New Austrian online poker room soon

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NEW ONLINE POKER ROOM SOON FROM AUSTRIANS

Swedish software already purchased

The relationship between Casinos Austria and Austrian Lotteries was clarified this week by Casinos General Director Karl Stoss in response to rumours that the companies were about to merge.

In his clarification, Stoss revealed that the partners plan to set up an online poker room in the near future using technology bought from an unidentified supplier in Sweden.

The new online poker would be set up on the Win2day.at website, hoping to benefit from the extraordinary boom experienced in regional poker playing over the past year. Online poker bets will be limited to Euro 800 a week per individual player in an effort to reduce the risk of problem gambling.

Stoss dismissed rumours about a formal merge with Austrian Lotteries, saying: "We are not thinking about a merger but only considering the possibility of increasing the bundling of some of our functions." He added that Casinos Austria would consider selling its headquarters in Vienna's first district and moving it to the lottery headquarters in the third district.

Casinos Austria International and its partners currently operate 51 landbased casinos in 17 countries and 13 shipboard casinos. Its parent company, Casinos Austria AG, operates the 12 casinos in Austria. Together, the Group's 76 casinos feature over 1 100 gaming tables and 10 800 slot machines.

Win2day.at is the multichannel gaming platform run jointly by Austrian Lotteries and Casinos Austria AG. Accessible via PC or mobile phone, this highly popular site was launched in February 2003 to replace the existing WebClub.at, which had already been online since 1998. The skite offers players a choice of traditional Austrian lottery games and a selection of different online casino games.

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BOSS MEDIA THE POWER BEHIND WIN2DAY ONLINE POKER

Swedish provider gets the Casinos Austria online poker deal...but is this the start of another protectionist state monopoly?

Further to the InfoPowa report earlier this week we can now advise that Boss Media is the poker software and network chosen for the planned new Win2Day online poker website.

Österreichische Lotterien and Casinos Austria will go live with the Boss Media Poker platform during the 1st quarter 2008 using a Boss platform solution delivered in partnership with Svenska Spel, which will provide a safe and secure playing environment covering responsible gaming, customer support and fraud and collusion.

“We are proud that this is the second government controlled poker network to operate on a Boss Media solution“, says CEO of Boss Media Michael Hallén. “We are confident that more government controlled gaming operators will consider online poker during 2008 and 2009, and we intend to maintain our current strong position in this segment."

Win2day is an e-gaming brand based on cooperation between Austrian Lotteries and Casino Austria AG. The site is considered, together with svenskaspel.se, to have the most complete internet offering among local government controlled operators in Europe.

“Poker is still booming in Austria, and we had a 300 percent increase in poker playing guests from our offline poker games in 2007“, says Casinos Austria General Director Karl Stoss. “We hope to capture a substantial part of the Austrian online poker market with our responsible approach, just as our colleagues at Svenska Spel did when they launched with Boss Media in 2006."