Online Poker industry is booming. Undeterred by USA ban on online gaming and France’s reluctant to open poker, casino and other gambling market online poker rooms are mushrooming. Almost every month a new online poker room is launched with a variety of poker games to keep poker enthusiast engaged in this game of skills and luck.

UK and other EU countries, Asian countries and rest of world has kept the online gaming industry alive which was otherwise doomed to be a failure after USA ban.

With emergence of new online poker rooms the competition is getting tougher. Poker rooms are offering a number of attractive goodies including sign up poker bonus to new poker players, Poker tournaments with guaranteed prize money and a number of other prizes.

Traditional online poker rooms such as Titan Poker, CDPoker, Mansion Poker, Red Kings Poker, Virgin Poker, and America’s very own Duplicate Poker survived USA ban and expanded their market base to rest of world. There are very few online poker rooms which still accept USA players Poker Nordica, the Denmark based online poker room, is one of them.

There are other online poker rooms such as Duplicate Poker which offer unique poker games and not com under scrutiny of USA law.

However the future is bright for online poker industry. French Govt. has recently announced that it will be allow the gambling industry to start operations in the first half of next year. Online gaming industry is lobbying hard to get the ban lifted in USA which is certainly going to happen sooner or later given the fact that poker and other gambling is national hobby than a sinful business.

France announced, last Friday, that it will
soon open its market for Online Poker,
online betting and gaming market.

Two days after a meeting with Charlie
McCreevy, the European
Commissioner
for Internal Market and Services, French
Budget Minister Eric Woerth reportedly
communicated the guidelines in which
France will undertake a “controlled
opening” of its online gaming market.

The meeting highlighted on the European
Commission’s infringement procedure
against France, the possible methods or measures in implementing the opening of online gambling market in France, and the period of time for the measures to be approved by the French legislature.

Woerth said that he will discuss the guidelines with the French Government on a cabinet meeting scheduled Wednesday.

Taxation levels for online gambling firms, according to Woerth, had not been set for the reason that he wanted to consult first the different parties involved in the sports and betting industry.

Other than the taxation levels, the sports team sponsorship issues has not yet been discussed.

Woerth also wanted to make sure that the technology, they will use in electronic data processing and financial transactions , is well secured.

By autumn, the bill to open the online gambling market will be presented to the French parliament.

The regulatory body is said to start setting up during the first half of 2009, awarding of licenses will take place before 2009 ends.

Operators or parties are required to obey any decision that will be handed down by the present legislative set up.

As of the present day, online games or any promotions related to them are still forbidden.

According to Woerth, the operator’s behavior concerning promotions about online gambling will be considered and evaluated before the awarding of licenses.

Anyone who will disobey the present rule will be accountable and will pursued by French authorities.

Referring to the monopoly and competition of online gambling sites in other countries, Woerth proudly said that it is for the sake of “realism” that France decided to open its doors for the online gambling market.

He was reportedly happy to announce that his dialogue with State Secretary for European Affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet, was successful.

Since Commissioner McCreevy said that guidelines Woerth presented to him was positive, the bill will be presented to the commission before presenting it to the Parliament.

If everything is successful, Online Poker, casino games, like roulette and blackjack will be launched.

Awarding of licenses will be done by regulatory authorities to make sure that the young will be protected and to make that safe gambling will be strictly enforced.

Licenses of a five year period will be given to operators with reference to industry sectors; licenses obtained in other European states are welcome to apply for licensing in France.

This has got to be the luckiest year of David Singer and Eric Lindgren who both won their first Word Series of Poker bracelets in the morning of June 5.

Considered to be two of the best Poker players of this generation, Singer and Lindgren had bagged the most wanted bracelet in the Poker industry.

Victory sided with Singer when he participated in the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha event.

Reports said that Singer was not expecting this win because he was already discouraged , earlier in the match, upon reaching the final table.

Singer had the second lowest chip stack of 83,000 when he got into the final table but proved victorious after he played carefully, sticked to his game plan, and chose the correct spots where he could play.

Lindgren reportedly won the toughest final table in the history of World Series of Poker. He is a victor of $5,000 Mixed holdem Limit/No Limit event and beat other known poker players like Howard Lederer, David Williams, Justin Bonomo, and Rolande de Wolfe.

According to reports, Lindgren’s had won because of his game plan which was to play tight in the no limit and play loose in limit part of the event.

Lindgren, just like Singer, had to struggle from a low chip count earlier in the match; Lindgren reportedly said that he had already entered another tournament because he thought that winning in this tournament was next to impossible.

Good thing these poker players did not give up, because if they did give up, they would not have the most coveted bracelet everyone is dying to have.

Lindgren is a team member of Full Tilt and is an American professional poker player who has several victories behind him; his first major victory was at Bellagio in year 2002.

Singer, on the other hand, is a poker professional from New York; he used to be an environmental lawyer of a non profit organization working on issues concerning the Long Island Sound.

He earned $1,000,000 last year when he played in the Caesars Palace Classic $9,800 No Limit Hold’em Championship Event.

Reports said that at about 1:00
a.m. on June 3rd Nenad Medic
was named the Pot Limit
Hold’em Champion in the first
event of the 2008 World Series of
Poker at the Rio Hotel and
Casino.

It is said that it was no easy task
for Nenad because he had to fight
his way through a final table that
consisted of well known pros such as Phil Laak, Patrick Antonius, Kathy Liebert, Andy Bloch and Mike Sexton.

Going into the final table Nenad was reportedly 2nd in chips with about 1.2 million and it did not take long for Nenad to bust another player out of the tournament, because on only the 5th hand of the day Phil Laak moved all in and Nenad called and flipped over pocket aces and after the board was laid out Nenad’s aces held up and Phil Laak was knocked out in 9th place. A couple other victims to fall to Nenad were Chris Bell who Nenad knocked out in 6th place and Kathy Liebert who was knocked out in 3rd place by Nenad.

It was now down to heads up action between Nenad Medic who sat at 4.94 million in chips and Andy Bloch who sat at only 2.1 million in chips. It was a long and stressful heads up game which took over an hour of play and on the last hand of the match Nenad turned a heart flush and Any Bloch had a pair of nines. For his win Nenad won is very first World Series of Poker Bracelet and he took home over $794,000.

According to reports, Nenad is a former college basketball player turned Poker professional.

While at the University of Waterloo, Medic has already been playing Poker with his team mates. And after his graduation, instead of playing basketball professionally, Medic started playing Online Poker professionally.

Success is without a doubt in a favor of Medic. He reportedly made his first success in WPT final table at Pokerstars.com and in Carribbean Poker adventure in 2005.

January of 2006 came where he won the final table at the Aussie Millions. He bagged the 3rd place and earned $282,432. He also earned $1,717,194 when he won the final table at the World Poker finals last year.

Reports also said that Nenad is a sponsored pro with Full Tilt, a popular Poker Room.

Medic plays Online Poker under the alias Serb2127, a Poker Review said.