poker 425 (sponsored by williamhillpoker.com) aims to bring a fresh outlook to the game, featuring the most recent tournament action, results, analysis, interviews, and tips from the top European professionals competing on the European poker circuit.

David Hood, William Hill PR director, said, “We expect Poker 425 to attract a large slice of the late-night poker viewership. An explosion in the number of players now participating in the game means poker is the hottest gaming product on the Internet. William Hill is bringing together the popularity of williamhillpoker.com (with players in over 150 countries) and Channel 425 TV to ensure some dynamic content for Poker 425. It is a natural fit for Channel 425’s late-night viewers.” Poker 425 is broadcast at 11 p.m. each Wednesday, and repeated at the same time nightly throughout the week.…

As the clock ticked over into 2014 it was not just a time of reflection on the year that was, but also a chance to look forward to what lay ahead and make your wishes for 2014. My wish, football wise anyway, is that 2014 is the year that Australia finally embraces Asian football.

Since joining the AFC in 2006 Australians haven’t so much embraced Asian football as tolerated it. Asian football has been like the unpopular kid from school living next door that Australia has humoured and pretended to like, but deep down they’d rather be somewhere else, hanging with the cool kids on the other side of town.

But that unpopular kid next door is Australia’s business partner for life and it is he who will put us on the path to success in the future. The sooner that realisation is made, and the sooner we start respecting, appreciating and working with the kid next door the better it will be for everyone.

Everyone has a role to play – FFA, media, clubs and fans – in developing a new  Domino99 Pkv attitude of respect and appreciation for Asian football.

The FFA can start but doing what almost every other nation in Asia has done – introducing the 3+1 system for foreign players in the A-League. Or if they want to remain at 5 foreign players opt for 4+1. Introducing a +1 system will force clubs to look to Asia if they want to fulfil their full quota of foreign players.

It will mean clubs will need to develop scouting networks in Asia, sophisticated ones at that to ensure that get the best talent available. The fact that in a league of close to 250 players there are only 3 players (Ali Abbas, Ryo Nagai and Shinji Ono) from Asia is a sad indictment on the league and how we value Asian football. In fact, with Nagai’s loan spell ending this past week that number is now just two. Ono will depart at the end of this season to return to Japan and Abbas is now a naturalised Australian citizen.

By way of comparison, there are close to 30, mostly Japanese and Korean, in the Thai Premier League (TPL). Admittedly the TPL does have 20 teams as opposed to 10 in the A-League. Despite that, there are still significantly more players from AFC nations in the TPL than there are in the A-League.

Just this past off-season Daiki Iwamasa (284 games for Kashima Antlers), Robert Cullen (naturalised Japanese player with 100+ games experience for Jubilo Iwata and 60+ games for VVV Venlo) and Teruyuki Moniwa (172 games for FC Tokyo and 112 for Cerezo Osaka) have moved to the Thai Premier League.

Players of genuine quality and yet I don’t think it would be a stretch to say there was zero interest in signing any of them, or players of similar quality, to the A-League. In Japan this year a new rule has been introduced allowing all clubs to sign an extra foreign player, provided that player is from a SE Asian nation. It is part of the J.League’s push into SE Asia.

Last year the league ‘gave away’ its TV rights to four SE Asian nations – Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand. In return the local broadcasters agreed to give commercial slots and sponsorship opportunities to Japanese companies, who pay a fee to the J.League.

Introducing 3+1 means there are greater opportunities for clubs to grow in the region. Would a club be so bold as to go after one of the continents best strikers, Thailand’s Teerasil Dangda? Or target one of the biggest stars in Indonesia, Irfan Bachdim (one of the players to recently trial at J.League club Ventforet Kofu), a man who has 4.2m twitter followers! Although with Bachdim they may have been beaten to the punch, with reports suggesting J.League side Ventforet Kofu will sign up the talented young striker.

Perhaps instead of bemoaning the fact his players have been called up to the Olyroos for a “meaningless” tournament, Newcastle Jets coach Gary van Egmond should have a scout there looking for the best new talent in Asia. We all know how unlikely that is, however.

The media also have their part of play. There is a little bit of chicken and egg here. What comes first? Increased fan interest, which forces increased media interest, or increased media coverage to drive increased fan interest?

In my opinion it has to be the latter. There is a commercial interest in FOX SPORTS promoting Asian football. They own the rights to the AFC Champions League, they own the rights to the AFC Asian Cup and they own the rights to the FIFA World Cup qualifiers for the AFC region. It is in there interest for the popularity of Asian football to increase, as it will increase the viewer base for the above-mentioned competitions.

That, sadly, has not been the case, however. FOX SPORTS’ coverage has been sporadic at best. It rarely shows an AFC Champions League game that doesn’t involve an A-League team. It rarely shows a FIFA World Cup Qualifier that doesn’t involve Australia.

 …

Royal Vegas, one of the oldest and most well-respected online brands from the Fortune Lounge Group, is getting a make-over. The site and casino software will undergo a visual transformation, stressing that customers will still receive their usual dose of enjoyment.

The Royal Vegas casino, which first opened its virtual doors in 2000, will launch a new look and feel for its website tomorrow (August 27, 2008). The re-branding will aim to make the site and casino a more streamlined experience while taking on a vibrant new look.

Redesigning the site has also been done with the eye on improving multi- language agen slot support and user-friendliness across the site: whether players are newcomers to online gambling or old hands ready for new deals. Royal Vegas will even be celebrating the redesign with new offers and promotions, kicking off at the beginning of September.

Keno

If you’ve ever heard anything about Keno, there is a good chance you’ve heard it’s a game with bad odds. Well, not to burst anyone’s bubble, no casino game is a surefire bet. And while it’s true the return on keno is not as good as most other casino games, the countless keno fans out there don’t play for the odds. Rather, they play for the entertainment and the hopes of winning a very large jackpot – something which keno is very capable of bestowing.

Keno is played by selecting a series of numbers (1-80). A drawing of twenty numbers is then made and the number of correctly picked numbers is paid out accordingly. In a land-based casino, the process of selecting numbers is done by filling out a keno card (there are different types of cards) or getting a quick pick. In the online casino, where as you can imagine games go much faster, you simply click on the number.

Depending on how many numbers you select, the payout for hitting some or all of the numbers will vary. For instance, if you only select five numbers, your payout for hitting all five numbers will be fifty times as much than if you selected fifteen numbers and hit five correct picks.

How to play Keno.

Keno is one of the easiest casino video game. Keno is like a lottery. To become a winner you should guess which numbers would be selected by the machine. Each round of the game you should choose between one and ten numbers (between 1 and 80) and the wagering amount/ Then the Keno machine will select 20 numbers. You should match as many numbers as you can. The possible payout will be rewarded according to the number of matches.

Depending on the number of spots you picked you can also win on a partial match, though the payouts are significantly less than if all numbers are caught. The amount of the winning money depends on how much you bet and how many numbers you picked and matched.

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In order to provide traders the ability to trade cryptocurrencies, platforms have been increasingly requiring registration. These registration requirements are often justified by new KYC and AML regulations. However, it turned out that there are still some exchanges that allow users the ability to trade digital coins without having to have a verified account.

You can lose the balance again

Before the advent of Bitcoin, the question about privacy and transparency was still being asked. Partly, decentralized digital currencies were created in response to the trend towards cashless economies and societies. This threatened privacy. They reintroduced cash with its relative anonymity into the digital space. However, transparency was not lost.

These Shelter Crypto exchanges allow you to purchase cryptocurrency without knowing who you are

This new balance has been challenged. Today, crypto exchanges find themselves in a crossfire between the privacy needs of customers and regulators. For tax purposes, or to stop illicit activity, identity verification is a good idea for crypto-to-fiat transactions. However, crypto-to-crypto transactions are also a target. It’s not known why many countries, such as Poland, exempt them.

The U.S. and European leading crypto exchanges are now collecting personal data from traders. Sometimes, this is done via loyalty programs that offer certain benefits. It is often justified by the need to comply new KYC or AML rules. These requests often come with assurances that the data will be protected. Critics warn that there is still a risk that your sensitive information could be shared with other vendors, lost to hackers or shared with a government.

Some cryptocurrency trading platforms recognize the needs of crypto users and offer services to fill the gaps left by Shapeshift. Last fall, we reported on some of the options. The following options have gained popularity with crypto enthusiasts:…