Investors in PartyGaming and Playtech, the online poker specialists, may, at last, have been dealt a winning hand by American authorities.

The US attorney for the southern district of New York, apparently acting under instructions from the FBI, has ordered banks to freeze about $33 million in accounts of payment processors that handle the winnings of 27,000 American customers of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. Those two American groups have continued to operate websites in the United States in defiance of a ban on online gaming, even though PartyGaming has had to pull out of the US and pay a big fine.

American punters are estimated to fuel at least half the $16 billion global internet gambling industry, so the sites aimed at US consumers generated larger winnings, which attracted punters in Europe and Asia. If American players are forced off the web, then European players should be tempted back to the European sites.

Deutsche Bank analysts said: “If this action is the start of a bigger move by US authorities to clamp down on those sites, then this should be materially beneficial for the next-largest providers of poker liquidity, Playtech and PartyGaming, as we would expect to see non-US players migrating away from PokerStars and Full Tilt.”

PartyGaming rose 15¼p to 254¼p and Playtech rose 16¾p to 480½p. 888 Holdings added 6½p to 115½p and Sportingbet rose ¾p to 58¾p.

The FTSE 100 closed up 31.96 points at 4,436.75 as surging Chinese car sales and coal imports to fuel its steel mills helped to lift commodity prices and boosted mining and oil stocks, while weakening the dollar.

BHP Billiton, up 39p at £15.34, was also helped by agreeing a 58 per cent cut in prices for coking or metallurgical coal with the world’s big steel mills that was not quite as deep as some had feared. Macquarie raised its forecasts for coking coal prices.

Eurasian Natural Resources, the miner of ferrochrome used to make stainless steel, was one of the top performers, rising 54½p to 730p, after it reported in-line figures but showed that it was benefiting from the devalued Kazakh currency, the tenge. Citigroup stuck to “hold” advice but noted that rival producers of ferrochrome in South Africa were suffering because of the strong rand. It also speculated that there could be a jump in prices in the ferrochrome contract that is shortly to be agreed with China for the next quarter.

Pearson rose 1p to 624½p as UBS said that California’s threat to cut spending on textbooks in favour of digital learning should benefit the publisher because it was well-placed to supply online teaching material.

Thomas Cook fell 16¾p to 219p as the company talked down the prospects of an imminent bid, with a placing of Arcandor’s 53 per cent stake looking more likely.

Heritage Oil retreated 63p from its record high to 540p amid profit-taking after the Iraqi Oil Minister was reported reiterating that contracts agreed by foreign oil companies in the Kurdish region were illegal until ratified by the Iraqi President.

• New York: Shares fell because of fears that rising interest rates could dampen consumer and business spending. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 24.04 points at 8,739.02 at the close.

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