Nach dem tollen letzten Stopp mit einem großartigen Preispool der Italian Poker Tour’s (IPT) steht nun die Poker Action im wunderschönen San Remo am Programm. Pokerstars.it präsentiert den 3. Halt der offiziellen italienischen Pokertour, die von 24. bis 31. August 2009 stattfindet.

Regeneration company New East Manchester has promised “hundreds of millions of pounds” will be invested in the area during 2009. Eddie Smith, chief executive of New East Manchester, said this year would see the start of some major projects bringing “very significant levels” of public and private sector investment to east Manchester. This would include the site intended for a regional casino, which will be replaced with something creating “thousands of jobs,” he said.

A GBP 300m tourist attraction should be built on the site earmarked for the super-casino in east Manchester, regeneration experts have said. A delegation has been looking at other ways of bringing jobs to the Sportcity site since the casino plan was axed. Homes, offices, shops or an industrial estate were all ruled out as options because of „market conditions“. A report before Manchester City Council says a tourist attraction would make the biggest economic contribution.

British bookmaker and entrepreneur Victor Chandler says the government was right to scrap plans for a Las Vegas-style super-casino in Manchester. Chandler reckons a huge multi-million pound supercasino – with 1,250 unlimited stake and jackpot machines – would have provoked gambling addiction. “The biggest damage I’ve seen to society is in South Africa’s casinos,“ says Chandler, who moved his entire bookmaking business to Gibraltar in the late nineties to escape betting tax.

Manchester City Council will not be pursuing legal action against the government over its abandonment of the super-casino project. Instead, it will work with a task force exploring ways of generating the same number of jobs a casino would have brought to east Manchester. Leader Sir Richard Leese said there was more to be gained from working with, rather than against, the government.

A GBP 250 million opera house is being planned as Manchester’s ‚payback‘ for being denied the country’s first super casino. The ambitious development would see the world’s leading singers performing at the venue in east Manchester – the area let down by the government’s U-turn on expanding the gambling industry. Talks are already underway between the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and the city council about building a ’national opera house‘ in the north.

A top-level government committee will meet for the first time this week to consider alternatives to a supercasino in Manchester. It will be chaired by Local Government Secretary and Salford MP Hazel Blears. She has told Manchester Evening News that, while she understood why many people were disappointed the supercasino plans had been abandoned, she hoped to draw up plans to provide thousands of jobs in east Manchester.

Große Enttäuschung bei den Stadtoberen von Manchester: Die britische Regierung hat endgültig ursprüngliche Pläne fallen gelassen, in der nordenglischen Metropole ein Super-Casino nach dem Vorbild von Las Vegas errichten zu lassen. Für den Stadtrat von Manchester ist dies ein schwerer Schlag. Man hatte fest mit den geplanten Investitionen in Höhe von rund 260 Millionen Pfund und der Schaffung von mindestens 2.700 neuen Jobs in der strukturschwachen Region gerechnet.

Manchester appeared to have won a five-day stay of execution last night before its planned supercasino is scrapped for good. Culture secretary Andy Burnham had been due to announce that the project – worth 3,000 jobs and GBP 265m – would not go ahead. There were no plans for the government to soften the blow by promising a replacement package of jobs.

Der seit fast drei Jahren andauernde Rechtsstreit zwischen dem Staat und dem Londoner Gutshot Poker Club ist nun endgültig beendet. In der letzten Verhandlung wurde Poker erneut als Glücksspiel deklariert und damit braucht jeder Kartenklub nun eine staatliche Glücksspiellizenz. Im Jahre 2004 wurde der Klub in der Clerkenwell Road von Derek Kelly eröffnet. Die Kartenklubs haben in Großbritannien eine lange Tradition und schnell gab es Tausende von Mitgliedern. Bereits im folgenden Jahr drohte jedoch schon die Schließung.

Manchester officials have said they will consider a legal challenge if a government decision to axe the city’s planned super-casino is confirmed. The city council said it knew nothing of the U-turn by ministers, who are still planning 16 regional casinos. The BBC has learned that the decision is to be announced in a statement to the Commons after the half-term recess.

Plans to build a “supercasino” are to be dropped by the British government, but 16 smaller casinos will be given the go-ahead, local The Daily Telegraph has learned this week. A review of the Gambling Act, which cleared the way for eight new ’small’ casinos, eight „large“ ones and a massive regional gambling centre in Manchester has concluded all except the supercasino should be granted licences.