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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: redfish who wrote (102547)	10/14/2005 10:28:47 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Looks to me that they're willing to return MORE than their earnings to shareholders. <G>

To: redfish who wrote (102547)	10/14/2005 11:06:43 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Nice piece on SportingBet's big quarter. Also, they've initiated a dividend, which I didn't know. I don't know what that means for ADR holders payout. news.independent.co.uk

To: redfish who wrote (102547)	10/18/2005 9:08:23 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Opportunity developing? Empire Online, EOL.L, just pre-announced a 10% shortfall in earnings vs. expectations. Of course, they weren't expecting to lose the traffic from PartyPoker, which divorced them last week. The stock has been hammered. O.K., that being said, the company has done some smart things. They plan to eventually move their players to the Playtech platform used by their NoblePoker subsidiary. I have mentioned many times that Playtech has the best and fastest platform in the business. Too bad they didn't have any player traffic. Well, folks, EmpireOnline is basically a genius at developing player traffic. Yes, they are giving up a small piece of the biggest poker room in the world (there's some question whether they gave it up or Party booted them out), which is a big hunka burning love to lose. But if they can entice more traffic to the Playtech platform, this could be the biggest winner in the industry. That being said, I was disappointed in their latest reload offer. I just finished my 100% up to $100. I only signed up for $50, as you had to earn 10 rakes for every dollar of bonus within a 10 day period. At about 30 rakes an hour, 500 points just about used up my weekly poker hours. The new bonus offer is 100% up to $300. That sounds great. The negative is, they want 20 points per dollar this time. For the same $50 I just earned, I'd need twice as many points. And if you miss it by one rake, you get nothing. The number of rakes, itself, doesn't bother me. It is the 10 day time period. $300 would require 6000 raked hands. At my rate of earning, that would require about 20 hours a day of play. I'm an addict, but I'm not suicidal. <G> True, there are ways to get much more than 30 rakes an hour. Short-handed games, for example. They sometimes have over 100 raked hands per hour. Heads up play has many times more. But, all in all, 10 days is just too short a period of time. It's too bad for Empire, because if they gave me two months, I'd sign up for the whole magilla.