« 2007 Year in Review: Part 1

July

Although the World Series of Poker kicked off in early June the Championship Texas Hold’em main event started in early July.

When the final table took place, the top ten consisted of Philip Hilm, Tuan Lam, Jon Kalmar, Raymond Rahme, Lee Childs, Lee Watkinson, Hevad Khan, Jerry Yang and Alex Kravchenko and when the pretenders were all weeded out, Jerry Yang won the championship event taking home $8.25 million.

Late June/early July also saw the winds of change blowing through the British government as previous PM Tony Blair, who announced his resignation in May, handed the reigns over to successor Gordon Brown.

Unlike Blair, Brown wasn’t pro gambling and that had an effect on the UK’s gambling policies.

Plans for a Supercasino under the Blair administration were nixed by Brown and as a report in UK’s Times said, “The Times understands from government sources that the plan for regional casinos is ‘dead in the water’. Plans for 16 smaller casinos may return to Parliament over the next few months.”

iMEGA’s lawsuit against the UIGEA moved a step forward as the date of September 4 was set for the hearing.

NETeller Executive Chairman and Director of the Company Gord Herman’s resignation was accepted by the board on July 13 and the company also announced that it would stop accepting transactions from Israeli customers five days later.

As well the online payment processor also said that it would pay $136 million to U.S. authorities to avoid prosecution.

Betting scandals happen all the time in Europe but the sanctity of North American sports was soiled when reports began to circulate about an NBA ref under investigation for illegal betting and official Tim Donaghy and the NBA would be under the spotlight for the first North American betting scandal since Pete Rose.

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