I read it as 888 would expand their offices and employees and wsop.com or caesers.com or whatever brands they will use would be ran out of there by 888, butwould be branded seperately to the other 888 skins and likely not part of the network.

888 would handle the payment processing, develop software and provide the customer service centre, Harrahs provides the name and im guessing a boatload of marketing capital when it goes live.

Its interesting that people were saying Harrahs was too broke to buy up a ready made site - that rings true in them choosing to partner up with a network that is already in business and it seems just contract their services without needing to outlay much money up front.

"Yeah, I'm ******ed. I got 12 Cadillacs; that's how goddam ******ed I am."

Nice post that is how I understood it! To add to that, Harrahs being too broke to buy a ready made site its intriguing on a few fronts:

a) It shows that while their financial prospects clearly are not where they need to be, they still are willing to risk entering a market that is still essentially illegal in the country where they base their operations. The question you have to ask yourself is why would a company publicly struggling be willing to take on such a risky venture.

b) Based on past actions of the company (i.e. Bill Frist) one would have to assume that Harrahs (together with other US operated casinos) have a bit of pull involving legislation affecting them in D.C. Based on that along with the fact they are fully supporting Barney Frank legislation of Online Poker, and the previous actions by others(Party Gaming etc.) that legislation could be following suit rather soon.

Agreed. Garber is doing his best to destroy the Harrha's brand.

Why don't Stars or FTP run their own 'World Series of Poker' opposite Harrah's? A little competition may create better payouts and service for users. Cardplayer could cover it and one of the major networks could compete with their own coverage versus ESPN's stale WSOP show.

I haven't played there for years, but there was a time when they were raking uncalled bets.

lol thats actually pretty ******ed imo.

i dont get it tho, seems like they could just open up their own ****ing poker room. all they need is a software company really. why share huge profits with 888?

Wait.....are you saying some developments with online legislations could be on the way?

I can't comment much, but I can say that we don't rake uncalled bets and we do not block successful players!

Made a ****load on Pacific last year. Unbelievably soft games, but just not enough traffic and LOLbad software to justify sticking around.

Might check it out if the traffic increases due to the Harrah's hookup

Pacific (when I played there a few years ago) had horrible software, one table only and rake that was insane. Worst site by far. Even the fishiness isn't enough to make me play there.

"'It's an amazing deal if the U.S. market opens up to online gaming one day and it's a good deal even if it's Europe only. We have more big American deals in the pipeline for the B2B unit,' chief executive Gigi Levy told Reuters in an interview."

http://www.gamingintelligence.com/in...online-success

Hmm, I thought this was a standalone move, but it appears this is actually joining the 888 network

When that Harrahs site opens then, I imagine the Pacific Network will have some nice, fishy traffic. Too bad us Americans will miss out.

Indeed, I suspect Harrah's will find a way to make it even worse.

Any pokerstars or FT regulars who are used to playing on software that makes 10-24 tabling manageable aren't going to play on 888s software.