Playtech already lay claim to being the world’s largest (by market cap.) online casino software company and it looks like they want to get a little bigger with the announcement of a £100 million share issue.

46.5 million shares will be offered to the public at a slight discount to Playtech’s (PTEC) current share price – 2.5% cheaper than the price quoted Tuesday last week.  Playtech hasn’t been immune to global market pessimism of late sliding 25% in value over the last 3 months on the back of general EU doom and gloom as well as ongoing issues with JV partner William Hill. There’s a chance the placement price may be at a premium  to market value by the time the book closes for investors!

The £100 million has been earmarked to fund new acquisition and JV opportunities. Already £40 million worth of potential purchases are under review so the company is clearly gearing up for an aggressive 2012.

As well as funding new development opportunities, the placement will help Playtech’s shares move up from London’s AIM to being traded on the main London Stock Exchange.

As for mention of a hedge in the post title…there’s no surer way to hedge your bets than to own a piece of the house your betting with!  Then and again, the way share markets are moving at the moment I reckon roulette’s a safer option.

Related pages:

Playtech Euro live casino

Playtech Asia live casino

Playtech TV gaming

Playtech live roulette

All is not well at William Hill’s Tel Aviv offices according to a report in the Sun yesterday.

William Hill Online (“WHO”) is the online joint venture between William Hill and Playtech and the bulk of their marketing and customer support staff are located in Tel Aviv; or at least they were until a mass walkout over the weekend saw staff numbers reduced from almost 200 to only 20.  Included in the walkout, and confirmed as tendering his resignation was Chief Marketing Officer Eyal Sanoff.

One staff member told the Sun, “All 180 staff walked out on Sunday, which is a working day here, and only 20 came back today”

The cause of the disquiet is a belief among WHO’s Israeli staff that William Hill plans to move the marketing and customer support function to the UK or Gibraltar, leaving them jobless. A statement issued by William Hill denied this to be the case, saying:

“William Hill Online is committed to its sales and marketing operation in Tel Aviv and contrary to media reports has no intention of relocating this operation.”

The statement also read:

“Several other senior managers in Tel Aviv are now subject to disciplinary actions in relation to the disruption this week within the marketing business in Tel Aviv and in the customer service and back-office operations in Manila and Bulgaria

Senior William Hill Online management are currently on the ground in Tel Aviv working through these issues although it should be noted that the office in Tel Aviv will be closed from tomorrow through to early next week, as normal, through the Jewish holiday period.”

According to the Sun, Jim Mullen is among the senior WHO management troubleshooting the issue on the ground in Israel and trying to get staff their back to work.  A source has told the Sun that Mullen has offered staff a month’s pay to return to work.

Related pages at livedealer.org:

WHO is 2011 online company of the year

William Hill live casino review

Playtech platform review

Paddy Power are hours away from taking the wraps off their new-look website that comes with some substantive changes under the hood.

A smarter back-end will give customers an experience more tailored to personal playing preferences, which seems to be where all the big operators are now heading.  Account keeping will also become more seamless with no need to transfer funds between casino and sports betting accounts.

But the big change from a casino play point of view…new software.

This was the note we received from Paddy’s yesterday (emphasis not added)…

“We have some pretty big news at Paddy Power Casino that I wanted to fill you in on. Launching on Monday 3rd October Paddy Power Casino will have a new look website and a different software provider. We are moving from IGT/Wagerworks to Playtech“

IGT/Wagerworks who?  I can hear the live dealer fans asking.

Wagerworks is a subsidiary of gaming machine giant (terrestrial and online) IGT and they power some of the RNG games at Paddy’s…slots and progressive jackpot games mainly.  Evolution Gaming will continue to power their live casino for the time being, but the fact that they now have a closer relationship with Playtech makes you wonder if their could be a change coming down the track?

At the time this post was published, Paddy’s website was off-line and a maintenance page was promising the new-look site would be up and running at 7.00 am (GMT), and that it’d be a change for the better.

Certainly sounds like a change for the smarter.  But I guess if your an online business not moving in that direction you’re in trouble.

Anyway, visit their new site and let us know your thoughts.

Playtech have upgraded their casino lobby giving their live games more prominence.

The new lobby makes it easier to navigate your way around the live casino with game type, table, dealer, limits, available seats and full video capability all displayed on the one page.

BetFred have already added the new lobby, making them the first Playtech casino to do so.  No doubt the other licensees will follow suit pretty soon.

The new lobby is only available in the downloaded casino.  Live games can still be played at the instant casino casino (ie browser play, Adobe Flash) but you won’t get all the whiz-bang navigational tools…just individual links to load each game.

First I’ll get the general stuff out of the way…

1. a cracking new site-wide overhaul; and
2. a new bonus structure with up to €/$1,000 for your 1st deposit, €/$500 on your 2nd deposit (60% match) and €/$2,500 on your 3rd deposit (15% match);

Now the live casino related changes…

More focus has been given to live games on the newly-launched site with a dedicated live dealer page containing direct links to load the each game in browser play format.

The other big change is the addition of a new roulette game (top left).  It’s a totally new look live roulette version from Playtech, and Eurogrand are the only operator currently offering it.

It’s a European roulette game with the same odds, payouts and bet options (neighbour bets easily accessed etc) as Playtech’s standard live roulette game, and the dealers you’ll find sitting at the wheel are the same faces you see at the other Playtech studio tables. But the look of the game…WOW!

It’s like  Evolution Gaming and Playtech got together and created a love child!  Below are a couple of pics…

Plenty of nice features too, like the below outcome history chart…

By the way, don’t be scared by the ‘VIP’ tag.  Minimum bets go down to $/€ 0.10.

Just days after the Spanish Congress passed a new remote gambling law, and before the legislation has been published in the official gazette, it has been announced that the first license has already been awarded.

Casino Gran Madrid is the recipient.  They now hold a license from the autonomous region of Madrid to provide online poker and other casino games including roulette, blackjack and baccarat as soon as they can get them up and running.  And this shouldn’t be too long.

They’ve already signed up Playtech as their software provider – a deal that was struck back in 2009.  No doubt plenty of implementation planning has already taken place in anticipation of the new laws getting up…there are reports that beta testing of their new website and associated software is under way and that the games could be available to players within a month!

The Playtech deal will also give Casino Gran the option of including a range of live games, or TV games in their online casino suite – an option that would be wise to consider given how popular live games are becoming in Spain (judging by the number of casinos tailoring games to Spanish players).

I wouldn’t be surprised if the coming year saw an explosion in the number of live casinos in Spain.

Playtech casinos stood out as having a policy that gives players the chance to complete their hand should it be interrupted by an unexpected internet disconnection.  The policy stated that in the event of disconnection from a live game players will be automatically directed to the RNG version of that game, at the same stage of the deal that you were cut off, upon re-logging in to the casino.

Sounds pretty cool right?  But I hadn’t been disconnected during a live game and so hadn’t experienced this nifty little piece of tech wizardry.  Then it it occurred to me that I only had to turn off my router mid-game to test it out!

So during a game of blackjack at William Hill today, I waited until a point where I definitely would want to be able to play out a hand. With a 2 & 3 against the dealer’s 10 up card I pulled the plug on the router.

Immediately I get the below message from the casino:

A couple of hours later I log back into the casino and true to the policy, I am confronted with the below game console:

Precisely the state of play where I left my live blackjack game two hours earlier.

I played out the hand and as it turns out I lost.  But if I’d had a bucket load riding on this hand and the disconnection had been an unintentional one, I certainly would have appreciated the chance to play it out!

Related pages:

William Hill live casino

Playtech platform review

It’s the second year these awards have been held, aimed at recognizing the best and brightest suppliers of technology products and services to the online gambling industry.

Once again they’ve included a live gaming category, titled Live Casino Supplier of the Year and the shortlisted nominees for the award have been announced as:

• ComTrade d.o.o.
• Evolution Gaming
• Media Live Casino
• Playtech
• Portomaso Gaming
• Visionary iGaming

Evolution Gaming and Playtech would be juggling favouritism with Visionary iGaming and Media Live the dark horses.  If either Comtrade or Portomasa win then someone will need to have a serious chat to the judges and make sure they don’t smoke so much weed during deliberations next year.

If I had to put money on the winner…hard to go past Evolution Gaming.  Last year they won this award as well as Software/Network Rising star of the year so the judges do love ‘em and they haven’t gotten any worse during the past 12 months.  They’re also one of the events major sponsors this year…call me a cynic but I can’t see this hurting their cause even if it shouldn’t be relevant.

All will be revealed Tuesday night!

About time as well!

For a while now Betfair have been touting their real-deal casino games as the best thing since sliced bread.  These are games dealt by what Betfair describe as ‘ultra-realistic CGI avatars‘ that are without doubt technologically impressive, but not really real; not in the sense that the dealers are flesh and blood humans and the cards being dealt are tangible casino playing cards.

Now Betfair can lay claim to having real deal casino games because they’ve finally jumped on the live casino bandwagon and added Playtech’s live deal casino games.

Those of you familiar with live casino gaming may recognize the decor of the casino floor in Betfair’s promo image above…it’s the Playtech European live studio.  Cracking games and a bevy of very attractive and proficient dealers that are now accessible by Betfair’s 3 million plus registered customers.

Hopefully Playtech are going to add some more tables and dealers so the rest of us can still get a seat at our favorite tables!

We’ll get a full review of Betfair up in due course although many of you will already be familiar with the brand. If not here’s a quick & dirty to give you some idea of their standing in the industry:

• founded 1999;
• over 5,000,000 betting transactions processed daily (more than all EU stock exchanges combined);
• over 3,000,000 customers worldwide;
• over 2,000 staff;
• betting exchange offered in 17 different languages;
• official betting partner Manchester United FC;
• official betting partner FC Barcelona;
• official betting partner Ascot Racecourse.

Not a bad mob to be playing with!

You can visit them here if you want to be one of their first live casino players.

Related pages: Betfair live casino review

Until now that is.

From today you can play live baccarat in full screen mode also.  It won’t increase your chances of winning.  But it does make the game more enjoyable to play (I think anyway), simply because it goes that one step closer to replicating the authentic casino experience.

I could go on and on trying to explain the merits of full screen live play.  Probably better to just provide an example….

You an play this game at bet365, William Hill, BetFred

Cheers

LD