Monthly Archives: February 2015

STL veteran wins Powerball, plans move to Texas

A veteran from St. Louis won $1 million in a Powerball drawing on February 11, and now says he’s moving to Texas STL veteran wins Powerball, plans move to Texas ST. LOUIS — A veteran from St. Louis won $1 million in a Powerball drawing on February 11, and now says he’s moving to Texas Check out this story on KSDK.com: http://on.ksdk.com/1Ez9DbJ ST.

SealsWithClubs Bryan Micon’s home raided by Nevada regulators

More light has been shed on Friday’s announced demise of Bitcoin poker site SealsWithClubs (SwC). On Saturday, SwC chairman Bryan Micon (pictured, in skivvies) posted a video to YouTube revealing that his Nevada home was raided on Feb. 11 by gun-toting agents armed with a search warrant issued by the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) “regarding SwC and Bitcoin poker.”

In the video (viewable below), Micon said he was handcuffed and led out of his house in his underwear while a “bunch of guys with guns” searched his house for eight hours and ultimately “stole most of my electronics.”

Micon maintains that he doesn’t believe he was “doing anything unethical” and says he wasn’t arrested or charged with any crime. Micon said the agents who conducted the raid “made it clear that they were very familiar with my social feeds and my entire output as a journalist.”

Micon noted that SwC cashouts were processing as promised and all Bitcoin funds were safe. As Micon put it: “Math does not bow down to guns.”

The timing of the raid coincides with the start of the events that SwC’s Friday announcement said led to the site’s “perpetual state of jeopardy.” Micon said there’d also been “an irregularity” with one of SwC’s data servers hosted by Voxility in Romania, although Micon said it was unclear to him what had transpired from a technical perspective.

The rest of SwC’s management team decided to quit but Micon has vowed to carry on. Micon has assembled a team that is “working extremely hard” to get the new swcpoker.eu domain up and running with the new SwC 2.0 software.

Micon made the announcement from his new base of operations in Antigua. Micon said he’d been planning a family trip to Antigua long before the raid but the developments prompted him to make the move permanent. Micon said he didn’t want his two-year-old daughter to grow up “in a police state where creativity is often met with guns and handcuffs and whatnot.”

RAWA to Receive March 5 Hearing in Congress, Reports Say

A federal online poker ban still seems unlikely this year, as there’s plenty of opposition (and even more indifference) lined up against the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA). However, it does appear that some in Congress will at least be talking about the bill, as reports are circulating that RAWA will get a hearing […]

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India declares card games a “physical” sport; Sikkim issues second online license

India’s Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether poker is a game predominantly based on skill or luck, but it has declared that playing cards is a “physical sport.”

On Friday, Mumbai-based commercial printing firm Parksons Graphics prevailed in its long legal quest to have card-playing deemed a sport. However, unlike similar lawsuits in Western countries, Parksons wasn’t overly concerned with the issue of whether card games were based more on skill than luck. Parksons’ concerns were entirely due to its desire to lessen its tax burden.

Under India’s tax codes, manufacturers of sporting goods have to pay 5% excise duty. Sporting goods deemed not to require physical exercise must pay an additional 1% duty. Since 2011, Parksons has been claiming that its playing cards are exempt from this extra 1% tax.

Challenged on this claim by India’s taxman, Parksons went to court. A Parksons attorney noted that if playing a card game was not deemed a sporting activity, then the game of chess was similarly barred from calling itself a sport. In 2014, a Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal sided with Parksons.

On Friday, India’s Supreme Court upheld the Tribunal’s ruling, rejecting arguments by the Attorney General that playing cards was “gambling” and therefore not an athletic pursuit. The Hindustan Times quoted Chief Justice HL Dattu saying: “When you play cards, you use your hands. It can be a physical sport. Why not?” Oh, if only ‘why not’ were a more frequent dictum in court cases of this nature…

The Supreme Court has yet to rule on a more traditional skill v. luck case involving games like poker and rummy. The Karnataka High Court has declared that such games are predominantly skill-based but rulings in other states have declared that luck is the primary factor in separating winners from losers.

The Supreme Court was supposed to issue a ruling in November but decided it needed more time to study the question. Should the Court uphold the Karnataka ruling, the Central government would be tasked with establishing a uniform set of rules that would apply to all states. This would undoubtedly open up the door for more states to consider offering online poker services.