Strange but true: Ladbrokes, a prominent UK betting company, is in trouble because it ran two television ads linking gambling to reckless behavior. From the Guardian:

The betting company ran two TV ads, described as "pastiches of documentary-style filming", telling the story of two adrenaline junkies who came to a sticky end after taking one risk too many.

One of the ads featured a fictional eyepatch-wearing character called Willem Snyman, described as a "mentor and oceanic guru", who talked about the demise of a shark-diving student.

Snyman explained that the student's headstrong attitude and extreme appetite for risk-taking led him to tie raw bacon and sausages to his wetsuit and dive in shark infested waters in a seal costume.

"All we could bury was his flipper," explained Snyman.

The other ad was narrated by the fictional J "Snake Eyes" Kowalski, a pilot and skydiving pioneer, talking about the death of his student Ted.

Ted was said to have died after experimenting with smaller and smaller parachutes, until one day he jumped using just an empty 30g potato chip packet.

Both ads ended with the line "If only he'd seen ladbrokescasino.com it would have quenched his thrill buds."

The Advertising Standards Authority received one complaint that the TV ads portrayed gambling in a context of toughness and linked it to risk-taking and reckless behaviour.

In its defence, Ladbrokes said that the humour was "deliberately exaggerated and ridiculous" and that the cautionary nature of the of the stories "actively encouraged caution and moderation over extreme behaviour and recklessness".

Ladbrokes TV ads banned for linking gambling to reckless behaviour | Media | guardian.co.uk.

It’s wonderful that one complaint can stop an ad campaign in its tracks. Or that it’s taboo to air a comedic portrayal of gambling as a surrogate for reckless behavior. Shouldn’t Ladbrokes be applauded for their candor? The subtext of the ads is that if you seek too much risk, you’ll end up regretting it. It doesn’t really make me want to go out and get some action down on the Eagles this weekend.

Manchester won’t be getting a Golden Nugget-sized “supercasino” anytime soon, thanks to the House of Lords (not the Sahara’s quondam steakhouse). From the Sun:

PLANS to build Britain’s first supercasino in Manchester were THROWN OUT by the House of Lords yesterday.

In a disaster for Prime Minister Tony Blair and Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, peers blocked the Government’s Gambling Order by 123 votes to 120.

The shock result leaves the vision of Las Vegas-style casinos in Britain in tatters. And plans for 16 smaller casinos are also on hold.

Ms Jowell won’t put a fresh order before Parliament until at least May.

Any new scheme is not likely to come to Parliament until after Chancellor Gordon Brown has taken over as Prime Minister — and he is lukewarm about the supercasino plans.

Ministers had heralded the plans to allow unlimited jackpot machines and roulette tables in huge leisure complexes. Last month Manchester was the surprise choice by an independent panel for the first supercasino, beating Blackpool and London’s Millennium Dome.

The Sun Online – News: Lords wreck hope of gambling

I think this will actually open the door for more than one “supercasino” within the next few years.

Even though I’ve never been to Blackpool, England, I’ve always had affinity for it–at least since I heard people describing it as the Atlantic City of the UK. Like AC, the city has had some bad beats in the past. Also like my hometown, it has been looking to casino gaming to rejuvenate it. But when it came time for the UK’s Casino Advisory Panel to select a site for the nation’s single super-casino, it was snake eyes for the casino resort. Many are in a state of shock. From Blackpool Online:

Amazement, anger, bewilderment – the list is endless when trying to describe the sense of feeling against what many see as a gross injustice.
“Blackpool had the best case, proved it and still lost” is a sentiment shared by a town in shock at the decision to award the lucrative prize to Manchester.
Our North West neighbours were, said the CAP, the best bet on all counts – for helping assist regeneration of a poor district and as the social impact test bed for Las Vegas-style glitz and gambling.
Not so, say MPs, council leaders and Gazette readers who today made an 11th hour appeal to Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell to think again ahead of the crucial Parliamentary vote on the matter.
Blackpool will lose millions in potential regeneration revenue by the decision to hand the one-and-only licence to a modern, cosmopolitan city already having benefited from £2bn of private sector investment in the last five years.
The reason for such strong support for Blackpool’s case locally comes from the 180-page CAP report – the same one which so publically damned the resort’s bid.
It stated the casino was not enough to boost Blackpool’s fortunes, would not be instrumental in its rebirth and claimed
Blackpool was not in terminal decline.
The Fylde’s four MPs have branded the Casino Advisory Panel report as littered with “inconsistencies” and “contradictions”.
They have accused the panel of missing the point when it came to assessing the “catalystic potential” of the super casino to trigger further massive investment in Blackpool.

Blackpool Today Blackpool news – Casino – a colossal blunder

I really feel for the people of Blackpool. The whole casino selection process strikes me as bizarre. Why not just let citizens of Blackpool vote in a referendum on whether they want casino gaming or not? Is that too much democracy? I guess it’s just a politico-cultural difference between the UK and the States.

If it’s any consolation, the first bid to get casinos legalized in Atlantic City failed as well.

Speaking of AC, I watched the Louis Malle movie Atlantic City last night. It was the first time that I’d seen it all the way through. I’ve got to say it’s an interesting depiction of the city circa 1980–I’m not sure how accurate it was (I was only 7 at the time). A few things rang true, a few rang false. It might be that movie audiences are much more sophisticated now, but the whole “stolen drug shipment” storyline didn’t seem very well thought out–not compared to True Romance, anyway. I was also a little bummed out that no one spoke with a real Philly/South Jersey accent. Still, it was nice seeing the old Resorts, and the old boards, and what I think was the inside of the Knife and Fork. I’ve got a feeling that if they’d shot a scene inside the Baltimore Grill, it would look pretty much the same today.

Someone who’s got a better memory of the city at the time of the shooting could answer this question: Is the apartment building where they all lived on the site of today’s Flagship? I kind of think so, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

One funny note: most of the vacant lots that you see in the movie are, after 27 years of “redevelopment,” still vacant.

Here’s an interesting story about roulette cheating from the UPI:

London casinos are bracing for a possible onslaught of gamblers equipped with a device that claims to provide a big edge to roulette players.

The gadget uses software to calculate where the little white ball is most likely to land. However, it has not yet been declared illegal by British gambling regulators.

Gambling analysts told The Guardian that the Gaming Commission appears unwilling to ban the devices because it would be an admission that roulette can be biased.

The Commission has urged casinos not to pay players caught using the gadget, which consists of a concealed clicker that records the ball, and a computer that calculates its speed and motion and then delivers a prediction of where it will land via an earpiece.

The devices cost about 1,000 pounds $1,268. It came to the commissions attention a couple of years ago when a suspected gang of professional gamblers used them to win more than 1 million pounds $1.64 million at the Ritz casino in London.

United Press International – NewsTrack – London casinos brace for roulette cheats

A few years ago I wrote this up somewhere online, saying that I thought it was impossible. I then got an email from a guy who says that it really, really works, and he has the money to prove it.

So even though I tend to be skeptical of these kind of high-tech “schemes” (it’s not cheating if it isn’t against the law, is it?), I’m willing to concede that this may work.

But it seems that the Commission is putting the casinos into a tough spot–how can they refuse to pay out if the device isn’t illegal?

I have the feeling that there is more to this story than was published here.

The UK Casino times has a list of Great Gambling Quotations that literary-minded gamblers might find inspiring. It draws on everyone from Harvey Keitel to Jean Cocteau, and is nothing if not catholic in its reach.

Just because you shuffle off your mortal coil doesn’t mean you have to stop gambling. For that matter, it’s got a distinct advantage: you don’t have to pay off your markers. Of course, you can’t really collect your winnings, either, but the thrill of getting action down is really the important thing, isn’t it?
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“I don’t want to be the one to call it the dumbing down of Britain, but I think its the dumbing down of Britain.”
–Warren Lush, chief oddsmaker at Ladbrokes, on the huge upswing in novelty betting on everything from televised talent shows to whether someone will live to be 100. You can read the full story of novelty betting here: baltimoresun.com – English risk odds on oddest of wagers.

This came to my attention because I’m currently writing the chapter of Roll the Bones dealing with the initial English gaming mania (1660-1750), and novelty betting was huge back then, too.

When I saw the headline Ministers to kill off cuddly gambling bears, I had to read the article. It turns out that prize toys are the latest political football to be kicked around in the British casino debate.
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The British government has released its plans for an expanded casino industry.
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As I discuss in my forthcoming book about the Wire Act (the title is still evolving), the current US “prohibition” of online gaming is encountering significant challenges. This article discusses some of them.
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The US isn’t the only country trying unsuccessfully to stop foreign companies from offering Internet gaming to its citizens. The Czech republic is facing similar problems:
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Parliament has published plans of Great Britain’s overhauled gambling bill. From BBC News, courtesy of David McDowell:

The new law, if approved by Parliament, will allow casinos with up to 1,250 slot machines and unlimited jackpots.

It would ban slot machines from fast food outlets and minicab offices, restrict internet gaming and introduce a new industry regulator.

But opponents, including the Salvation Army, say the bill will lead to an explosion in problem gambling.

Some points of the bill:
- Casinos open 24 hours

- Immediate access for public, no 24-hour joining period

- Unlimited jackpots in largest casinos

- Betting allowed on Good Friday and Christmas Day

- A new criminal offence of inviting, permitting or causing a child to gamble

- Compulsory age checks by gambling websites operating from the UK

- Mystery shopper surveys by the Gambling Commission to check rules followed

- Tighter restrictions on betting exchanges

- Allowing casinos to advertise for first time

BBC NEWS | Politics | Gambling law shake-up is unveiled

Will Britain become the “Las Vegas of Europe?” Will more scholars follow Sir Professor Peter Hall’s example and read Suburban Xanadu to get some insight into the trajectory of the industry in the United States? Will anyone go to British casino buffets? Only time will tell.

Sometimes, I like to step back from things and consider them in historical context. We truly live in a fantastic world of wonders. I’ll explain after this story, from KeralaNext.com:

A mathematics graduate from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who snubbed a 40,000 pound a year banking job to earn a mere 4,500 a week playing internet poker, is all set to earn 234,000 pounds a year as earnings.

According to The Sun, Lee-Anne Smyth began playing at university and in the process made so much money, that she refused a banking job

“Who needs a proper job when I can make what most people earn in a month in a couple of hours?” the paper quoted her as saying.

Lee who logs on to Ladbrokespoker.com and plays for five hours against other gamblers, betting by credit card says, that her 2.2 honours degree in pure and applied mathematics helps her to calculate the odds regarding the number of cards left in the pack.

Lee whose favourite variety happens to be the Texas Hold ‘Em, where players make up their hands from dealt cards and communal ones which are left face up, has reportedly won as much as 7,600 pounds on one single day.

Online gambling more lucrative than banking profession!

Maybe she plays against Nicholas Leeson, the banker who single-handedly brought down Barings bank. In a Casino [ptz] post last month, I discussed his presence at celebpoker.com.

The dubious part of this story is the idea that gambling is an easy road to quick wealth, something that, a a historian of gambling (though not a gambling historian) I have to dispute. I’m glad that Lee-Anne is proficient at “the Texas Hold Em,” but I’d hardly recommend professional poker as a career path for most graduates.

The fantastic part of this story is something I never cease to wonder at; how borders have completely collpased. A guy in Las Vegas using the Internet to quote an Indian news article about an Irish woman who plays online poker is about as much proof of this as you need.