Harrah’s Goes Online

Live poker stalwart and parent company of the coveted annual World Series of Poker, Harrah’s Casino is getting into the online poker game. Gary Loveman, Harrah’s Entertainment President, Chairman and CEO announced Friday, May 22, the creation of a new subsidiary of the company, to be called Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment, Inc, (HIE) which will start running its own internet poker site in Europe very soon.

Boding well for Harrah’s online poker venture is that its Chief Executive Officer is none other than Mitch Garber, formerly the head of PartyGaming, best known perhaps for World Poker Tour commentator Mike Sexton’s favorite poker site, Party Poker. Less known about Garber is that from 1990 to 1999 he was an attorney who specialized in, appropriately, matters of gaming.

President of HIE, meanwhile, will be Jeffrey Pollack, familiar to many as the commissioner of the World Series of Poker. This is an apt appointment as a key concern of Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment will be to manage the global expansion of the WSOP into broader markets, starting with the European market.

Players familiar with Harrah’s Total Rewards Program for its land-based operation will be glad to hear that the program will be extended to the online pool of players as well.

Harrah’s is reputed to be “the world’s largest gaming company” and with the inception of Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment, it looks set to hold onto that title for a long time to come.

The impact of this news may be a welcome signal that a land-based gaming industry which has obviously been waiting patiently for its time to break into online poker finally sees that time approaching. With legislation across the United States, on both a state and federal level, to make online poker legal in the U.S. again, maybe Harrah’s announcement might even help push things along.