There is huge turmoil in the world of online poker after three of the world’s major online poker sites were shut down by the FBI last Friday, 15 April, now labelled Black Friday in the online poker community.

US federal prosecutors filed an indictment charging the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, as well as nine other individuals, of operating illegal gambling businesses. Federal prosecutors also filed a civil lawsuit of $3 billion in money laundering penalties, accusing the online poker companies of disguising the money they received from US poker players as payments to non-related online merchants such as jewelers and golf ball suppliers.

The PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker.com internet domain names were seized to stop the companies from operating in the US, and a federal judge enforced a restraining order against 76 bank accounts in 14 countries that are connected with these online poker companies.

The accused poker operators have maintained that they were not violating US laws, and that poker is a game of skill and not gambling, but have not commented since last Friday. Some legal land-based casinos have been in the process of setting up lucrative deals with these online sites. These deals will no longer go ahead.

The indictment still maintains that PokerStars, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker “…used fraudulent methods to avoid restrictions and to receive billions of dollars from United States residents who gambled” and “…deceived or directed others to deceive United States banks and financial institutions into processing billions of dollars in payments”.

The above-mentioned online poker companies are not run in the US but are estimated to have made over $1.4 billion in revenue from US players.

An online poker obsessive has pleaded guilty to stealing £7.4 million worth of chips and awaits sentencing.

Ashley Mitchell hacked into the Zygna online poker game and stole over 400 billion virtual poker chips before trying to launder them out through various Facebook accounts.

Before he was caught, Mitchell was able to sell around 30 per cent of his 400 billion chip stash. He charged £430 per billion chips and netted £53,000.

The incident happened in the summer of 2009 when Mr Mitchell pretended to be an administrator for Zygna games once he had hacked into their system.

However the poker game company quickly realized that something was amiss and set up a trap to catch him.

Having admitted that he has a gambling problem, Mr Mitchell pleaded guilty to the five charges of computer misuse brought against him in Exeter court, UK.

Mr Mitchell already has previous as he tried to hack into computers in a local council, an offence for which he was given a suspended sentence.

Now he has been remanded while a date for the sentencing is set up.

Speaking at his case Judge Philip Wassall said that Mr Mitchell would face the full weight of the law.

There are two poker tables set up in William Snyder’s math classroom at George Mason High School and both are buzzing. At one, 17 year old Daniel Fletcher is trying to decide what to do with his four of hearts and two of clubs.

Fletcher is part of a growing trend to take poker from casinos to classrooms in a drive to get kids to use card-table concepts for math and logical-reasoning lessons.

After his pile of chips grew substantially throughout last week, he inadvertently summed up the exercise: "I don't know whether math class is helping me with poker, or whether poker is helping me in math class,"

The poker club Fletcher is part of is sponsored by his school and since it started in September has become one of the most popular extracurricular activities offered by the high school.

The club has also resulted in a popular debate resurfacing. Anti-gambling groups are questioning whether the club is bringing up unhealthy gambling habits in the kids participating. Gambling has already been recognised as a problem amongst teenagers in the US.

Principal Tyrone Byrd has defended their decision by saying: "We know the kids could play outside of school, but when they're here, we have the opportunity to show them how to play responsibly and to show them how the game relates to their education," said Mason Principal Tyrone Byrd.

Byrd set up ground rules to protect the teenagers: no real money is allowed to be used and the emphasis must be on the game’s educational relevance.

Universities have been on this wavelength for some time with many offering classes that deconstructed the game’s “marvellous architecture” as Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson puts it.

Nesson’s classes are about more than basic statistics, but about understanding the anatomy of reasoning and human behaviour - "about teaching them to contend in a contentious environment."

With his students Nesson formed the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society in 2007 and the club has since expanded to a number of other top universities. Its members aim to deliver their mission statement that poker, "can be used as a powerful teaching tool at all levels of academia and in secondary education."
 
Anti-gambling activists are insisting that these lessons are not suited to high school students who might get heavily influenced by high-stakes poker and celebrity players and start playing on the very easily accessible online poker rooms.

The Annenberg Public Policy Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania released a study last month that found that 15 percent of boys between 14 and 17 years old gamble using cards at least once a month.

 So while there is no doubt that the game is popular amongst teenagers and also holds a large amount of potential for being used as an educational tool perhaps the emphasis should not be on whether or not to offer the game at schools but how the game can be taught so that teenagers can play it, enjoy it and learn from it in a healthy and constructive environment.

Jonathan Duhamel evolved into Canada’s very first World Series of Poker main-event champion, knocking out John Racener to recieve the $8.9 million 1st award.

Duhamel received the No-Limit Texas Hold’Em world championship following approximately two hours of heads-up play that commenced yesterday at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

The 23-year-old Duhamel, ran over to a group of pals wearing Montreal Canadiens hockey jerseys following the winning hand and was raised into the air in succesion. He then been given a diamond-encrusted gold bracelet in onjunction to the leading prize, which was piled on the table in stacks of $100 bills.

The head-to-head final capped the $10,000 buy-in event that initiated in July with 7,319 participants. Nine avid gamers advanced to the ultimate table, with seven being eliminated during a 13-hour session that was completed early on the morning hours of Nov. 7.

Duhamel majored in finance before dropping out of the University of Quebec in Montreal. He’s been a full-time poker pro -- mostly online -- for about the last two years, earning $43,000 in WSOP events before today’s payday.

As one country puts laws into place to shut down online gambling and poker, another takes steps to legalise and therefore regulate online poker.

On August the 20th, Judge NB Tuchten handed down a new judgement stating that gambling using digital products would now become illegal in South Africa. This means that if online gambling operators and online players within South Africa continue to operate or play, they will be in direct contravention of the law and face a R10-million fine or 10 years in jail, or both. Seems like they mean business this time! But how will they enforce this? It has proved notoriously difficult for other countries and US states to do so.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the Dutch government-sponsored Online Gaming Advisory Committee has realised that the current laws are completely ineffectual with regards to online poker and is now recommending the legalisation of online poker just like sports-betting and lotteries are presently legal and state sponsored. There are a number of reasons for this but one of the stronger ones is that the only viable way to curb online poker if it were to be deemed illegal would be to have ISP providers block sites which would violate current EU fair trade laws. If the Dutch government does take the advice of the Online Gaming Advisory Committee, the laws will be similar to the online poker laws that have been implemented in France recently, where only online poker rooms that were licensed in Holland would be able to provide online gambling to Dutch residents.

WSOP bracelet winner Annie Duke, otherwise known as the “Duchess of Poker” can now add another name to her collection- a congressional witness- as she is now advocating the right for every American to gamble online in the privacy of their own homes.

Duke expressed this view to the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday, and also argued that there were huge advantages to legalising and regulating an ever growing and lucrative underground online gambling market.

"At its most basic level, the issue before this committee is personal freedom, the right of individual Americans to do what they want in the privacy of their homes without the intrusion of the government," Duke said.

As it presently stands, online poker is illegal in the US but players still go to the online casino sites that are set up offshore and therefore beyond the reach of federal regulators.

Duke is firmly behind the views of Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, who is trying to introduce a bill that would legalise and tax the online gambling websites.

Frank advocates the players’ freedom to choose: "Unwise choices [are] part of freedom."

If this bill is passed the taxes on it could bring in almost $42 billion for the federal government for the next 10 years.