We reported earlier that John Campos and the prosecution had agreed on a plea deal that would see Campos face 1 charge only (Misdemeanour) and up to a maximum of six months in jail. Campos was the last defendant to plead guilty on charges stemming from Black Friday and now it’s apparent that online poker won’t see its day in court in the United States. All five defendants pled guilty to charges and most of them are awaiting upcoming sentence hearings in Manhattan.
Initially the U.S. District Judge (Lewis Kaplan) didn’t accept the plea deal, but it has now been announced that the plea deal has been accepted by the judge and now Campos only faces sentencing for the misdemeanour charge he’s facing. The plea deals were very lenient for most of the payment processors charged on Black Friday and I’m sure they had no other choice but to take the plea deal; as if they went to court they could be facing very stiff sentences and many more charges.
PTR Not Done with PokerStars
We reported that Poker Table Ratings would no longer offer players the ability to view data from PokerStars, but it turns out the company may offer an opt-in service in the near future. PTR has stated that they always planned to offer an opt-in service and now they’ll be focusing on the new service due to PokerStars coming after them. PokerStars may be able to restrict unwanted data mining, but if players don’t mind their data being mined they’ll be able to sign an opt-in form shortly.
iGame Launches Fast Poker Network Client
iGame has become the 2nd poker room to launch the Fast Poker Network client developed by Relax Gaming. Unibet Poker was the 1st poker room to launch the new fast-fold poker client and it has already become very popular. I expect more poker rooms to jump onboard because the poker room can increase revenues. In times when online poker revenue is shrinking it has become more important than ever for poker room’s to make the most of the player pools they still have.
Problems at William Hill Poker
William Hill Online sold a 29% stake in their company to Playtech back in 2009 for €250 million. That 29% stake is now worth £345 million and William Hill is starting to have problems with Playtech. William Hill Online doesn’t want Playtech to work with rival Ladbrokes and is trying to prevent Playtech from doing so. William Hill has also been thinking about buying Playtech’s stake back in the company, but they only have until November 2012 and they don’t have the cash to make the purchase.
