Tag: GAMBLING

Earlier today, a British hacker was sentenced to two years in prison for five counts of hacking and theft. Ashley Mitchell, 29, hacked into Zynga (the game giant behind 'FarmVille' and 'Texas HoldEm Poker'), stole more than $11 million in credits, and laundered a third of them through Facebook. There are some potentially interesting ramifications to this case. The court ignored the defense's ...

The new website Ultrinsic wants to to make a bet with you; it says that you can't get straight As, or straight Bs for that matter. The beta service lets students place wagers on whether or not they'll achieve a certain grade in a class or maintain a particular GPA. To be a virtual bookie, the service uses an algorithm that takes into account current work load, course history and, when available, ...

In the midst of our cash-strapped economy, the federal government is now looking into legalizing online gambling. The New York Times reports that the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill that would allow "online poker and other nonsports betting, overturning a 2006 federal ban," which was mostly ineffective in the first place. The Times notes that the bill would have the Treasury ...

Students at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany are helping to redefine virtual poker with 'Poker Surface,' a system that gives card sharks a way to play -- without the cards, the chips, or the table (or, unfortunately, those Aces up your sleeve). 'Poker Surface' uses a multi-touch screen as well as a player's mobile phone to simulate the game. Using the intuitive system, bettors can ...

It's one of our favorite pastimes -- betting what movies will soar and flop at the box office. By no means do these numbers indicate film quality, of course, but we still enjoy keeping an eye on them. Now, we have even more incentive. According to The New York Times, Cantor Futures Exchange will launch a Web site in late April that allows everybody from studio executives to film lovers to bet ...

While it's hard to picture Frank Sinatra holding a martini in one hand and an electronic handheld device in the other, more and more, Las Vegas sports bettors are trying new ways to gamble. According to The New York Times, casinos like M Resort and the Venetian are supplying bettors with new handhelds, which resemble iPhones, to make bets in real-time throughout a game or event. Gamblers still ...

If it appears on a video, or in a photograph, it must be true, right? A new study by a group of psychologists at the University of Warwick shows how dangerous it can be to accept video or photo evidence as fact, according to Wired. In the study, 60 college students played a computerized gambling game, each student being matched against a researcher posing as a participant. If a player answered a ...

As is the case with many other sports, tennis is struggling to get hold of Twitter, the microblogging phenom, and understand just how to regulate it. At this year's U.S. Open, it appears the tweets have hit the fan. Andy Roddick, for one, isn't too happy about it, either. According to the Associated Press, Roddick has been using Twitter to publicly voice his displeasure over a number of signs ...

Although gambling is illegal throughout much of the United States, online poker has exploded in popularity and managed, for the most part, to avoid government interference. Online casinos are typically operated from overseas, safe from prosecution, and can also be considered a "peer-to-peer" activity, not a transaction between a bettor and a casino. Despite the gray poker area, the U.S. ...

Where does the government turn when it needs more money? Usually it's straight into peoples' vices, and, with an already drastically hiked cigarette tax, gambling might be next. Gamblers could wind up paying $52 billion in additional tax revenue over the next decade, according to a recent study. The U.S. government recently put a ban in place to prevent online gambling within the country, but now ...

A new study has found that the United States would make $52 billion over the next decade if lawmakers decided to lift a three-year ban on Internet gambling and tax the maligned industry. The study, prepared by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, may prove to be laying the groundwork for the repeal of the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, a generally ineffective piece of ...

We know that you watched '21' and started wishing you could count cards and take a casino for all its worth. You probably even thought you could do it and get away with it... if it weren't for your lack of math skills standing in the way. Fortunately, we live in an age in which one is never stuck with just one's wits and skills, which is why some gamblers are finding new, cutting-edge ways to ...

Over the past two years, the largely unregulated business of online poker has seen two major cheating scandals, according to a joint report by '60 Minutes' and the Washington Post. Players on the poker site Absolute Poker uncovered the first of the two scandals in August of 2007, when one apparently novice player, known as "Grey Cat," began consistently winning high-stakes games. After ...

In the waning hours of his presidency, George Bush is pushing to effectively outlaw online gambling in the United States. These efforts have met strident opposition by Democrats, proponents of Internet betting, and even some financial institutions. The Bush administration's pursuit of these prohibitive laws follows on the coattails of a rider vaguely prohibiting online betting that was included ...

The European Union is launching an investigation into whether U.S. online gambling laws violate world-trade rules. The investigation stems from a 2006 ban on credit cards and banks transferring payments to online gambling sites based overseas. That law effectively locked out all foreign gambling outlets, but left room for home-grown sites to flourish. Clive Hawkswood, chief executive of the Remote ...