The race to build Britain's first super-casino has been condemned as a fix. The man who will decide which of the seven bids will win the lucrative licence admitted that the U.S. tycoon with close links to John Prescott had been given a major head start. Professor Stephen Crow, chairman of the Casino Advisory Panel, suggested that the joint bid by Dome owner Philip Anschutz and Greenwich Council was in the lead because building work had already started on the Las Vegas-style casino.

Clark County Sheriff Bill Young called on local gaming companies Friday to install and pay for a surveillance system on the Las Vegas Strip. Surveillance cameras can help solve crimes and break up terror rings, but they are controversial. Sophisticated camera networks are already up and running in major cities like London and Chicago. It was surveillance video that helped to identify the terrorists on September 11th.

It's a long way from Fremont Street to the heart of Las Vegas Boulevard. It's just a few miles by cab, perhaps, but a million miles when it comes to comparing the quality of casino dealers' jobs. Typically, most dealers made that journey in a few months, even a year or more, depending on the available jobs and their own juice.

When Larry Gregory heard last fall that MGM Mirage planned to reopen the storm-ravaged Beau Rivage exactly one year after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Coast's casino industry, the executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission gave a private chuckle. No way, Gregory thought, would the Las Vegas-based casino giant be able to make repairs to Biloxi's largest gaming property in such a short time. Tuesday morning, Gregory will happily eat some serious crow.

The newly crowned World Series of Poker champion has found himself in another heads-up competition, only this time the venue is the Regional Justice Center and the stakes are half of his main event prize money. A British television producer now living in Los Angeles has sued Jamie Gold in Clark County District Court, saying the winner of the World Series of Poker's signature event had failed to live up to an agreement to split any winnings.

No bets are being placed on when the Viva Las Vegas casinos in Nuevo Progresso and Matamoros will open. The casino in Nuevo Progreso has been closed for 11 days because owner James Vann said the building needs a transformer. The Matamoros casino’s opening, which was originally scheduled for Aug. 16, was delayed due to “electrical problems,” and a tentative grand opening is not in the works. “Not right now,” Vann said.

Developers have scrapped plans to open a super-casino near the site of London's new Wembley Stadium. The decision came after the local council withdrew its support for the proposed GBP 335m (USD 632m) gambling venue. Las Vegas-based casino giant Caesars had submitted the joint plans with UK developer Quintain Estates.

You trust the things you know. With regard to capital investment this phenomenon is generally known as home bias, weighting domestic products above average, although this leads to a lower yield. Corresponding bias towards foreign gaming and betting operators becomes evident in the current jurisdiction. A presiding judge of the Court of Appeal of Cologne recently compared a respectable UK bookmaker, sued by a German state operator, with a Mafia company, thereby “convincingly” demonstrating his impartiality.

Wembley, one of the frontrunners to host the first super-casino, has withdrawn from the contest after a surprise decision by Brent council last night.The move tilts the odds towards the Millennium Dome in south London winning the right to build a giant casino, only one of which will be allowed by the government.

Hong Kong - Sands Macau claimed to be the largest casino in the world after expanding its gaming rooms. Sands, owned by the American casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, opened a new third floor, boosting the number of gaming tables by almost two thirds to 740, according to a statement.

James Packer's Publishing and Broadcasting plans to buy his family's stake in a group of British casinos as a prelude to a push into the European gaming market. The deal is expected to take place before the end of the year and follows recent gaming investments in ventures worth up to USD 3 billion in the fast-growing Chinese territory of Macau. Gaming came within a whisker of overtaking media as the biggest profit engine at PBL in 2005-06, where annual profit jumped 25.6 per cent to USD 610 million.

With its decision of 3 August 2006, the Bavarian Administrative Court of Appeal (Bayerischer Verwaltungsgerichtshof) ruled that private operators could be prohibited to provide and to broker sports betting with immediate effect (case-no: 24 CS 06.1365). This is the Court’s first preliminary decision after the Federal Constitutional Court’s fundamental decision of 28 March 2006 regarding sports betting. The Court’s decision concerned a betting shop in the small town of Fürstenfeldbruck (near Munich) conveying sports betting to a Malta based and licenced bookmaker. The Bavarian Administrative Court of Appeal dismissed the betting agent’s appeal against the negative decision of the Administrative Court of Munich, upholding the prohibition order issued by the District Office (Landratsamt).