After much anticipation, Titan Poker’s French website went live today at 9:00 AM EST. The website, Titan.fr, is Titan Poker’s first venture into the French market. In addition to giving Titan a new market to tap, it gives French players another option for their online poker needs.

France had long been a closed market that only allowed online gambling through their state-run monopolies. However, recent rulings by the European Union have necessitated a liberalization of the market. As a result, Titan Poker was able to obtain a French online gambling license on November 18. They quickly launched a dedicated website for the French, though in the beginning it only had a landing page with some information on the upcoming online poker room.

This morning, the poker room opened for business. In order to become licensed in France, Titan Poker had to open a physical business within the country’s borders and be vetted by France’s gaming authority, ARJEL. After passing France’s stringent vetting and regulation process they should be safe place to play. How strict is gambling regulation in France? Some casino operators call it the worst market in Europe, due to its high taxes, low cap on the payout rate, and strict government oversight and control.

French citizens can now log onto Titan.fr and join the poker room for some online poker games. In addition to the poker license, Titan was also granted a sports betting license and the company hopes to launch an online betting website for the French market soon.

There are now two different online poker bills in the California Senate, as the state almost seems to be racing against New Jersey to become the first in the U.S. to regulate the activity. The new bill was introduced by Senator Rod Wright, who introduced a different version of the bill in 2009.

Back then, Senator Wright introduced SB 1485, which was intended to regulate online poker within the state of California. After facing some difficulty, Wright canceled the scheduled hearing on the bill in June of this year. Since then, Wright has revised the bill and has now introduced a modified version to the current state Senate, with this bill called the Internet Gambling Consumer Protection and Public-Private Partnership Act of 2011 (SB 45).

The new version of the bill would allow the California Gambling Control Commission to grant licenses to three different operators within the state. Those licensed operators could then provide online poker services to residents of California. The licenses could last up to 20 years.

The first online poker bill in the state Senate, which is still on the table, was introduced by Senator Lou Correa on December 6. That bill, SB 40, would allow the California Gambling Control Commission to grant online poker licenses to the California Online Poker Association (COPA). Any California tribes that offer gambling are eligible to join COPA and the bill would not give COPA an exclusive right to offer online poker, protecting potential future competition from facing a state monopoly.

The Morongo Band of Mission Indians and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians support Correa’s online poker bill and oppose Harry Reid’s online poker legislation in the U.S. Senate, feeling that his bill would hurt California’s industry.

As a jab to Congress, the language of SB 40 says that the UIGEA “has not eliminated illegal, unregulated Internet gambling, nor has it provided any increased protection for participants from game operators and others who would impair the integrity of online gambling activity.” In short, the bill says that the federal government failed to prevent illegal gambling or protect gamblers from dangerous websites, so California has to do it on their own.

Okay, earlier today I wrote about a bad experience at Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. It only seems fair that I now highlight something good at the casino. Thanks to mixed martial arts superstar Randy Couture, the casino will soon host an important charity poker tournament, called Operation All-In.

Couture is as kind and giving in the real world as he is brutal and devastating within a ring. To demonstrate that, he formed the Xtreme Couture GI Foundation years ago as a way to honor veterans of the U.S. military. A special attention is paid to raising funds and awareness for those wounded in action.

The Xtreme Couture GI Foundation is holding a no-limit Texas hold’em tournament on October 30 at the casino. The poker tournament is open to the public, so anyone can join who pays the entry fee. The buy-in for the event is $225 and re-buys will be available at $100 each. Proceeds from the poker tournament will go to Couture’s charity. In addition to the poker tournament, there will also be raffles, a silent auction and an after party.

In addition to Couture, other MMA fighters are scheduled to participate, including Tyson Griffin, Ryan Couture, Gray Maynard, Ray Sefo, Martin Kampmann, Jason Ron, John Alessio and Mike Pyle. Actor David Zayas, best known for his work on Dexter and Oz, will also play in the tournament.

Before becoming an MMA fighter, Couture served in the military for six years. This is the third year that Couture has hosted Operation All-In. If you are interested in playing in the tournament, contact the Golden Nugget Casino for details.

It has become a trendy question lately: Is poker gambling? The knee-jerk reaction is that of course it is. However, many, including poker players, owners of poker rooms, gaming lobbyists, some politicians and more, say that is not the case. Each jurisdiction defines gambling in their own way, but as a general rule, it is considered to be wagering money on an event with an uncertain outcome. The implication is usually that the bettor has no control over the outcome. Such is not the case with poker, though.

With poker, it can be argued, skill has more to do with the outcome than chance. Sure, the players have no control over what cards they are dealt, but they do control what they do with those cards. Players can even win against someone with better cards (unlike blackjack) by bluffing.

Such an argument is at the center of a court case in front of the South Carolina Supreme Court. The case dates back to 2008, when approximately 20 poker players were caught in a Charleston home engaging in what the authorities say was illegal gambling activity. Their defense is that they were playing poker, which as a game of skill is not banned.

Billy Wilkins, the defense attorney in the case, argues that Texas hold ‘em is “a game where predominantly skill determines the winner.” As such, it isn’t covered by a state law that prohibits gambling. The case is now before the state Supreme Court after the clients were convicted of gambling in a municipal court. Upon appeal to a higher court, the conviction was overturned. The state attorney general then appealed that decision, bringing it to the state Supreme Court.

Wilkins maintains his clients’ innocence and says he is fighting to protect the rights of individuals to play poker in the privacy of their own home. The prosecution, however, disagrees. They say that it wasn’t a group of friends getting together to play a game. Rather, they contend that the group was a “high-stakes gambling ring.” The AG stated that the games were held weekly, had hired dealers and the host took a cut of each hand.

Whatever decision the Supreme Court makes on this particular case, there is a good chance it would clearly define gambling and whether or not it includes poker.

Recently PokerStars had to pull out of the market in the U.S. state of Washington. After that state’s Supreme Court upheld a law that bans all form of online gambling, including online poker, they had no choice but to no longer allow Washington residents to play on their website.

That was bad news for PokerStars. Though they’re the largest online poker room in the world, no one likes to lose business. What may soften the blow is the new business they obtained in Estonia. The Baltic nation only recently passed a law allowing overseas online gambling websites to obtain licenses to operate in the country. PokerStars is now one of the first to obtain a license from them.

The poker room has launched a new website dedicated to the Estonian market, Pokerstars.ee. PokerStars, located in the Isle of Man, has been working at expanding their European market for some time. Their most recent successes were obtaining online gambling licenses in Italy in 2008 and in France in June of this year.

For years, Party Poker was the largest online poker room in the world. However, when the U.S. government passed UIGEA in 2006, Party Poker got spooked and left the American market, banning all of their citizens. Losing America lost a large portion of their business, many of whom then went to PokerStars, since they remained in the U.S. market. With an aggressive European strategy to go along with that success, PokerStars seems poised to retain their status as the most popular online poker room for quite some time.

When you hear about NBA players and gambling, it’s usually not anything positive. Stories about the extravagance of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley as they blew millions at the Vegas casinos don’t exactly paint the stars in a favorable light. But at least they fared better than Antoine Walker, who is millions of dollars in debt and facing various charges due to his unwise gambling practices, unwise business ventures, allegedly committing fraud and more. That’s why I wanted to share this story about Shawn Marion’s poker tournament, because it’s something positive for the NBA and gambling.

For those who don’t know Shawn Marion, he’s a forward who is currently with the Dallas Mavericks but has spent most of his time with the Phoenix Suns. He is known for being as extraordinary on offense as he is terrible on defense. It seems that he also loves playing poker and giving to charity, which made hosting a celebrity poker tournament a no-brainer.

On August 14, the Shawn Marion Celebrity Poker Tournament was held at the Choctaw Casino Resort in Durant, Oklahoma. At the tournament, players raised nearly $70,000 for the Shawn Marion Foundation. The poker tournament has a Texas no-limit hold’em game that drew 181 poker players from around the nation. Aside from Marion, the only “celebrities” I can count in attendance are Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and two poker players who have starred in the reality TV show Amazing Race, Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle. Professional poker players Annie Duke and T.J. Cloutier were also in attendance.

Even without a lot of big-name celebrities, the poker tournament was still a success. Though the charity was the main attraction, the top players in the tournament still won prizes. The guy who won it all took a seat in the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event. By the way, his name is James Dean, but I don’t think he’s related to the actor or the sausage guy. The poker player who came in second won an all-expenses paid strip to Hawai’i. The third-place finisher won a seat in the T.J. Cloutier/Choctaw Poker Classic. The player who finished fourth won a nice watch and the fifth-place finisher won two tickets to a Mavericks game and dinner with Shawn Marion. All of those prizes were donated by sponsors.

The Shawn Marion Foundation is dedicated to helping single-parent families and providing life-changing opportunities for the children. That is accomplished by providing grants and scholarships to the children, among other things.

If you’re going to raise awareness for something, using strippers is a good way to do it. Next month, poker players will compete in a strip poker tournament all in the name of cancer awareness.

The Baller Strip Poker Championships sounds like something from a rap video, but it’s not. At least, not as far as I know. It is actually a championship strip poker event held in London in September as part of a larger month-long poker celebration.

During the month of September, London will be the setting of a festival of poker featuring 100 events. The festival begins on August 30 when the World Poker Tour stops at The Smoke. The Baller Strip Poker Championship takes place on September 21 at Stringfellows a famous gentleman’s club in the Covent Garden district of London.

During this strip poker tournament, some of the best poker players in the world will get together for some poker. They are playing for a good cause. Sources state that the proceeds from the poker tournament will go toward raising cancer awareness.

The players themselves won’t do any stripping, though. Instead, their stripping will be done by proxy. Each poker player will be assigned a Stringfellows girl – one of the strippers at the club – who will strip on their behalf. When the player loses a hand, his or her Stringfellows girl will then remove an article of clothing.

The Baller Strip Poker Championship is being sponsored by Bluff Europe, the European version of the popular poker magazine Bluff. More information is supposed to be found at www.BallerStripPoker.com, but at the time of writing this blog, the site was not available.

VIP Slots Casino has a lot of online slots. That much should be clear by the fact that “slots” is in their name. In fact, I’m looking at a list and I count almost 70 slot games, despite the fact that the list of available games clearly hasn’t been updated recently. With the emphasis on slots, though, many people don’t realize that the casino has an excellent collection of table games.

VIP Slots Casino has enough table games to satisfy most players. If you’re looking for blackjack, they offer the Vegas Strip and European versions. In addition, they also offer the blackjack variants of Progressive Blackjack and Perfect Pairs.

Poker fans have a few choices as well. In fact, they have some poker variations that I haven’t even heard of (then again, poker isn’t my game of choice). VIP Slots offers Five Card Mulligan Poker, Let Them Ride, Pai Gow Poker, Tri Card Poker, Red Dog, Progressive Caribbean Stud and 10 High Hold’em Poker. That selection may not be as good as at a website that deals exclusively with poker, but for the casual poker player it offers plenty of variety.

For fans of other table games, VIP Slots Casino also has both European Roulette and American Roulette, War, Craps and Baccarat. Aside from the table games and slots, the online casino also has video poker games, specialty dice games and bingo.

To enjoy the selection of table games, slots and other games, visit VIP Slots Casino.

If you follow poker players, you probably know who Annette Obrestad is. She is a Norwegian poker player who is the youngest player ever to win the World Series of Poker Europe. He is a professional poker player who plays for Full Tilt Poker. Online she goes by the screen name Annette_15.

Like a lot of young stars, there are very mixed opinions of her. Some marvel at her advanced skill at such a young age while others criticize her for being arrogant or cocky. Well, the people who hold the latter view now have more of a reason to feel that way.

In a recent interview with ESPN the Magazine, Obrestad criticized Doyle Brunson, players at live tournaments, and all female poker players. Wow. That’s a lot of people to alienate. Speaking with ESPN’s Morty Ain, she said “I’ve always said that girls suck at poker. I say that because they do. Maybe they just aren’t as competitive and don’t try to learn from their mistakes.”

This argument has been going on for a while. Poker started as a man’s game and its demographic is still predominantly male. However, more and more women are starting to play the game. Some think they shouldn’t be playing and some think they can’t play as well as men, but people with either opinion are in the minority.

To make matters worse, Obrestad then said that online poker players are tougher competition than players in live tournaments. “Online players process information so much faster and don’t let their egos get in the way of becoming a better player,” she said. “No disrespect to Doyle, but I’d rather play him.”

Ouch. Of course, if you play online you have a variety of tools at your disposal that you can’t have at a live tournament. In any case, her interview hasn’t exactly made the young lady more popular within poker circles. She is only 21, though, and still has plenty of time to mature. I’m sure most people that age would say something stupid if a reporter interviewed them.

There has been no comment from Brunson.

As I have said before, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) – which was passed in 2006 and took effect June 1 of this year – does not ban online gambling in America. In fact, there is no federal ban of online gambling. There are several states in the U.S. that have online gambling bans, though. Washington is one of those states.

In the state of Washington, online gambling – including poker – is illegal and engaging in online poker is a felony. A felony!

The Poker Players Alliance – one of the largest online poker lobbies in the world – is challenging Washington’s law in court. Lee Rousso, State Director of the PPA, challenges that the law violates the Interstate Commerce Act. According to Rousso, the law states that no state can pass legislation that discriminates against a section of a particular industry. He argues that Washington’s law discriminates against the online section of the gambling industry. In other words, you can’t allow people to play poker in a land-based casino and not allow them to play it at an online casino.

I’m no lawyer, so I’ll avoid trying to interpret a small section of a law passed in 1887. The PPA is fighting the Washington law on the basis that it violates federal law by unfairly discriminating against the online gambling industry. So far the case has been heard by a trial court and then an appeals court. It is now set to be heard by the Washington State Supreme Court. The outcome of this case should definitely be interesting.