Mr. Livermore joined the casino industry in 1991 after serving 9 years in the Royal Marine Commandos. When he joined the casino industry he went straight into surveillance. He has a Law Degree in the UK and has a Diploma in Anti-Money Laundering. So beware. Tell us about the history of IACS? When did it start and how many members did it have at the moment? The Association was originally started by a group of Casino Security/Surveillance Managers in London UK in the late 1980s who met up occasionally to discuss the problems and issues that they were facing in […]

Whan did you start operating bingo rooms in Romania? How did you start? I really enjoy answering this question and to go back a few years, even if I cannot believe it has been such a long time ago… it was 1994 and some experience with the slot machines when the opportunity appeared. Together with my associates (two good friends and my brother) we started extending out activity to gambling and we also decided to get involved with bingo game. There was a bingo room in Timisoara and at the same time, Sala Palatului in Bucharest opened a bingo room, […]

1. When was your first contact with poker? What attracted you to the game? Hello. My first contact with poker was when I was 12, there was the Romanian poker with 5 cards, and I used to play in front of my block on pocket money… I used to be quite good. I have started playing Texas Hold’em about three years ago, and after depositing 100$ on the 3 D website I have started growing. The equal chances of each player on the table attracted me most, as well as the possibility to have a high advantage over the rest […]

In this episode David Sklansky present the ante structure because all poker begins as a struggle for the antes. The size of the ante determines the way you play to a large extent, because if you don’t struggle properly for the antes, you cost yourself money one way or the other – either by playing too many hands when there’s a small ante or too few when there’s a large ante. With a low ante you should play tight (except in the cases noted above), and as the ante increases, you should loosen. All poker starts as a struggle for […]

You can take certain knowledge from poker and then applied it to your own life. One of them teaches you the most important thing: to take a sit at the table, be in the game and always gamble with the best since they help you improve yourself. There are also other wisdoms materialized by observations; they are sensational because they can direct you and they can also offer the key. This is a quota regarding the poker wisdom that I really love: “If you take a sit at the table and don’t realize who the loser is, the loser is […]

At approximately one year and a half from the major changes brought to the Romanian gambling industry, the authorities have prepared at the end of the last year an immense emergency ordinance, which brought modifications for the entire Fiscal Code, from the income tax all the way to the VAT, small taxes and gambling. If some of these modifications and completions brought to the Government emergency ordinance nr. 77/2009 (OUG 77/2009), included by the Executive in the Law nr. 246/2010, are wellcomed, as well as the introduction into legality of online gambling, others, such as the taxation of the access […]

David Sklansky show us in this chapter how important is for a poker player to know to use mathematical statistics and correct assessment of the chances of winning. Mathematical expectation is the amount a bet will average winning or losing. It is an extremely important concept for the gambler because it shows him how to evaluate most gambling problems. Using mathematical expectation is also the best way to analyze most poker plays. Mathematical Expectation in Poker Poker plays can also be analyzed in terms of expectation. You may think that a particular play is profitable, but sometimes it may not […]

Almost 20 years since the Romanian gambling has developed within the free market, all the actors in the field talk about responsible gaming as an important purpose; this is an issue that should be achieved, but, unfortunately, has no real applicability or to less in Romania that is why we consider necessary and important to know some specialized advice regarding the responsible gaming. “do we need such a campaign for responsible gaming in Romania?” “how does a campaign should look like?” What is responsible gaming? According to Cristian Pascu, head of The Gambling Operators and producers in Romania, “the responsible […]

The credit for players is a marketing instrument used by the big casinos in the USA for the clients. The correct uses of the loyalty credits generate important revenues for the operators. Even if names as Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Mirage or Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in the USA are already making a lot of money with their clients who use credits, in Romania this strategy is not legal, and those willing to obtain supplementary amounts for gambling can only get the money from loan sharks. The state budget could enlarge by applying taxes on the credits offered by each […]

When was your first contact with the gambling environment? I have started during a campaign of a casino in Brasov, when I was a student. It was actually a tricky situation, since the students would receive a coin to gamble. I had a friend who was a croupier. Their nick name at the time was “pepecar”. I used to enter the casino with a friend of mine; we would play each on one color, red or black, and if we got lucky and win, we would drink beers all night with the money we won … the casinos were quite […]