Paddy Power supported David Ginola to stand against Blatter in FIFA election

David Ginola wants to challenge Sepp Blatter for the Fifa presidency in a campaign backed by a bookmaker. A spokesperson confirmed the former Newcastle, Tottenham and France midfielder was ready to oppose Blatter’s attempt to win a fifth term at the age of 79 and that he “will be looking for the full support of Uefa and five football associations”.

M&C Saatchi PR, acting on behalf of the Irish bookmaker Paddy Power, told the Associated Press that Ginola will launch his campaign in London on Friday, but it is not yet certain he will be able to stand for election.

Ginola, who also played for Aston Villa and Everton before retiring in 2002 and has since moved into winemaking, has until 29 January to prove to Fifa he has played an “active role” in football for two of the last five years, while showing he has the support of five national associations. The election will be held in Zurich on 29 May.

Three other people have declared an interest in the job: The Fifa vice president Prince Ali Bin al-Hussein of Jordan, the former Fifa official Jérôme Champagne and the former Chilean football federation president Harold Mayne-Nicholls.

Amaya ahead of schedule for PokerStars sportsbook launch

In its consumer business update Amaya Gaming, parent company of PokerStars stated that it was ahead of schedule in the upcoming launch of its sports betting product. The operator expects to launch the product by Q1 2014

The sports betting product will initially launch within the PokerStars poker client within certain markets. PokerStars will gradually add more markets as well as web and mobile versions throughout the year.

The operator has chosen to build its sports betting product in-house, in November 2014 Amaya revealed that it had begun to construct its sports betting trading team.

Its planned expansion into the sports betting market, comes just months after the operator launched its casino product.

In December 2014 PokerStars completed the rollout of casino table games to players in eligible markets on PokerStars.com and certain domains sharing liquidity on the global network. The table games are available through the new PokerStars 7 platform, which is currently an optional download to players but which will become the sole poker client in the future.

PokerStars will also launch web and mobile versions of its casino in 2015, supported by an aggressive consumer marketing campaign. PokerStars announced the planned rollout of table games on its .com network in November, following a successful launch on PokerStars.es, the brand’s website in Spain.

The operator claims that it has witnessed a 30% cross sell for its casino table games to its its active player base in Spain.

Sportradar secures integrity partnership with Lega Serie B

Italy’s second division, Lega Serie B, signed an agreement with Sportradar Security Services, under which the betting fraud prevention specialists will provide both education workshops and e-learning packages to all 22 club teams for this season and the next two.

Under the terms of the agreement, the workshop and e-learning modules will be provided to the senior team and youth teams of each club. Workshops will help all participants understand why match-fixing is a growing problem, how fixers make their approaches and what the consequences of fixing are, using real-life case studies. The e-learning tutorials will support and supplement the workshops, ensuring that each participant understands what they have learnt and is comfortable with the information.

Speaking alongside Sportradar’s spokesperson, the Lega Serie B President, Andrea Abodi stressed not just their own commitment to fraud prevention and detection, but the whole of Italian professional football’s strong stance on honesty and integrity.

Mr Abodi made the following commitment: “The most important asset of football are its supporters. Deceiving football supporters means deceiving the whole football world. That is the reason why knowledge and training about match fixing is essential for Serie B‘s credibility, and is fundamental to ensuring our stadiums are full. I would like to underline how important teamwork is to ensuring the effective defeat of match-fixing, and our key ally is Sportradar, which already collaborates with many other football associations worldwide”.

Managing Director Integrity and Strategy at Sportradar Andreas Krannich, commented:

“Our market-leading Fraud Detection System already monitors every match in all five professional leagues in Italy. No other country has that level of coverage. Today successfully closes the circle. This exclusive agreement means that our unparalleled integrity education services will reach all 102 professional clubs in Italy. We could not be prouder that all of these stakeholders have shown this level of trust in us and we will ensure that professional football in this country gets the most informed, joined up and credible information and insight possible.”

SBOBet exit the UK market

Asian sports betting giants SBOBet has told its UK players their accounts will be closed as of Sept. 15 to accommodate the UKGC’s new regime. In an email to players, SBOBet said the “unfortunate circumstance” was a direct result of the UK’s new gambling laws.

“It’s a decision that we arrived at after a considerable discussion, debate and analysis. The fact for us is, as a major operator for the Asian handicapped system which is predicated on the value proposition. For every £100 we take as a stake, we pay £ out on the winnings. so we have a gross margin of 1%. The end of the day, we can’t run high-tech business like ours or any other iGaming company with these associated costs. Out of the 1% margin and then pay 15% gross tax. Simply doesn’t work,” said Bill Mummery.

SBOBet has quite a few Premier League sponsorship and following the rule changes, the UK Gambling Commission indicated in a letter sent to sports governing bodies: “We [the commission] are aware that in some cases commercial partnership arrangements [which include sponsorship] are in place between sports clubs or bodies and remote gambling operators who do not hold a commission licence. Those operators cannot, in our view, advertise their betting services without both making it clear in the product as advertised and in reality that betting is not available to those in Britain.

The body warned that clubs now risk prosecution if their sponsor failed to prevent gamblers in the UK accessing these sites or they were deemed to be failing in the “overall effort” to combat match-fixing through corrupt betting on “unlicensed operators in foreign markets”.

Following the rule changes another major operator, SBOBet, which has previously sponsored Southampton, Swansea City, Hull, Norwich and West Ham United, was forced to exit the Premier League this year.

“If there is one good thing that comes out from this is the timing was actually favorable; that we’ve been there for five years. We certainly had built the brand, built the recognition, built the trust. So we don’t have to act with haze. We have time to stand back and look at the alternatives. I guess the key things in Premier English football is, one it’s broadcast by 200 broadcasters every weekend so the global reach, more important to the player; it’s trusted. There isn’t another league in football, globally that is trusted as English Premier League, therefore if you’re betting on that product, you absolutely want to know that it’s clean as clean as it can be.”

Poker program Cepheus is unbeatable, claim scientists

It may not win every hand it is dealt, but over time, no one can beat Cepheus, a computer program that scientists claim plays a near-perfect game of poker.

Unveiled in Canada on Thursday, the researchers believe that Cepheus is so good that a seasoned poker star could spend their whole life playing against it and still not come out on top.

To learn the game, Cepheus spent two months playing the equivalent of more than a billion billion hands of Texas hold’em, which is more poker games than have been played in the entirety of human history.

The feat required the number-crunching power of four thousand computer processors, each handling six billion hands every second. With each game Cepheus played, the program built up a database of cards dealt, betting decisions and outcomes. At the end of the marathon training session, the database contained 11 terabytes of information on calls, raises and folds for every hand a player could have.

Cepheus learns from an algorithm that essentially minimises its regrets: the program reviews every decision made and then learns which moves paid off and which cost it the hand. “For every single possible situation you could get into, it has a description for how you should play,” said Neil Burch, a computer scientist who helped develop Cepheus at the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group.

The program plays a variant of poker called heads-up limit hold’em, made famous by Michael Craig’s 2005 book, The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King. The game involves two players who bet fixed amounts with a limit on the number of raises allowed.

“Cepheus starts off with a strategy that’s quite terrible,” said Burch. “But every time it plays a hand it comes up with a better strategy.”

It is impossible to make a program that wins every hand, because an opponent can always be dealt a pair of aces or another lucky hand. Instead, Cepheus plays the hand it is dealt in the best way possible. Before every decision, it checks its cards against the database and uses probability to play the best possible game, whether that means calling, raising or folding its hand.

“Cepheus loses to no one over a long enough time. You just have to play enough hands so that luck goes away,” said Burch.

The scientists describe how they created Cepheus in the latest issue of the journal Science. The program can be played online at the University of Alberta’s website.

“I’m sure we’ll get plenty of emails from people who will play 20 or 30 hands against it, win a little bit, and then happily declare victory and say Cepheus must have a bug. But while a human or another program could get lucky and beat Cepheus in a short match, nobody could do it consistently over a long match,” said Michael Johanson, a researcher at the lab.

The program marks a milestone in artificial intelligence and game theory because it makes optimal decisions in a game where only limited information is available: a player’s own cards and those face up on the table (the flop, turn and river, in poker terminology).

Until now, all of the major games that have been “solved” by computers are “perfect-information games” such as chess and checkers where the full history of the game is known to each player.

Poker and other card games are known as imperfect-information games and are much harder for computers to master because each player has only a limited amount of information on which to base their decisions.

The parallels between poker and real-life decision-making mean that card-playing programs are far more than toys. John von Neumann, the father of modern computing, was inspired by bluffing in poker to develop game theory. Versions of game-playing programs can be used to find the most effective ways to patrol coastlines for drugs traffickers, or the best way to schedule sky marshals on commercial flights.

The Canadian researchers said they have been careful not to release information about Cepheus that could be used to win fortunes on online casinos. But other computer experts could potentially recreate the program and unleash it on the web. Even if that happened, Burch is not convinced it would make a fortune from hapless online human players. “It’s like being a really good poker player. If you start beating people all the time, nobody will want to play with you,” he said.

Gambling in sport: John Hartson on how betting nearly cost his life

A fearless and robust striker, John Hartson's forthright response to being diagnosed with cancer came as little surprise to anybody who knew him well.

But there was one challenge "Big John" repeatedly shirked, his life-threatening addiction to gambling.

"You never think you've got a problem," he explained. "You're a gambler, you enjoy it, you never realise the hurt you're causing.

"Your family know you're addicted, but I used to think they had the problem by questioning me."

Then the questions stopped. Hartson's wife Sarah had had enough of him coming in from trips away, ignoring her and the children, going straight to the TV and turning on a cricket match, golf tournament or horse race he had £5,000 on.

So she packed her bags and told him she was leaving.

"I broke down and said I'd do something about this," the former Arsenal, West Ham and Celtic star remembered, his voice buckling with emotion and regret.

"When I was fighting for my life [with cancer], she was my rock. She was pregnant, she looked after the children, she was incredibly strong, and this scumbag here came out of hospital and carried on with the gambling, after everything she had done.

"I hit rock bottom and it takes that for you to realise - the penny dropped. I will never gamble again as long as I live."

Hartson's last bet was three years, three months and three days ago.

"Everybody is aware that cancer kills. It nearly took my life in 2009," the 39-year-old said, recalling the two emergency operations and more than 60 sessions of chemotherapy he needed when testicular cancer spread to his lungs and brain.

"Cancer takes good people away every day, but, for me, gambling also kills.

"There are four places you can end up as a compulsive gambler: out on the street, in jail, dead, or at Gamblers Anonymous (GA).

"I ended up at GA, thank the Lord, and it's not only saved my marriage and made me a better person, it's also saved my life. If I gamble again, I'll die. I'll lose everything.

"I'm ultra-determined. I don't think about gambling today. I don't buy raffle tickets, I don't buy lottery tickets, I don't go to race tracks - I go to GA twice a week.

"I'll be going until I'm 70. Why wouldn't I? It's my medicine."

Hartson sees a lot of different people walk through the doors of those meetings - there are an estimated 400,000 people in the UK with a problem - but most of them do not come back. They have not reached their nadir yet.

"You're very selfish as a gambler, very deceitful. Compulsive gamblers are compulsive liars - they're very good at covering things up," said Hartson.

So good, in fact, many can appear, swan-like, to be gliding through life, holding down jobs, living in nice houses, with loving families. And a disproportionately large group can feed this destructive addiction whilst playing professional sport.

Hartson's testimony came at a conference organised by the Professional Players Federation (PPF) at Edgbaston Cricket Ground last month.

An umbrella body for the players' associations in cricket, football, rugby union and other leading sports, the PPF wanted to share some research into an issue that has been the stuff of terrace legend.

From jokes about QPR maverick Stan Bowles' inability to pass a bookmaker as well as he could pass a ball, to guesstimates of how many millions golf's favourite rogue John Daly has lost in Las Vegas, the idea that sport's competitive and wealthy young men were cash machines for the gambling industry has been commonplace.

Now, thanks to a study of almost 350 cricketers and footballers, we know sportsmen are three times more likely to have a gambling problem than young men in the general population (6.1% versus 1.9%).

That equates to nearly 200 current professionals in British cricket and football with a serious issue, and another 440 "at risk".

The study had a few more punches to deliver. One in 10 said they gambled to "fit in", one in four said they were encouraged by team-mates to do it, and nearly one in three thought their team's links with the gambling industry "encouraged" them to bet.

For football, in particular, that should be alarming.

A quarter of the Premier League's clubs have gambling logos on their shirts, the Football League's 72 clubs play in competitions sponsored by Sky Bet, William Hill backs the Football Association and pretty much every club has its own "official betting partner".

Sporting Chance's chief executive Colin Bland revealed that seven out of 10 of the footballers that come to the Tony Adams-inspired residential clinic are there because of gambling.

But Hartson is not looking for excuses. He realises the vast majority of people gamble rarely, and when they do, they do it because it is fun.
While he may have been frittering away a reported £50,000 a week - he does not put a figure on it himself, as the amounts addicts gamble is relative to their earnings and it is always too much - his dad takes his business clients to Ffos Las racecourse once a year for champagne and £20 each-way punts. "Not everybody gets drawn in," he noted.

But some who do get it bad: gambling has the highest suicide rate of any addiction.

Sitting alongside Hartson during the conference's main session was Gaelic footballer Niall McNamee. He told a similar tale of the disease's progressive nature - moments of relief that became more fleeting as tolerance to betting's buzz builds.

But he also spoke about bad company, lies, stealing and, ultimately, despair.

"I remember waking up one morning with a knot in my stomach," said McNamee. "It was the most gut-wrenching pain. I had no money to go gambling with, or to buy drink to numb the pain.

"The thought came to me that if I jumped out of the window that would end it all. It terrified me. I have had friends who have died from this addiction."

Thankfully, this was his rock bottom, and he got help. McNamee, who is still one of the game's top forwards, is now a well-respected voice on problem gambling in Ireland, and at 29 is about to launch his own business.

For Hartson, the first symptoms appeared as an 11-year-old potboy at a social club in Swansea. Fascinated by the fruit machines, he memorised the reels and was called over by the adults whenever they had a few nudges.

It sounds innocent enough, but before long he was pouring his money into those machines and begging for money for match fees at the weekend. A decade later he would have accounts with all the top bookmakers and was so consumed by gambling that he would struggle to hold a serious conversation.

"I can concentrate now and focus on what people are saying, but five years ago I couldn't," he admitted. "My life is so much better now. I'm a better husband, a better father, and I've got money coming out of my ears!"

And just as his cancer foundation is helping people deal with that affliction, he now hopes he can persuade a few footballers to think about their futures.

"I was in a lot of trouble physically and mentally when I quit," said Hartson, who went out with a whimper at West Brom.

"I should be living in a £4m mansion on the edge of the Vale of Glamorgan but I'm not because of all the money I wasted. I've got a nice house in Swansea, and it's paid for, but that's what I should have when you think about the money I earned.

"I would like players now to aspire to the big house."

Betting is an integral part of our culture - three quarters of the UK's adult population have gambled, most likely on the National Lottery, in the past year - and betting companies have moved into the sponsorship space vacated by tobacco and, to a lesser extent, alcohol. Without them many sports would struggle.

But listening to the speakers at the conference, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that British sport needs to look again at its relationship with gambling.

More must be done to protect the vulnerable, identify problems earlier and make sure gambling is a happy mug's game, not a debilitating illness.

Simon Barker, the assistant chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, notes that prevention through education is cheaper than emergency interventions. His counterpart at the Professional Cricketers' Association, Jason Ratcliffe, said sport was only "scratching the surface" in terms of what was needed.

The Responsible Gambling Trust's chief executive Marc Etches has managed to persuade the gambling industry to donate more than £6m of its profits to fund education and treatment, but he knows it is not enough.

"We're at a tipping point," said Etches. "The industry needs to recognise that it's in the business of risk, and it needs to take more responsibility."

Sportradar enters prediction partnership with Kicktipp.de

Sports and betting data provider Sportradar has entered into a partnership with online prediction game operator Kicktipp. The deal with the German based company includes the implementation of Sportradar Media Service’s Live Scores and Statistics solutions starting from January 1st 2015.

With coverage of over 100 countries, 240+ soccer leagues and 40 languages, Sportradar provides the broadest soccer coverage in the market. From now on the online tipping game provider incorporates Live Scores and Statistics via XML feed into their website www.kicktipp.de and also into the Kicktipp app. This will enable Kicktipp to provide their users with the fastest information available.

“We look forward to this partnership and are delighted that Kicktipp has chosen Sportradar Media Services for the data integration on its platforms. With our high quality data we are confident to provide all the necessary information needed to make this a successful partnership and help Kicktipp to strengthen its position and improve their business”, commented Andreas Meyer, Sales Director at Sportradar.

Kicktipp CEO and founder Janning Vygen stated: ”For our customers it is particularly important to have lightning fast and reliable Live Scores as well as Statistics. We are now able to provide an even betterservice and to deliver data to all of our users quickly and accurately for all available leagues. An addition to that the quality, speed and reliability were the reasons why we decided to join forces with Sportradar Media Services.”

Unibet acquires Bingo.com

Unibet completed the acquisition of Bingo.com domain and its related European operations and customer base.

Unibet acquires Bingo.com; NYX Gaming launches Sit & Go tournamentsThe $8 million total value deal will see Unibet to pay Bingo.com $2 million in cash for its brand and operations.

Bingo.com Ltd will further gain a redemption of Unibet Plc shares in the company, which are valued at $6 million and will also change operating name to Shoal Games Ltd.

Jason Williams, Bingo.com Ltd CEO, stated that the company would solely focus on the development of its social gambling products.

“The online gambling industry as a whole is experiencing conditions of maturity where smaller firms are finding it increasingly difficult to compete. Bingo.com’s European gambling business, built with the www.bingo.com brand and URL, has therefore found it difficult to compete effectively with larger operators.” Williams said. “In response to these facts, the Bingo.com management team decided it was in the best interests of the Company to sell the online gambling business; the associated brand and URL and determined the offer negotiated with Unibet, the company’s own online gambling partner and technology provider, was fair and the best offer available to the company for those assets.”

Kara Scott and Partypoker Sever Ties After Five Years

Kara Scott is the latest professional poker player to part ways with a sponsor after her five-year affiliation with partypoker ends with 2014 drawing to a close.

Kara Scott is back on the market.

Nope, Kara Scott remains happily married; but she has signed on the dotted line of a set of divorce papers that ends a five-year relationship with partypoker. There was a time when this news would have made waves; today it barely ripples – and it goes to show the recent trend of burning professional sponsorship contracts can tinge the fingers of anyone.

In a recent interview with the PR mastermind, Warren Lush, I asked him which sponsored players had been worth their weight in gold during his time in the biz?

“I think Kara Scott is a fantastic ambassador for poker. She is an excellent TV presenter, and great with customers. We use her as a face on the mobile app, and we have enjoyed an excellent relationship for years now.” Lush told me.

She ticks every single box; proving the decision to allow people to leave – or not trying harder to get them to stay – says more of what online poker rooms are beginning to understand about the value a sponsored pro has to the company doing the hiring, than the actual ability of the person hired.

The announcement was made on Kara Scott’s Cardrunners blog.

“PartyPoker has gone through many changes and unfortunately as their focus shifted, there were fewer and fewer TV projects. As those shows disappeared, so did one of my favorite parts of the job and now my association with Party is ending. However, I’m not going anywhere. I still love playing poker and have made a lot of great friends in the industry.”

To be fair to bwin.party they did say that moving forward their rest of the world focus would be on casino products, and a concentrated effort on poker would only be made in the U.S. Scott is a globally recognized face, and spends more time on airplanes than Ted Striker, but her European base, and work within the European tour stops, doesn’t push her nicely into a New Jersey niche.

Scott follows ‘Mad’ Marvin Rettenmaier out of the door marked ‘exit’, and it will be interesting to see what happens to both Jamie Kerstetter and Scott Baumstein once their contracts come up for renewal. Ken Daneyko did buck the trend by joining the team at partypoker, but he is a former sports star, thus fitting the model of sponsored pro that seems to more appropriate in modern times.

With ties to partypoker now snipped, Scott can spend more time concentrating on her family, and she will continue to work with the ESPN and World Series of Poker (WSOP) when the summer comes rolling into her life. During her time with partypoker Scott played a pivotal role in turning TV productions of The Premier League and the Big Game into some of the greatest poker shows ever televised.

Czech Republic gambling operators brace for tax hikes

Gambling operators in the Czech Republic could see their tax bills nearly double by 2016 if Finance Minister Andrej Babis (pictured) gets his way. Babis is set to present a new gambling tax proposal on Friday and a Czech newspaper reported that the plan includes rate hikes that would boost the government’s annual tax haul from CZK 8b (US $359m) to CZK 14b ($629m).

The newspaper claimed the current 20% tax on gross gaming revenue would be raised to between 30% and 40%, with fixed-odds sports betting coming in somewhere at the low end of that scale and slot machines at the high end. That’s on top of the 19% corporate tax that licensed gambling companies are required to ante up. The newspaper didn’t cite its sources for the figures and Babis declined to comment when queried by Reuters.

The Czech government is in the process of overhauling its gambling laws to allow online casino and lottery products in addition to sports betting. The legislation, which the government hopes to approve early in the new year, would also open the market up to international operators, although how many would find those tax rates appealing remains to be seen. The Czech Republic was one of several nations whose online gambling regimes were scolded by the European Commission last November as too restrictive.

The legislation is also intended to rein in the number of gaming machines currently entertaining gamblers in pubs, bars and other small-scale venues. There are currently 7.5 gaming machines for every 1,000 Czechs, twice the number in Slovakia and 25x the number in Austria.

On Monday, Czech national anti-drug coordinator Jindrich Voboril revealed that the government had approved a new national strategy that lumps gambling in with alcohol and drugs as targets for further restriction. The Ministry of Health has been tasked with preparing a plan of action by the end of March, which will remain in place until March 2019, after which the results will be evaluated and a new plan formulated.