A study by a former state finance director warns that legalisation of internet poker in California could deprive state budget coffers of $365m annually because the games would violate gambling exclusivity agreements with tribal casinos.

California’s protracted legal battle over charity bingo is ending with moving vans and signs of surrender as gamblers pay last respects to local bingo halls and charities remove hundreds of electronic gaming machines.

The last call for charity bingo parlours operating casino-style games in California may have finally arrived, and Indian gambling interests say the anticipated demise of electronic bingo is long overdue.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and other California lawmakers are aggressively trying to head off development bids by struggling Indian bands and wishful investors that continue to eye the San Francisco Bay Area as a potential Emerald City for casino gambling.

Eleven California tribes have been awarded licences for 3,548 new slot machines in a major victory for tribes that complained they were unjustly barred from expanding under casino deals the state agreed to in 1999, but many more licenses went unclaimed.

A legal war between tribes and Arnold Schwarzenegger over the governor’s demands that tribes fork over millions of dollars for reworking casino deals California agreed to in 1999 is intensifying following the state’s failure to block a draw for more than 10,000 new slots licences taking place today.

A court battle in California to overturn the state’s slot machine limits has ended in victory for the tribes who opposed the administration’s restrictive reading of their 1999 compacts.

As the legislative session resumes later today in California, a move by one of California’s leading casino gambling tribes and poker clubs to legalise internet poker in the state is rekindling the intense tribe-versus-tribe politics that drove costly ballot fights in recent years.

The Inglewood City Council in California is giving the green light to a major redevelopment project that signals the pending demise of one of the Golden State’s most famous horse racing venues.

Citing a refusal to be shaken down by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to pay for new casino deals, some Indian tribes are challenging a state-imposed limit on the number of slot machine licences allowed in California. Their challenge could overturn the longstanding machine limit in the state.