Casino Folk Pages

The Boston Globe,By Connie Paige, Globe Correspondent

Michael Corfman believes he knows when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

Corfman’s website and assorted directories and almanacs make his business something of a Dun & Bradstreet of the gambling industry. Casinocity.com provides gaming-related statistics, news, and links of interest to gaming operators and their customers. It also features ads for online gambling sites — something that may be of interest to the federal government, which has declared that such advertising is illegal.

Corfman has taken a high-stakes gamble: He decided to sue the government before it prosecuted him.

‘’This is an important First Amendment case,” Corfman said last week. ‘’The government can say, ‘We might prosecute you,’ and it chills free speech.”

Corfman’s business is based in Newton, where he and his wife and business partner, Sylvia, also live.

‘’We always joke about Newton being the center of the gaming industry,” said Corfman, who has made casinocity.com an industry leader, with annual revenues of almost $5 million.

A 1975 graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in computer science, Corfman worked as a software engineer at several companies, including Digital Equipment Corp. In 1990, he started a traditional consulting business, Information Technology Systems. He then turned to building websites.

He created casinocity.com primarily as a demonstration site to show off his computer skills at Internet World ‘95, a trade show in Boston.

‘’That was a fabulous show for us,” Corfman said. ‘’People loved what we’d done. In those days, the Web was just getting started. It was all static pages. There was nothing like that around.”

Within five years, Corfman’s consulting firm had 45 employees, but then business ‘’vanished,” he said.

He rode out the economic downturn by investing more heavily in casinocity.com. Today, the business has recovered, has 30 employees, and is advertising for six more.

Corfman does not gamble for fun. He jokes that the only time he tried his hand at it was when he was awarded a dollar’s worth of nickels at a casino in Colorado, played the slots with them, and won $6 or $7. ‘’I ended up deciding I could never ever again in my life be up 600 to 700 percent on money I got for free,” he said.

Still, he enjoys his business immensely, he said.

‘’For me, it’s an issue of gathering information and finding all sorts of ways to use it,” he said.

Corfman hedges his bets, working to curb gambling as well as to encourage it. He said he was developing programs for online gaming sites that would enable gamblers to set limits for themselves. And until recently, he hosted a website for the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling.

Kathleen Scanlan, the group’s executive director, said the arrangement was discontinued only because the group had technical needs that Corfman’s office could not accommodate. ‘’It wasn’t him; it was us,” she said.

Corfman sees gambling as ingrained in American life. He pointed out that Angier Elementary School in Waban, which his daughter attends, is planning a casino night this winter to raise money.

The casinocity.com site is gaudy, and blinks with offers for sweepstakes and invitations to play online games ‘’NOW!!!” Through the site, he sells directories and almanacs bristling with statistics about casinos worldwide, online betting, Indian gaming, sports betting, horse tracks, dog tracks, cruise ships, and lotteries — just about everything except finding a bookie.

Did you know, for example, that in 2004, gambling operators in the United states — after paying off winnings — cleared $78 billion? That 228 Indian tribes operated 405 gaming facilities in 30 states? That Massachusetts ranked 18th of the 50 states in its revenue from gaming (mostly lottery-related)? You can find these and other facts by buying an annual subscription for $700 or a directory for $150 from Corfman’s company. A subscription buys you the current and next hardcopy edition of the semi-annual Gaming Business Directory and CD with online updates as they happen.

Corfman also publishes an online news service called Casino City Times. The latest issue features gaming gurus who offer advice about such matters as ‘’Can you beat the slots?” (Answer: No.) Casino City Times is third on the list of Yahoo! links for gambling information.

While Corfman’s business is booming, he could be in legal jeopardy. In June 2003, the Justice Department sent letters to such media organizations as the Magazine Publishers of America, National Newspaper Association, and National Association of Broadcasters stating that online gambling is illegal and, according to spokeswoman Jaclyn Lesch, that advertising online gambling ‘’may be aiding and abetting illegal activity.”

Although Corfman has never been directly threatened, he was drawn into the fray about a year and a half ago, when he lost a bid to partner with A&E Television Networks on a spinoff show from the book ‘’Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Las Vegas for Millions,” by Ben Mezrich. The network had second thoughts because of the Justice Department notice, Corfman said.

Corfman decided to call the government’s bluff. He hired Barry Richard, one of the attorneys who represented President Bush after the disputed 2000 election. In August 2004, the company sued the government, seeking a declaratory judgment that advertising online casinos and sports books is constitutionally protected commercial free speech. A federal district court ruled against him, but Corfman said he hoped for success in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, now based in Houston.

Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for a hearing on Dec. 7.

And thumbing his nose once again at the feds, Corfman said he now has a deal with CBS-TV in New York City to run ads for casinocity.com in Times Square through New Year’s day.

This is not exactly gambling news, but anyway ….

dailymail.co.uk

When a girl died after a marathon session playing her favourite computer game, fellow devotees paid her the ultimate tribute.

Hundreds went online and staged a virtual funeral for her.

They directed their characters to a cathedral in the World Of Warcraft fantasy game and spoke in memory of her. The digital characters could be seen kneeling in rows, heads bowed.

The player, known only as Snowly, died last month after playing the game for three days with barely a break during a week-long national holiday in China.

Her online friends said she had one of the highest attendance rates in the online game. But days before she died, Snowly complained of feeling exhausted as she prepared for a particularly difficult stage of the challenge.

Weeks later, a second gamer, who nicknamed himself Thereafter, died in similar circumstances.

Gaming deaths

The deaths are the latest in a growing number of tragedies related to excessive games-playing in Asia.

They have sparked a flood of Inter-net postings from concerned fellow gamers. One player, calling himself Charlie, said: “Some players really do play the game for three or four days without rest and they barely eat.”

Another, Trevor Hill, revealed: “I’ve stayed up and only got three hours a night for the first year of law school.

“What the heck does someone have to do to die from fatigue? She must have had no sleep at all for over a week.”

Chinese authorities now want to impose restrictions on how long gamers can play online.

A three-hour limit is to be introduced next year. Several games makers have agreed also to install “anti-obsession” systems to prevent more deaths.

World Of Warcraft is the latest phenomenon in the sphere of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games and came to Britain a year ago.

Players form communities with other users from around the world to complete quests and carry out tasks.

The fantasy universe is inhabited by about four million online players.

UK NEWS, 07/11/2005

The combination of new-style casinos and extended drinking hours will create a “lethal cocktail” of super bars in town centres catering for thousands of drinkers at a time, the Conservatives said last night.

New casinos and drink laws ‘are lethal mix’
By Marco Giannangeli
(Filed: 07/11/2005)

The combination of new-style casinos and extended drinking hours will create a “lethal cocktail” of super bars in town centres catering for thousands of drinkers at a time, the Conservatives said last night.

An investigation by the party claims that moves by the Government to set up a series of “smaller” casinos around the country could “threaten public welfare”.

Already, up to eight “super” casinos may be built following the introduction of the Gambling Act 2005.

But the Conservatives’ report focuses on the proposed breed of what they describe as “large” and “small” casinos which, it claimed, could hold as many as 3,000 customers.

New rules under the act would force these casinos to set aside space for non-gambling purposes, resulting in storey upon storey of bars, open until 6am.

Theresa May, the Tory spokesman on culture, media and sport, said: “Even so-called smaller casinos will dwarf anything seen before in Britain.

“I fear the new casinos will combine with super-bars; behind the superficial glamour of poker or black-jack, the real money will be made from slot machines and plying alcohol into the early hours.

“The combination of weaker gambling and licensing laws threatens a lethal cocktail that will threaten public welfare.”

Mrs May also warned that a plethora of jackpot-style machines would encourage drinkers to gamble more.

She said: “Casinos will also operate as super betting offices. Apart from the slot machines and gaming tales, the will be able to offer an unlimited number of smaller prize slot machines.”

A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, said: “British casinos will be the most tightly regulated in the world. Binge drinking will not be tolerated.

“The Gambling Commission will have the power to revoke licences and there will be heavy fines imposed on casinos acting irresponsibly.”

Source: abcnews.go.com

If you’re not a gambler or a fan of extravagant stage shows and exotic cocktails, the Mohegan Sun Casino may have found another offering to reel you in: flu shots.

Mohegan Sun — located on Mohegan tribal land in Uncasville, Conn. — is offering anyone who visits the hotel and casino access to a flu and pneumonia clinic where shots for both are administered on designated days. There’s a reasonable fee, but if you’re a member of the casino’s Player’s Club, and have enough points, you can get the shots on the house.

I know there’s concern out there to get flu shots,” said Connie Dinerman, health director for the tribe. “So we started planning this very early on in the year.”

So is it simply a thoughtful public service, or one of the most unusual and original marketing ploys ever conceived?

A Noble Effort?

In the past, the Mohegan Tribal Health Department, which hosts the clinic, has limited the event to just one day or so. But this year it’s open to all those who want to take a break from pulling one-armed bandits to take a shot in the arm themselves.

Dinerman says community flu clinics at Mohegan Sun are nothing new, but does admit this year is a little different. Still, she insists it was not conceived as a marketing tactic.

“My goal is to get them in here for the flu shots,” she said. “So many people die every year from influenza, that if our department can do it, it’s all for the better.”

According to the Connecticut Department of Public Health, about 20 percent of flu vaccines administered there are provided by groups other than private physicians, so it’s not unusual for a public facility — in this case Mohegan Sun’s Wolf Den music venue — to be used like this.

In fact, Dinerman says that she and her team administered 250 shots in a two-hour period during the most recent clinic alone.

Targeting the Elderly

With chips constantly changing hands and slot and video poker machines with arms and buttons continuously mashed by a parade of eager digits full of germs, a casino may be a smart place to fight the flu.

But rather than targeting germophobes or health conscious gamblers, Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, suspects the casino is reeling in another portion of its clientele: the elderly.

“Whether it is or not, I don’t know, but this sounds like the latest in a long trend of very specific marketing to seniors,” he said.

Whyte says his group is not for or against legalized gambling, but he believes casinos market heavily to seniors.

A study done by the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn State College of Medicine found that nearly 70 percent of seniors said they gambled at least once in the last year.

“There’re places in the Midwest that offer discounts on medication,and some have ‘Over 55′ clubs,” he said. “These are people with disposable time and incomes.”

Whyte says some casinos offer table games on hydraulic lifts so they’re more accessible to seniors, while others have installed defibrillators.

Betting on Your Health

On Thursdays through Dec. 8, 2005, Mohegan Sun will continue to offer the shots to anyone 65 or older, as well as pregnant women, adults with chronic health conditions, health care workers and caregivers engaged in direct patient care,or for children 6 months or younger.

Flu shots are $30 and pneumonia shots will run you $46, but if you have a good day shooting craps, the cards turn in your favor or you hit it big on a one-armed bandit, it’s a mere pittance.

Mohegan Sun is gambling that even though you may not walk out of its casino richer, you may at least be a bit healthier.