Ultra Internet Media is claiming in federal court legal filings that Harrah’s-WSOP breached its multi-million dollar sponsorship contract in 2008 and 2009, and that it intends that the Everest Poker sponsorship for the 2010 tournament be withdrawn.

Ultra Internet Media-Everest claims that the sponsorship deal called for Everest Poker’s logo to appear prominently on the felt on every table in the competition, and on the inner rung of the WSOP feature table during the finals. However, it alleges that in 2008 and 2009 Harrahs breached the sponsorship deal when ESPN broadcasts of the tournament by an affiliate in France, television channel RTL9, failed to display Everests name and logo – instead displaying the name and logo of competitor Full Tilt Poker.

The lawsuit seeks a court order validating UIMs claim that the contract has been breached.

“The suit charges that officials with Harrahs, Everest and ESPN met at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., in February 2009 to discuss issues with the broadcasts and that ‘Harrahs and ESPN agreed to control their affiliate, RTL9, and require RTL9 to cease causing violations of the agreement during its broadcasts and transmissions into France,’” reports the Las Vegas Sun.

“But as recently as Feb. 14, 2010, the Full Tilt name and logo were included in a broadcast of a WSOP event into France by RTL9. Every material breach of the agreement represents lost potential future profits, erosion of goodwill and compromise of UIMs international business reputation, charges the lawsuit, filed by attorneys with the Las Vegas law firm Marquis & Aurbach.”

Ultra Internet Media’s filing notes that the company does not generate gaming revenue or profits in the United States by way of the Internet or telephone, but that its largest source of revenue and profit is from customers in France.

Seth Palansky, a spokesman for Harrahs Interactive Entertainment Inc. and Harrahs World Series of Poker, told the Las Vegas Sun Friday that the company had not been served with the lawsuit and would have no immediate comment on the allegations.

Ultra Internet Media is a licensee of online gambling software developed by GigaMedia Ltd., a company based in Hong Kong and in Taipei, Taiwan, which in December announced a deal to sell 60 percent of its online gambling software business to European online gambling operator Mangas Gaming.

Most of the designated games for double loyalty points are online slot games. Of these the featured game is Alaskan Fishing. The featured game does not offer additional benefits compared to the other designated games, but is recommended by Roxy Palace online casino for its all round excellence. Not only does it have amazing graphics and animations but also plenty of payout opportunities. The Fly Fishing Bonus round offers payouts between 2x and 15x the total bet made. The other bonus round has 15 free spins in which all payouts are doubled.

Another of the designated slot games that enjoys considerable popularity at Roxy Palace online casino is Summertime. With symbols of luscious fruits like Watermelon, Orange, Lemon, Plum, Strawberry and Cherry it is the perfect game for the hot summer months. It features a 10,000 coin jackpot, a free spins round and a gamble game. The other designated slot games for double Players Club points are Adventure Palace, Hellboy and Pure Platinum.

There are four other games on which players can earn double loyalty points. These cover the spectrum of table games. Roulette is represented by French Roulette. This is the favorite roulette variant at Roxy Palace online casino because it returns half the even money wagers to the players if a zero is called. Atlantic City Blackjack is the blackjack game offered. This blackjack variant follows the rules of the popular Atlantic City land casinos. Texas Hold’em Bonus Poker Gold offers elegant styling and allows online casino players to get a feel of the king of poker games. The fourth game is Joker Poker video poker.

Roxy Palace online casino is powered by software from Microgaming and all the designated games in the Players Club promotion are Microgaming games. Microgaming has also released two new slot games and these can be played at Roxy Palace online casino. These games are Sugar Mama and Magic Multiplier. The casino is licensed by the Lotteries and Gaming Authority of Malta.

More than 500 Golfweek raters play and rank thousands of courses nationwide on criteria which include feature shaping, natural setting, greens, variety, conditioning and maintenance, landscape management, and overall impressionability.

Owned and operated by the Hannahville Band of the Potawatomi Nation, the 18-hole, par 72 layout stretches nearly 7,300 yards from the tips and has been touted as one of Michigan’s premier facilities, out of approximately 700 courses. Sweetgrass unfolds over rolling terrain and subtly pays homage to Native American lore. Historic bridges rescued from the region, intricate rockwork and a liberal sprinkling of its namesake sweetgrass add to the course’s distinct look and feel.

“Earning a place on this prestigious list lets us know that Sweetgrass Golf Club is trending in the right direction,” said Sweetgrass Director of Golf Dave Douglas. “Our mandate is to provide an experience which golfers savor and value, and we hope this award will entice them to visit us and judge for themselves.”

Sweetgrass and Island Resort & Casino are the hub of a rising-star golf destination in Michigan’s pristine Upper Peninsula, where summer temps are refreshing compared to most of the mainland United States. They will again offer the popular 3-day, 2-night “Perfect 4-Some” stay-and-play package. Starting at $249, based on double occupancy, golfers enjoy luxurious accommodations at the resort and one round each at Sweetgrass, TimberStone and Marquette Greywalls – three of the Upper Peninsula’s finest. TimberStone is a rare Golf Digest 5-star facility, while Marquette Greywalls frequently finds itself near the top of the Golfweek “Best in State” list.

Sweetgrass and the resort casino are easily accessible via airports in Escanaba and Marquette, as well as Green Bay’s Austin Straubel International Airport.

Microgaming-powered RoyalVegas.eu is a member of The Fortune Lounge Group of online casinos, which also includes sites such as VegasVilla.eu, DesertDollar.eu, VegasTowers.eu and 7Sultans.eu, and stated that each winner would receive two tickets for the cruise.

The eleven-week promotion begins on March 30 before finishing on June 15 and is giving players the chance to take part in a host of scheduled tournaments and lucky draws offering over nine million in loyalty points in addition to more than 40,000 casino credits and Diamond Status For Life statuses within its Loyalty Rewards Programme as well as the 15 cruise packages.

“The idea of sailing the Mediterranean on a five-star luxury liner can become a reality through this promotion,” read a statement from RoyalVegas.eu.

“The Oceans 15 grand prize sees players revelling aboard the Holland America’s Noordam, a leading Mediterranean cruise liner, with a partner of their choice and 14 other lucky winners for a full eight days.

“The Oceans 15 promotional website gives all RoyalVegas.eu players the information they need to about the scheduled tournaments and helps them decide which ones appeal to them the most.

“Participation is easy and entry into the promotion is automatic upon the registration of a real-money account at the casino. Players need to simply check their inbox or the casino’s ‘message of the day’ in order to opt-in to play. The best way to win is to play and, of course, the more a player participates, the greater their chances of winning those exclusive cruise tickets.”

Full Tilt Poker owners Pocket Kings Limited took issue with the English domain registrar Safenames Limited and another in case EWCH 2529 before British justice Mr. Michael Furness QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the British High Court.

Reporting on the case, the ipkitten blog observed that Safenames was contractually responsible for pointing the fulltiltpoker domain name towards Pocket Kings’ domain name servers. The report goes on to describe the events surrounding the Kentucky attempt to seize domain names in 2008, noting that one of the registrars ordered by the lower court Kentucky judge to surrender client domain names was Safenames.

Pocket Kings sought an undertaking from Safenames that it would not do any act that interfered with the use and enjoyment of its domain name. When Safenames failed to give such an assurance, Pocket Kings sued both Safenames and Kentucky and applied for a declaration that the court would neither recognise nor enforce the orders in the Kentucky proceedings for the seizure or forfeiture of the domain name.

The State of Kentucky failed to acknowledge service and Pocket Kings applied for summary judgment. Safenames said it was willing to submit to judgment on agreed terms, so long as Pocket Kings obtained judgment in default against Kentucky.

Lawyers for Pocket Kings argued that the jurisdiction of the state of Kentucky exercised through a domain seizure order on an English registrar would be improper in that it constituted the imposition of the criminal and public law of a foreign state on a British company.

Long story short, the judgement went in favour of Pocket Kings, placing the company in a strong position in the event of future domain attacks.

Justice Furness accepted that the action was a pre-emptive measure, finding: “The proceedings are essentially pre-emptive in nature — in theory the claimant might have waited to see if the Commonwealth of Kentucky would attempt enforcement proceedings and then defended them.

“But this seems to me to be a case where the pre-emptive approach was justified. The continued use of the domain name is clearly important to the claimant’s business and it is at present in a state of uncertainty as to whether the Kentucky proceedings will be enforced.”

They can buy cigarettes at that age.

Soon they might be able to play video slot machines.

The legal age to gamble at the state’s new ”racinos” — combination horse tracks and slots parlors — would be 18 under proposed guidelines the Ohio Lottery Commission released Wednesday.

Gov. Ted Strickland and the state legislature last month approved a plan to install up to 2,500 video slots at each of Ohio’s seven horse tracks as a way to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the state budget.

The Lottery Commission is overseeing the process. It plans to meet Monday to adopt the proposed racino rules, which outline everything from the minimum age to gamble to the state’s cut of the proceeds.

If approved, Ohio would join three other states with the lowest minimum age permitted to gamble. New York, Oklahoma and Rhode Island allow gambling at 18, according to the American Gaming Association, a trade group in Washington, D.C.

Other states with commercial casinos, including those surrounding Ohio, prohibit gambling until age 21. (Native
American casinos operate outside of state restrictions.)

”That’s obviously disappointing,” said the Rev. John Edgar, who chairs the United Methodist antigambling task force in Ohio. ”It’s one more reason why this [is] a bad idea.

”There has been real concern about the fact that gambling addiction has been increasing at a disproportionate rate among teens,” he said. ”And there is some indication that when folks start gambling younger, they are more likely to become addicted, and the addiction tends to be more severe.”

Age 18 is the minimum to purchase lottery tickets in Ohio, but Edgar said he had hoped the state would set the video slots age at 21.

Greg Tisch, 43, a bartender at the Winking Lizard in Fairlawn, said he had no problem with the proposed age guideline.

”I personally believe that when you’re an adult, you’re an adult,” he said. ”They are adults in the court of law, they can go to war, you should be able to take care of yourself, too.”

Many of the guidelines in the Lottery Commission proposal have been made public before. Highlights include:

• Applications for gaming licenses are due Sept. 15, along with a $100,000 nonrefundable application fee.

• Each track owner or permit holder must make the first of five $13 million license payments — a total of $65 million — by Sept. 15. The state can fine applicants $15 million and $100,000 a day for not meeting the payment deadlines.

• Licenses are valid for 10 years.

• The track owners or permit holders must submit a 10-year business plan and a security plan.

• The state will take a 50 percent cut of the proceeds after payouts.

• Each permit holder must make $80 million worth of improvements at the track over five years, with at least $20 million coming in the first year.

• The state will lease the video slots.

• The permit holders must provide a program for problem gamblers.

The guidelines do not set a specific date that the racinos can open. Lottery spokeswoman Jeannie Roberts said officials hope they will open in May.

Brock Milstein, owner of Northfield Park, a harness racing track in northern Summit County, declined to comment on the proposal Wednesday, saying he hadn’t reviewed the guidelines.

Roberts said the commission is expected to approve the guidelines Monday and then forward them to the governor. They also must be approved by the state’s Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, she said.

None of California’s gambling schemes, whether the lottery or the state’s now burgeoning Indian casinos, have ever provided the painless fiscal fix for the state that their supporters always promise.

As The Sacramento Bee reported last week, one of California’s richest gambling tribes has hooked up with the state’s biggest card room operators to push a bill to legalize Internet poker in California.

Details have not been worked out, but a draft of the proposal circulating calls for the creation of a consortium of card room operators and the state’s 100 or so federally recognized tribes to run the online gambling enterprise. The state would get a cut of the action but how much has not been specified.

Even though Congress approved legislation in 2006 to curb illegal online gambling by prohibiting the use of credit cards, checks or bank fund transfers for Internet gambling, many experts believe the law has failed. Offshore Internet gambling still rakes in an estimated $4 billion a year from U.S. based gamblers.

These experts also say federal law does not bar state-sanctioned Internet gambling. If California were to legalize Internet poker, supporters of the idea say it would bring it out of the shadows and better protect players while producing needed revenue for the state.

But at what cost? Gambling is addictive. Online gambling even more so. Though the proposal would bar players under age 21, such restriction would be impossible to enforce. Studies have shown that adolescents, who spend more time on the Internet than adults, are particularly vulnerable. Internet gambling sites lure adolescents by offering freebies and other youth-centered inducements.

The notion that the state can solve its budget problems by luring more suckers into a giant virtual casino is both false and deeply troubling.

TOPEKA, Kan. – The Kansas Lottery Commission endorsed two competing plans Wednesday for a new state-owned casino in the Kansas City area – including one at Kansas Speedway – but delayed action until next week on a pair of proposals for a casino south of Wichita.

The commission approved proposed contracts for Wyandotte County for a project backed by Penn National Gaming Inc., of Wyomissing, Pa., and another from a partnership involving Kansas Speedway in Kansas City. The panel’s unanimous votes forwarded the agreements to a state review board that is set to pick one applicant before the end of October.

The Lottery Commission has the power to block proposals from moving forward because, under the 2007 state law authorizing the casinos, the Lottery will own the rights to the new games. The arrangement is unique for non-tribal casinos in the U.S., but the Kansas Constitution does not allow privately owned casinos.

The commission postponed action until Tuesday on the two proposals for Sumner County in south-central Kansas so that the Lottery’s staff has more time to review financial information for a group of developers behind one of them.

Foxwoods Development Co., of St. Louis, originally had a proposal competing with another from a partnership involving Kansas investors and two former executives of Las Vegas-based Mandalay Resort Group. But Lottery officials said Monday that they’d combined forces to push only the Foxwoods plan.

“We just got some additional financial information,” said Ed Van Petten, the Lottery’s executive director.

A proposal from Lakes Entertainment Inc., of Minnetonka, Minn., is competing with the Foxwoods plan.

Last year, the casino review board picked a partnership involving Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., to build a casino in Sumner County. But it dropped its plans in November because of the economy, forcing the state to restart the selection process.

Meanwhile, the Kansas City area is considered Kansas’ best casino market, though four casinos already are operating on the Missouri side. Kansas officials hope to draw business away from them and tourists from outside the metro area.

Last year, the Kansas casino review board also picked the Speedway-backed partnership to build a $680 million hotel-and-casino complex overlooking the track’s Turn 2. But the partnership backed away in December, saying it had to retool its plans because of the economy.

The new proposal for the speedway’s Hard Rock Hotel and Casino would cost $521 million.

“We’re anxious to get in front of the review board,” said Jeff Boerger, the speedway’s president. “We have a lot of respect for Penn. We believe we’re going to have a fight on our hands.”

Penn’s proposed Hollywood Casino would cost $539 million to build, with construction in two phases, like the speedway plan. Penn’s site, about 2 miles north of the junction of Interstates 70 and 435, is near the speedway.

A Penn spokesman did not return telephone messages Wednesday.

Like the speedway partnership, Penn also has won a contract in Kansas before, for a casino in the state’s southeast corner.

But Penn abandoned its project there in September, two months after the Quapaw tribe opened a casino in just across the Oklahoma border. No new applicants have come forward.