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One of the dishonorable online poker practices that is often on poker players’ minds is collusion – or when two or more players act communicate with each other information about their hands in order to secure an unfair advantage over another player. According to Scott Crespo of Florida, this is exactly what six poker professionals did over the course of 700 online poker tournaments. The defendants named in the case include Tyler Reiman, Andy Seth, Ravi Raghavan, Faraz Jaka, Mohsin Charania and Benjamin LeFew. Normally, this would not technically be a matter for the courts. However, Crespo was able to cite a law in Illinois that states that cheaters in gambling must return the money they won to the person that was cheated.

Recently Sportingbet PLC, a British online gambling company, agreed to pay $33 million to settle a United States investigation over alleged illegal Internet gambling. Part of the settlement includes not to criminally prosecute Sportingbet for crimes, apart from tax violations, related to Sportingbet’s Internet gambling business with US customers from 1998 to 2006, according to the US Justice Department.

The company, which is traded on the London Stock Exchange (SBT), is the latest to have publicly worked out a deal with the Justice Department in the wake of a widespread crackdown on Internet gambling in the country over the past few years.

Sportingbet is a leading interactive online gambling product company based out of the UK. The company principally engaged in the development and retailing of three types of gambling, namely, sports betting, casino gaming, and poker. In addition, the company also provides sportsbook products and a range of virtual games. It operates through its subsidiaries like Interactive Sports Limited, Sportingbet (Germany) Limited, Interactive Sports Limited, Sportingbet Australia Pty Limited, Internet Opportunity Entertainment Limited, and Platinum Management Advisors SA. It operates in 30 different markets across Europe, Australia, Canada, and South America.

In a recent statement made by Intelimax Media, they may have developed a form of real money online poker play that does not violate United States law while allowing players to compete against each other for cash in poker tournaments and ring games. A prominent figure in iGaming, Intelimax Media has introduced subscription online poker play that bypasses US law in regards to what constitutes illegal online gambling. Although subscription online poker play is by no means a new development, Intelimax is the first company to argue that their presentation of the online poker play engine could become a viable replacement for traditional real money online poker.

Subscription based online poker works similarly to other similar games based on a massive multi player format – with a monthly subscription fee that each player must pay in order to participate in any games on the web site. Instead of each chip in a poker game being backed up by a real monetary value, Intelimax uses a flat prize for the winner (or pool of winners). In addition, players can accumulate credits during play at the site that can then be traded in for cash or merchandise. The World Poker Tour has been operating a similar type of online poker site for some time now.

Among all of the developments for online poker in the United States, this week marked one of the most important. Cake Poker announced this week that they would be teaming up with Tribal casinos to provide online poker to their patrons. However, there is a catch. Only players at the casinos across the country can play players also located at the other casinos. In other words, this online poker network serves to connect legal gambling across the country – not open it up to players not physically located at a legal casino. However, this landmark deal does mark one of the most important steps to legal online poker in the United States.

One of the most important things to consider about this new online poker network is that, although Cake Poker is assisting in the implementation of the online poker network, the player pools of their existing online poker network and the casino traffic will not be combined. However, with an established company like Cake Poker on board, the pools can easily be combined at a later date if online poker becomes legal in the United States.

Over the past few months, it has become clear that Daniel Moravec and his company Best Odds Corporation plan to go ahead with their lawsuit against the owners of Poker News Daily, MacPoker.com and MacPoker.net, Protos Marketing. Moravec is suing for a trademark on the term “Mac Poker” and seeks damages from Protos Marketing. To date, Protos has already paid out $50,000 in litigation fees but the Chairman of the marketing company, Michael Jackness, has stated that they have no plans to let their sites go without putting up a significant fight.

As part of his defense against Moravec, Jackness has begun reaching out to the online community and asking that they sign an affidavit that Mac Poker is a general term and not able to be trademarked by any one site. There are more than 400,000 results for the terms Mac Poker, argues Jackness, and anyone promoting sites using such terms should be very concerned about this and similar lawsuits.