The wrath of PokerStars; Hart’s win; NV Internet poker: Too soon to tell?

That “thud” you just heard was the price of an Atlantic City casino hitting its lowest level ever. In litigation filed against Colony Capital, spurned buyer Rational Group said it was to have paid only $15 million for the Atlantic Club Hotel. Having done so many things wrong, it’s only apt that Colony CEO Tom Barrack couldn’t even get a decent exit price in Atlantic City. (This super-bargain deal makes life harder for Carl Icahn, who’s trying to extract a higher valuation for the just-sold Trump Plaza.) PokerStars got a temporary restraining order against Colony, but I don’t think there’s much danger of Colony being able to find another buyer anytime soon.

According to PokerStars, Barrack’s greed has gotten the better of him again: He’s alleged to have pocketed $11 million of the purchase price already and wants the rest as a “termination fee.” Colony is also accused of upping the sale price to $21 million and asking for 10 more days to shop the place around. If true, Barrack really took Rational Group for fools. Per ancient custom, Colony refused to comment.

If the latter has been getting by on Rational Group subsidies, it’s hard to see how it pays those back and stays in operation. Why did the deal go south anyway? With the approval process stretching months into the future, my guess Colony either got the impression that it wasn’t going to happen or just thought they could do better on the open market. Either way, without PokerStars’ IV drip of cash, Barrack may have signed the Atlantic Club’s death warrant.

Hart’s win. Had dissident shareholders gained control of International Game Technology‘s board at the latest shareholder meeting, it would have been curtains for much-criticized CEO Patti Hart. What, then, would they have made of an 11% revenue bump last quarter or a 68% leap in the sale of slot machines themselves? Best of all, at least for IGT, its much-criticized  half-billion-dollar acquisition of social-gaming application DoubleDown Casino yielded $67 million in revenue: a 94% increase. With results like those, even Hart’s adversaries are congratulating her. Chalk up a victory for the tortoise over the hare.

So how is Nevada faring in the early says of its experiment with intrastate, online poker? In three days, 100,000 were played, so — even though Station Casinos execs were at pains to play it down — I’d say it looks like success from here. So much, in fact, that player interest has swamped Ultimate Poker‘s human and mechanical ability to cope. Meanwhile, you remember how Gary Loveman was pronouncing federally sanctioned online poker ‘just around the corner’ after the 2010 midterms. Well, it’s been a mighty long corner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has declared the issue moribund, saying that opposition is actually increasing. What could have been happened had the constituent members of the American Gaming Association gotten their butts in gear two years sooner is one of the great ‘what ifs’ of casino history.

The one thing that’s kind of weird about online poker is the people from other states who are setting up accounts to register to play in Nevada. I mean, why travel here and book a hotel room just so you can gamble online? Where’s the fun in that?