The PokerStars’s Spring Championship of Online Poker, also called SCOOP, and is the biggest tour of online poker tournament in France. In the world of professional poker players, the new player of Poker770's team, Koen De Visscher, has achieved an amazing result. Indeed, he has won the PokerStars’s Spring Championship of Online Poker tournament in 2008 with a buy-in of 1000 $ and won 122.000 $!

Koen De Visscher has been very good players achieving many good results and been accumulating earnings at online poker games. The last arrived in the 770's Team, was representing for the online poker room poker770 along with Coralie Nauder and Jamel Maistriaux, which hopefully promises us further surprises!

Atlantic City might be the second biggest gambling capital in the U.S. in terms of revenues from casinos and card rooms, however, in a recently completed poll it came only third amongst destinations gamblers and card players would choose to go to if they were planning a gambling trip. Las Vegas is topping the chart followed by New Orleans, a city more often mentioned in connection with good music than casinos or poker. According to a regional president of Caesars Entertainment that owns four casinos in Atlantic City, the current trend is mixing multiple kinds of entertainment – gambling must be complemented with shopping, wellness, and, of course, good food. Caesar’s venues are not the only ones redesigning their business structure in this way.

Another couple of poker websites is leaving the U.S. market, doing so as soon as of May 1 2011. Playersonly and Sportsbook.com will let the already signed-up U.S. players in their online poker rooms, however, new U.S. signups won’t be possible after that date. These two websites created the largest groups of online poker players after PokerStars and FullTillt were shut down. Players turned to operators who would still accept them and those were subsequently so overwhelmed with the new demand that they asked affiliates to stop promoting. For the time being, e.g. Carbonpoker.com is still staying on the U.S. market, however, sites that have been accepting U.S. players are pondering withdrawal to avoid a similar fate that stroke the biggest online poker websites.

The crackdown on several major online poker websites might have consequences even in the land based poker industry. Right now, the WSOP is in focus, with question marks hovering over the expected number of participants this year. The event is starting on May 31 in Las Vegas with the main event taking place beginning July 7. Last year, over 7,000 players turned up. Back then, there were multiple possibilities to win a buy-in and a poker round-trip at major poker sites like PokerStars whose business is now under investigation by the FBI. When the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act was passed in 2006, operators remember the number of entries falling since poker sites were not able any more to pay their player’s entries via money transfers. Whilst the WSOP is operated by Caesar’s Entertainment who are not entangled in the current turmoil and even though it’s a land based affair, developments in the online branch of the industry might still affect this year’s turnout.

As Hawai lawmakers are arriving to a decision on poker (legalize or not legalize), space for controversy opens and a clash of opinions is currently hanging in the air over the beautiful islands that need a boost to the economy. Poker is not gambling. This sentence, long known and long heard around, still has a mighty pool of opponents and it is necessary to repeat again and again that skill overrides fortune when it comes to games like Texas Holde’m or Omaha poker. This may seem an insignificant fact and not one to be debated in political circles, however, the contrary is the truth – it’s a fact crucial in a state that prohibits gambling. This question also gives rise to a more philosophical thinking and poses another one: In principle, where is actually the difference between betting on sports, which is a fixture in virtually every community in the world, and gambling or even poker, which are games so often denounced and crucified by law?