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The future of the online gambling business will either be 100% government-run, or 100% government-licensed on a territory-by-territory basis.

You are forgetting that the Nevada Gaming Commission started licensing online sports betting website a year ago.

StationCasinos.com, in partnership with COX Cable, started offering LEGAL online sports betting to Nevada residents 6 months ago.

Several European Union countries, notably France, Greece, Norway, and Sweden, are taking a hard line against offshore online gambling and are ready to push for a change in legislation in the European Parliament to exclude gambling from free trade agreements so that the governments can monopolize online gambling within their respective territories.

Germany is the big swing vote right now, as only a handful of German states are in favor of joining France and Greece in pushing for legislative change in the European Parliament.

As for major gambling countries outside Europe, the picture is actually very clear: 100% government-run or 100% government-licensed, with the government taking somewhere between 30% to 50% of the juice.

1. South Africa has announced that it will only license those online poker sites that have servers based in South Africa.

2. Vietnam has announced that the government will run a 100% government-owned online gambling monopoly. Ladbroke has the inside track on getting the 15-year service contract to run the site, at a minimum tax rate of US$60 million a year.

3. The government-granted monopoly PAGCOR in the Philippines has declared that it, and it alone, will monopolize online poker in the Philippines. A number of entities, notably WPT Enterprises and PokerStars.net, are trying to negotiate a partnership with PAGCOR.

4. Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) will enforce its 100% government-granted online gambling monopoly, which currently offers horse racing and soccer betting. The HKJC has blocked all attempts by poker entities, including WPT and PokerStars.net APPT, to put poker on television in Hong Kong.

5. Taiwan and Japan have similar systems: only the Ministry of Finance will be allowed to offer legal online gambling. One will expect a BANK in Taiwan and a BANK in Japan to be licensed to run online poker in these two territories if and when they are ready to offer online poker as a means to raise tax revenue.

6. As for Mainland China: as long as poker is classified as gambling, the government will have a complete monopoly. If the Chinese government were to reclassify poker as a "sport" the way Russia has done, then World Poker Tour Enterprises has agreed to pay $3 million for the first and last rights of refusal to offer poker in China through the year 2012. What WPT did effectively has blocked Harrahs, PokerStars.net APPT, PartyPoker, and anyone else from the China market for the next 5 years.

I don't blame PartyPoker.net for wanting to sell now, given that it has to see the writing on the wall: government-owned and government-granted monopolies will be taking control of the entire business, one country at a time.

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The ONE online poker company embarked on a global crusade that is firing on all cylinders right now is PokerStars.net, with its "regional poker tour" concept around the world.

The prize pools offered by PokerStars.net EPT events now exceed those of the WPT when the two entities compete head-to-head with simultaneous events.

One would expect the PokerStars.net Asia-Pacific Poker Tour (APPT), which requires careful negotiation with government monopolies in each territory, to develop over time, with a 5-to-10-year horizon.

One would also expect PokerStars.net to eventually launch a tour in the Americas, with possibly stops at casinoes in Quebec, Bahamas, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile.

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As for the first televised poker tournament driven by online qualifying to take place in Macau, a territory administered by the People's Republic of China and the #1 gambling city in the world in terms of gambling revenue: neither PartyPoker.net nor World Poker Tour will have anything to do with the project.