A town council has defended its action in stopping a bingo caller saying “two fat ladies 88″ and “legs 11″ due to fears that players might sue.

Former mayor John Sayers, 75, who runs weekly bingo at the town hall in Sudbury, Suffolk, said he had been advised to stop using these phrases. He said no one had complained about being offended, but players had since moaned that his new style is “boring”.

Sudbury Town Council said it had issued the advice due to legal concerns.

Sue Brotherwood, Sudbury Town Council clerk, said: “We hear these things, of people being sued because of it, and obviously we have to take it on board.

“It’s very sad that everyone seems to have lost their sense of humour.”

Mr Sayers, a serving councillor, told the BBC: “The concern was that if there might be two large ladies in the audience when I said ‘two fat ladies 88′ or someone might think I was looking at their legs when I said ‘legs 11′.

“I was advised that someone might take offence and we could end up being taken to court.”

He added: “I don’t like it. “No-one had ever complained about being offended. But they moan now, they say it’s boring. And I think just saying the numbers is boring too. “I’m obviously not being offensive – just having a bit of fun. It’s the tradition of the game and part of our language.”

Amir Vahedi, the poker player known for his oversized cigars and playful attitude at the table and on TV, has died due to complications from diabetes.

The news of Vahedi’s passing quickly spread amongst poker players and poker fans through social media sites.  Professional poker player Mark Seif sent a message through Twitter stating, “I’ve just been told by close friends of Amir Vahedi, that Vahedi passed away in Las Vegas on January 8, 2010, due to complications involving blood sugar levels.  Waiting for for more details.  Devastating news.  Very very sad.”

Jeffrey Pollack, former tournament director for the World Series of Poker, tweeted, “Amir was one of my favorite people in poker…. This is so sad, RIP my friend, your laugh will always be missed!”

Vahedi made the televised final table of the World Series of Poker main event in 2003, taking home $250,000 in prize money.  Through his career he has officially recorded $2.5 million in tournament prize money.

Vahedi was a former Iranian soldier and veteran of the Iran-Iraq war before coming to America as a political refugee.  He is credited with teaching a number of people the finer arts of poker, including Hollywood celebrity Ben Affleck.

Estonia is preparing to welcome a new surge of international investment after making online gambling legal.

The legalisation will also boost public finances through a specific taxation imposed on gaming operators, the Estonian Free Press reports. This year Estonians will be able to play nation-based gaming platforms such as the one set up by Olympic Casino group. Full international access to the Estonian gaming market will come into force in 2011.

According to the news provider, the decision to legalise online gambling comes after the success of the Baltic Poker Festival and the policy of other European governments to boost revenues from gambling by adopting ad-hoc legislation.

The Estonian market could be a gateway to high levels of investment for the whole Baltic market from international gambling operators, the report added.

This week, the market analyst Mondo Visione reported a marked increase in international investment interests in Estonia in 2009 as its stock exchange saw the second highest number of transactions in the last decade.

Facebook, has announced an outright ban on advertising online casinos. This is despite the ongoing efforts in the U.S. to legalise and regulate the industry.

The site has released a list of around twenty industries which they find objectionable that includes, “gambling, including without limitation any online casino, sports books, bingo or poker”, these products sit beside firearms, tobacco and spy cameras on the list of banned advertising.

The list goes on to ban and monitor under strict policies: uncertified pharmaceuticals, inflammatory religious content, pyramid schemes and nudity. The company intends to protect its vast online community by adopting and implementing advertising censorship.

The banning of online casino advertising, however, does not stop online gaming operators creating facebook groups and fan pages in order to stay in contact with fans and players, updating them on news and promotions happening at their sites.

A tipster vowed to have a champion racehorse killed in a bid to stop it running in a major race – because he forgot to put a bet on it.

Andrew Rodgerson, 26, realised he faced owing £56,000 to a betting syndicate when he discovered he was too late to place the last piece of an accumulator on Conduit winning the last of a series of races. So he used terror tactics to try to force the owners of the four-year-old colt to withdraw it from the £500,000 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

After getting the numbers of the Ballymacoll Stud from newspaper adverts, Rodgerson sent a string of email and text messages to the manager with one reading: “We don’t believe you are taking the death of Conduit very seriously.

“We want the horse removed from the King George race this weekend. If you co-operate the horse will live. There are people in and around Newmarket ready and willing and there will also be people at Ascot on Saturday.”

But just two days before the race, Rodgerson was tracked down by detectives from two police forces who traced the messages to his bedroom 300 miles away in Balderstones, Rochdale, Greater Manchester, where he had set up a secret betting base. It emerged he had become so busy at his regular job at a travel agency he forgot to complete the sequence of bets he had been asked to place – leaving his syndicate out of pocket. Conduit later romped home to victory.

On Monday, Rodgerson, 26, pleaded guilty to threatening to commit damage and was sentenced to 34 weeks in prison, suspended for two years, and was ordered to complete 240 hours of unpaid work. His not guilty plea to blackmail was accepted.

Bolton Crown Court was told the offence occurred in July when Conduit, which had already won £1 million in prize money, was favourite to win the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

Peter Reynolds, the manager of the Ballymacoll stud in Ireland where Conduit was bred, initially received a text message which said: “Dear Peter, we would just like to warn you should Conduit run in the King George then the horse will be killed.” Mr Reynolds then alerted the colt’s trainer. “Mr Reynolds was concerned that, after 37 years in the industry, he had never received any threatening messages before,” said Duncan Wilcock, prosecuting.

Four hours later, Mr Reynolds got an email from a person who claimed he had heard a conversation in a bar in Manchester in which the horse Conduit was discussed and he claimed to have overheard that if it ran the horse would be killed. Mr Reynolds waited five days before calling police but then got the personal email from Rodgerson warning of people “ready and willing” to kill Conduit if he ran in the race.

Rodgerson’s mother later told police her son had had a gambling habit since he was 19 and kept large amounts of money in his bedroom. Rodgerson – said to come from a religious family – said he often placed £300-400 bets each way on particular horses up to five times a day and built up his syndicate through friends at a cricket club.

Defending, Joseph Hart said: “He met local businessmen who liked to put money on the horses, and liked to make clever bets. He was put in touch with a gambling syndicate and there were people putting up much bigger sums of money. “They told him when and where to put the bets on. They would bet on the best horses at the best races at the best odds.

“He was working in a travel agency but in the background he had the betting syndicate, which would insist on him putting bets on all through the day at specific times with specific companies and he forgot. “He had a great big bet to put on Conduit on the accumulator and he forgot. He was too busy at work and didn’t put it on at the right time with the right company. “And he suddenly found himself realising that if Conduit won he would owe this syndicate around £55,000. He was utterly and completely terrified – he simply didn’t know what to do. So he panicked and committed an unsophisticated and stupid crime.”

Conduit went on to win the race, netting more than £500,000 in prize money. In November, he won his second consecutive Breeders’ Cup title before running fourth in the Japan Cup. He is now standing as a stallion in Japan.

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Former tennis great Boris Becker will be one of the famous faces attending the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure charity poker tournament to benefit the American Foundation for AIDS Research in The Bahamas on January 8.

The amfAR Charity Event will run as part of the PCA Festival of Poker at the Atlantis in The Bahamas with celebrities, sports stars and top pro players among those set to take part. The tournament will have a $5,250 buy-in and half of the entire prize pool will go to amfAR to support their innovative research to help fight the global AIDS epidemic.

This star-studded event will welcome major PokerStars-sponsored sports stars such as NHL star and Olympic gold medalist Mats Sundin, tennis legend Boris Becker and French rugby player Sebastien Chabal as well as members of Team PokerStars Pro – including newly-crowned World Series champion Joe Cada.

Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu is a big supporter of PokerStars charity initiatives and has pledged his support. “PokerStars is bringing a truly innovative and fulfilling cause to the PCA this year through their partnership with amfAR. As a member of Team PokerStars Pro, I feel very lucky to be able to participate in, and contribute to, such a worthwhile cause in the name of AIDS research.”

Founded in 1985, amfAR is dedicated to ending the global AIDS epidemic through innovative research. With the freedom and flexibility to respond quickly to emerging areas of scientific promise, amfAR plays a role in accelerating the pace of HIV/AIDS research and achieving real breakthroughs. amfAR has invested nearly $290 million in its mission and has awarded grants to more than 2,000 research teams worldwide.

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One thing that most people don’t expect from online casinos is to have their losses returned but that is exactly what has happened as a yet unnamed online casino has agreed to return 500,000 Euros.

There are some other important parts to the equation. The money was gambled by an employee of an (also) unnamed company. It would now seem that this particular employee is a problem gambler and had embezzled the money from the company.

While the situation of the the online casino agreeing to return the money is unusual, the circumstances surrounding the incident have made it both potentially a legal and public relations nightmare scenario.

Swift movement on the part of the online casino has headed of both these problems and when if the casino is eventually named their action may actually turn out to be a very smart move as most of the reporting of this incident so far has been very positive.

Sin City welcomed some 315,000 revelers for New Year’s Eve with fireworks from casino rooftops, celebrity toasts at nightclubs and a traffic-free Las Vegas Strip. The downtown Fremont Street Experience hoped to host 35,000 partiers as it held a bash with nine bands and a countdown by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman.

Bundled-up revelers began trickling in at 6 p.m. for a block party with plenty of street-side bars and 2010 knickknacks. Bartenders flipped shakers and danced on the bar, while crowds sang along with tribute bands playing hits from U2, Van Halen and Aerosmith.

Elsa Valenzuela, a 27-year-old third-grade teacher from Victorville, Calif., said that despite graduating from high school and college during the last 10 years, she’s glad to move on from the past decade. “The horrible outfits, the bad hair,” she said as she and her boyfriend wore matching novelty hats and beads. “I really think it’s just more like thinking ahead on the possibilities and the good that we can do and the changes that we can make.”

David Fraley, 56, of Las Vegas, said he’s also ready to get away from the aughts. “This decade’s over, let’s get a better one going,” said Fraley, who said he lost his job as a supermarket liquor clerk in March. “My wish is a job. I’ve been laid off. I need work,” he said, sporting glasses that displayed “2010″ in blue lights.

On the Strip, actress Eva Longoria was scheduled to host at Eve nightclub at CityCenter, the newest casino complex in town. Other celebrity hosts at various clubs included rapper 50 Cent, singer Robin Thicke, Nicole Ritchie and Maroon 5, while DJs Mix Master Mike, Jermaine Dupri and DJ Z-Trip were scheduled to spin.

Las Vegas Boulevard was closed to vehicles from the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino to the Sahara. Police spokesman Ramon Denby said there were no major problems before 11 p.m., with eight adults arrested for various misdemeanors and one juvenile arrested for being on the Strip past curfew without a chaperone. Official crowd counts were not immediately available, Denby said.

At midnight, more than seven minutes of fireworks were shot from seven casinos on the Strip, stretching more than four miles from the MGM Grand to the Stratosphere. The show cost an estimated $500,000 and was brought back to the rooftops after a toned-down fireworks show last year was panned by tourists, city officials and casino executives.

Gone from the festivities were stunts. Last year, three stunts were performed in Las Vegas as part of television specials. This year, television networks Fox, ABC and CNN all planned New Year’s Eve programming from Las Vegas.

Tourism officials said they expected the city’s 148,000 hotel rooms to be 96 percent full as casinos slash prices to get more people in town.

The estimate of 315,000 tourists eclipsed last year’s total of 312,000 visitors, but the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said it expected folks to spend less than they did last year because of the bargains.

The agency, which promotes tourism to Las Vegas, estimated revelers would spend $183.4 million, down from $199.5 million last year.

In downtown Reno, several casinos pooled efforts to bring back fireworks in hopes the display would add excitement and encourage more visitors. The tradition went on hiatus last year as companies tried to save money.

They planned a $65,000, 15-minute show with Michael Jackson-themed music.