Russia reportedly aiming for sixth casino-friendly zone

According to the Russian language news outlet Izvestia, the property will be erected along the Caspian shoreline and also feature several sportsbetting outlets. Plans for the property are still tentative and the resort property remains unnamed. Holdings and investments firm Nafta Moskva is said to be spearheading the operation with billionaire businessman and politician Suleiman Kerimov at the helm of the reportedly $100 million endeavor.

The publication Asia Gaming Brief reported the undertaking would require an amendment to the 2009 legislation outlawing casino gambling in Russia, with exceptions for four specific regions: the Kaliningrad Oblast on the Baltic Sea, the far eastern Primorsky Krai, Krasnodar Krai on the Black Sea and central Asia’s Altai Krai.

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The Krasnaya Polyana area near Sochi was later included in the list of acceptable regions in 2014. Just last June Moscow approved plans to enable gambling in the recently acquired Crimea territory, as well

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In January another Russian politician, Governor of the Stavropol Krai region Vladimir Vladimirov, proposed his state be added to the list of accepted gaming regions.

It is currently unclear as to whether his request will be entertained by legislators. The region is a hard sell for regulators as, despite is being home to a population of 2.8 million, it shares borders with the notably unstable territories of Chechnya and North Ossetia.

In other news, Russia’s 2009 decision to outlaw gambling provided that several venues sell off their stocks of casino slot machines. However, those machines weren’t offloaded before many Russian programmers were able to deconstruct the aging machines’ Random Number Generation (RNG) software, and give themselves an edge on every spin upon later locating them around the world.

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A sophisticated ring of slots scammers emerged in the following years and continues to plague operators to this day

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With the assistance of smartphones, these scammers were able to record the games’ behavior, relay video to programmers standing by for analysis, who then sent back a signal of when the players should be pressing the spin and hold functions on the machines.

Thousands were racked up in hours of play, with the potential of up to $250,000 each week from a team of four operating at different casinos within a given locale.

These groups have been found to operate in Austria, the Philippines and other locations across the globe. Unfortunately for casinos, the only surefire way to rid themselves of the compromised machines is outright replacements and that is deemed too costly an endeavor for many at this point in time.