Korea A key Poker Market in Asia Poker Tournaments and Games

NEWLY-LISTED asian-facing online gambling operator AsianLogic has wasted very little time in making its first corporate moves, after announcing that it had entered into an agreement to acquire the Asian Poker Tour (APT).

Under the terms of the deal the value of which has not been disclosed - AsianLogic will now own the Asian Poker brand and web address, providing AsianLogic with access to an extensive database. Tom Hall, executive vice chair¬man, said the company had been waiting for Macau to license casinos to offer Texas holdem poker before it announced the deal. The APT will be running four tournaments in 200B, including one in Macau, as well as events in Korea, Singapore and the Phillippines.

Hall added that the firm will be looking to announce further com¬mercial deals for the tournaments next week. He added: You have to do things differently in Asia. You have more restrictions in terms of what you can do with TV, for instance.

He said the deal with the APT offered many cross-marketing op¬portunities. You can make money from online satellites, but the land¬based offering also helps expand the poker proposition generally. Previous owner Capital Events will remain as a shareholder and retain ongoing control and responsi¬bility for poker events in Singapore. Betfairs 2007 tournament in Sin¬gapore was run in conjunction with Capital Events and the APT.

APT has also added the Korean Professional Poker Tour to its net¬work and as a shareholder, Hall said this was a key strategic partnership as Korea was one of the key poker markets in Asia. The APT is the largest poker tour in Asia, with main events offering US$lm guaranteed prize pools. The APT will launch its own online play-for-free and play-for-money sites via Play techs iPoker network,

AsianLogic also announced a de, with Fortune Bid Holdings to launct two new Asian-facing online poker sites. The first of the sites will be called Dirty Stack Poker and will be run through AsianLogic subsidiary ESL. The second room is scheduled to follow shortly. Both rooms will operate on the i Poker platform.

Fortune Bid is run by John Cislowski, an online gaming vet¬eran according to the AsianLogic statement to the London Stock Exchange. He said he had been in discussions with AsianLogic for some time about running a site.

We have been driving significan poker traffic for many years to third-party sites and have an estab lished and loyal customer base and with our own poker rooms we see this as an opportunity to take it to another level.