Third Bullet Poker, an online poker site on the Cake Network, has informed its players that it has merged with its network host.

In an email sent to its players this week, Third Bullet management advises that the well planned merge has been successfully accomplished.

“Cake Poker has been operating and hosting our games for quite some time now,” the message reads. “I’m sure you will agree that they have done a fantastic job. We are happy to announce that we are merging our players with Cake Poker.”

Players were informed that on logging into Third Bullet Poker they will be redirected automatically to download an update. This will implement their transfer over to the Cake Poker database and management system, where the players’ login information will remain unchanged, and any funds in the playing account will be reflected. Those players who already have seperate Cake Poker accounts will find that their Third Bullet account has been integrated with the Cake Poker account.

Other than general comment about the player benefits of the merge, the email gave little real information on the reasons for the takeover. It does advise players that Cake Poker staff will be in contact with them soon, and that all future enquiries should be directed to Cake Poker.

A joint police action against electronic gambling in Greece and Cyprus has resulted in the arrest of a 44-year-old Athenian man and a continuing manhunt for a second accused, reports the Cyprus Mail newspaper.

“The operation constitutes a breakdown of a large electronic gambling network. The discovery of the case started from Cyprus and police officers from Cyprus went to Greece to participate in the investigations,” Justice Minister Loucas Louca revealed.

Late last week Cypriot and Greek police officers searched hundreds of establishments in Greece, following information that an electronic gambling network operating from there was offering online gambling services to hundreds of establishments in both countries.

“The presence of a central server was discovered a year ago and the investigation has lead to yesterday’s operation in Greece,” said police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos.

Two central servers were discovered in Athens, one found in a private home and the second in the office of a telecommunications company. The man arrested in Greece is believed to have been the server’s owner, and was the legal adviser of the company where the server in question was found.

The server was used to transmit electronic gambling services to 300 establishments in Cyprus and hundreds more in Greece. Katsounotos yesterday confirmed that Cyprus Police intend to ask for the extradition of the Greek suspect, so that he faces a Cypriot court.

According to the police investigators, an examination of the confiscated serves found in Greece will help police track down the specific establishments in Cyprus that offered illegal gambling services as part of this network. Police also estimated that the heads of the illegal electronic gambling network made millions in daily profits

The second suspect is still being sought in Greece, and is believed to have provided technical support for the operation. Police believe the bust represents a hit on one of the largest online gambling networks they have yet encountered in the region.

The Israeli authorities renewed efforts to clamp down hard on Internet gambling operations allegedly operating from within the Middle Eastern country this week, with the Jerusalem Post reporting that three hundred police officers and tax authority officials raided 37 homes across the country and arrested up to 30 suspects.

Police sources said that following a year-long investigation it was believed that the online gambling ring’s website at Bet555.net, later Betbet.us, had brought in over 340 million shekels (around US$90 275 326) for its Israeli owners over a three year period.

The raids were carried out by the Israeli police’s special unit Lahav 433, accompanied by officials from the national tax authority, state prosecutors and representatives from the Israel Money Laundering Prohibition Authority. Initial reports said that tens of millions in assets including cars were confiscated and 160 bank accounts in various banks were seized.

In preparing for the operation, Israeli police obtained twenty court orders prior allowing them to seize suspects’ vehicles and assets.

Central to the allegations is an as yet unnamed 38-year-old from Or Yehuda.

“We employed techniques to monitor the website which are very similar to eavesdropping,” a police source told The Jerusalem Post. He went on to describe the gambling ring as a “pirate sports gambling industry that has taken in more than NIS 340 million since 2007.”

The police spokesman claimed that Internet gambling is associated with criminal organisations and “….brings with it other forms of serious crimes, like aggravated extortion, violence, money laundering, tax offenses, and theft of monies from public funds.”

An elaborate hi-tech support network enabled the website’s ongoing operation, police said, including a website construction team, a technical support team, and betting agents.

“Millions of shekels in clean profit were made by the website’s operators,” police claimed. “Between April 2007 and June 2009, 70 million visits were recorded on the website, mostly by gamblers,” police added.

Police said Monday’s raids were the result of the first undercover investigation led by the Joint Intelligence Center (JIC).

In March 2007, the government set up the JIC and tasked it with providing information to various police and Tax Authority task forces investigating crime organizations.

The center is based in the Intelligence Branch of the Israel Police headquarters in Jerusalem. It includes police representatives, Tax Authority officials, and members of the Money Laundering Prohibition Authority.

Mfuse founder and mobile gambling expert Charlie Palmer is on record as recommending that online gambling operators should treat mobile gambling as seperate business units with dedicated managers rather than as mere add-ons to existing operations, and he illustrated the point this week in joining Internet gambling giant Betfair as mobile operations chief.

Palmer brings considerable experience to Betfair’s in-house developed mobile operations, and he will be deploying this in further enhancements and the expansion of the betting group’s mobile channel and the integration of its online and mobile products.

“I look forward to developing an already good product into a stand out proposition,” said Palmer this week. “My remit will include developing Betfair’s peer-to-peer model and include more social media features for mobile. Mobile technology evolves very quickly and I aim to make betting on mobile an effortless process for Betfair customers.”

Palmer relinquished his role as commercial director at Mfuse earlier this year, and has 15 years of International experience in brand strategy, media and communications planning and business development, working within the design and gaming technology industries.

After completing a Master of Science degree from Cranfield University in the UK, he joined Opel GmbH (General Motors) in Germany as a design consultant where he implemented the use of concurrent CACD (computer-aided conceptual design) techniques, improving communication between engineering and conceptual design departments, resulting in greatly reduced design lead times.

Returning to the UK in 1998, Palmer set up the digital design and marketing consultancy ECRV Limited specialising in developing advanced modeling concepts, animation and marketing materials for the automotive industry. In 1999, joining the dot com bubble, he founded online search marketing company Formindex.com which became a leading automotive resource.

In 2000, Charles was one of the original employees of Lost Boys UK a Dutch new media company, working between Amsterdam, Berlin and London, and focusing on brand strategy, media, marketing, digital communications and business development. Highlights included mobile strategy for Orange ‘Brand Futures’ and a series of digital campaigns for BBC Worldwide.

In 2002 Palmer founded Mfuse, a mobile gambling technology firm in which he spearheaded the marketing, communication and business development side of the business throughout Europe. Working at Board level Charles was instrumental in the company’s strong growth, bringing in high profile clients including William Hill, Ladbrokes, Sportingbet, Gala Coral Group, Skybet, Paddypower and Betsson among others.

Betfair’s ‘Right2Bet’ campaign for a more open European Union gambling market this week introduced a new service for online gamblers – a direct line of communication to Members of the European Parliament.

The campaign’s latest update focuses on direct written contact with M.E.Ps, urging them to support the campaign. The petition, which hopes to be among the first of many under the citizens’ initiative section of the Lisbon treaty, aims to push the issue of gambling industry deregulation into the debating chambers of the E.U.

Spokesmen for the campaign noted this week that the subject of open markets in the EU is currently ‘a very hot topic on the European mainland’, with several Polish politicians having been forced out of office for alleged corruption, a Dutch Subaru employee found to have been defrauding his employers to fund trips to Holland Casino, the Portuguese football league fighting a ban on betting sponsorship, and the formation of a new German Cabinet (consisting of both vehemently pro and anti-liberalisation supporters).