Three tales from the live tournament territory including the Commerce Poker Series, Borgata Poker Open, and the Grosvenor United Kingdom Poker Tour Main Event in Leeds.

The Poker Masters on Poker Central has captured your attention. I get that. But the rest of the live tournament scene hasn’t gone into a deep freeze.

Here are three live tournament tales to catch up on and we’ll begin at the Commerce Casino, Los Angeles.

Something clicked when Sean Yu battled his way through 3,599 entrants to win the $260,000 first prize in the 2014 WPT500 at Aria. Later that year he beat 283 competitors to earn his first World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) gold ring and $124,590 in prize money.

The World Poker Tour will present the winner of the WPT Borgata Poker Open with a membership for a private jet firm, and I wonder why the hell anyone would want that prize?

Bullseye.

No, not the Marvel Comics character played by Colin Farrell. I’m reminiscing about the 1980s UK gameshow hosted by Jim Bowen.

It was a show based on the game of darts. You would throw your arrows at a board divided into different questions, and eventually, if you got to the final, you had to score a certain number of points off six darts to win the star prize, which more often than not, used to be a speedboat.

Lee Davy previews the weekend’s Premier League fixtures including a look into his crystal ball where he sees upsets at both Stoke and Leicester. 

Premier League Week 6 Fixtures

West Ham v Spurs

Burnley v Huddersfield

Problem gambling is on the decline in Germany, according to the findings of a new national addiction study.

Monday saw the release of the Drug and Addiction Report 2017, an every-other-year project of Germany’s Drug Commissioner of the Federal Government. The report primarily addresses intoxicants, but there is a five-page section (starting on page 67) that directly addresses gambling issues.

The survey queried some 11,500 respondents, of which 37.3% copped to having engaging in some form of gambling activity at least once in the previous 12 months. This is down from 40.2% in the most recent report, and down significantly from the 55% who answered ‘yes’ to that question in 2007.

Those who admitted to gambling were asked a series of 20 questions regarding their gambling activity. Answering ‘yes’ to three or four of these questions was sufficient to earn a respondent the status of ‘problem gambler’ while answering in the affirmative to five questions or more resulted in a more serious ‘pathological gambler’ designation.

The lottery monopoly in Canada’s four Atlantic provinces reported a small profit decline in its most recent fiscal year, in part due to its digital offering being “not yet fully product competitive.”

The Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC) announced on Monday that its profit for fiscal 2016-17 hit C$422m (US $343.3m), exceeding its target by C$6.5m and marking the fourth year that the annual sum had surpassed the C$400m mark.

However, this year’s profit was down nearly C$10m from the previous year, as ALC’s overall revenue fell 3% to C$1.15b. Lottery ticket sales were down 4.6% to C$699m and video lottery receipts slipped 1% to C$434m. Only entertainment center revenue was in positive territory, rising 4% to C$19.2m.

The revenue declines were partially offset by keeping a tighter rein on direct costs and operating expenses, which fell 3.2% and 4.5%, respectively.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is reportedly planning to call a snap election, which would almost certainly impose further delays on passage of important casino legislation.

On Sunday, sources within Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) told local media that the government would likely request a dissolution of the lower house of Japan’s legislature shortly after the Diet is reconvenes for its extraordinary session on September 28.

While Abe isn’t required to face the electorate until late 2018, he’s reportedly leaning towards a snap election to take advantage of his party’s soaring poll numbers, which many have attributed to concerns over the recent missile tests launched by North Korea’s bellicose leader Kim Jong-Un. It doesn’t hurt that the LDP’s chief rival, the Democratic Party, is dealing with leadership issues.

Abe’s reported faith in a snap election call may also be bolstered by the fact that he called for a similar early vote just three years ago, which led to the LDP improving its majority in the House of Representatives.