With the new President Obama’s inaugaration coming up in January, the American Gaming Association is convinced that the new office will be more gambling-friendly. The AGA is motivated and quickly getting ready to put forth and strengthen their position to get internet gambling legalized and regulated in the United States.

During President Bush’s office term, there were countless lobbying groups and efforts made to put forth a case for the legalization of online gambling, however, those efforts never picked up enough steam. This is despite heroic efforts of many special interest groups and lobbyists showing their support, such as the SSIGI (Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative) and IGcouncil.

There used to be a time, way back in the last century, when you couldn’t find enough female poker players to organize a poker game, much less a huge poker tournament.

And even if you did somehow find some women who could play poker, the chances that they were good players were slim.

How those times have changed.

Fifty of the top female poker players in Europe recently competed in an online poker tournament, and when it was all over, the last woman standing was poker pro Maria Maceiras of Spain.

The championship round of the inaugural European Women’s Poker Tournament, sponsored by online poker site Everest Poker (www.everestpoker.com), concluded last month.

A celebrity poker tournament with a possible top prize of $60 million is scheduled to be held in Monte Carlo, Monaco, on May 19, 2007, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the nearby Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France.

Ten top international film stars and other celebrities are to compete in the charity tourney, which is to offer a total of at least $1 million for the participants’ charities.

As a bonus, if any tournament participant comes up with a royal flush in hearts during the competition, that participant’s charity is to receive a whopping $60 million bonus.

Event organizers are calling the tournament “The Game of the Century.”

Europeans won five of the top eight prizes in the recently-concluded European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final in Monaco while North Americans won just three, but among those three were the top two finishers.

Gavin Griffin, 25, of Los Angeles, Calif., USA, defeated more than 700 other entrants to win the EPT’s third-season Grand Final, which was heldat the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel and Casino in Monte Carlo, Monaco, from March 28 to April 2, 2007.

The results were as follows:

• For his winning efforts in the no-limit, Texas hold ‘em poker tournament, Griffin took home the top prize of 1,825,000 euros, which is equal to about 2.4 million U.S. dollars.

British online gambling site Betfair (www.betfair.com) is to sponsor its first televised offline poker tournament, the company announced.

The tournament, dubbed the “Betfair.com Poker Masters of Europe,” is to be a 36-player, invitation-only event with a top prize of $120,000.

It is scheduled to be held May 11-14, 2007, in front of a live audience at the Riverside Studios in London, and is to feature celebrity players from around the world.

The tournament is to be produced by Emblaze Productions, who produced the British Poker Open, the Million-Dollar Cash Game and the European Poker Masters, and is slated to air on Sky Television in the U.K. and elsewhere worldwide.

Don’t believe the naysayers who say worldwide interest in poker has peaked and is now declining.

That doesn’t appear to be the case, at least not in Europe.

Because of the unexpectedly high number of people who want to compete in the European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final, starting later this month in Monaco, tournament organizers have added an extra day to the event.

The EPT’s third-season Grand Final, which begins March 28, 2007, was originally intended to be only a five-day affair, lasting through April 1.

But now, because of unanticipated extremely high interest in the tourney from eager entrants, tourney organizers have added an additional day of competition to the event and made it a six-day affair.