In this week’s poker news round up we remind you that Fedor Holz joined partypoker, the StreamBoat 2 remains moored thanks to Hurricane Irma, and much more.

Let’s insert the tape, rewind to the beginning, and start with as much news from partypoker as we can muster.

Patrick Leonard has convinced Fedor Holz to join the partypoker revolution. The German superstar told the press he would: “never partner with a company that was not committed to looking after or listening to the players.”

There have been a lot of great additions to the partypoker squad in the past 12-months but the signing of one of the hottest players on the planet is further evidence that the players are beginning to believe the hype pumped out of the beat box by the likes of John Duthie, Mike Sexton, Rob Yong, and Tom Waters.

A quirky new responsible gambling campaign in New South Wales aims to educate young Australian men on how to avoid the potential pitfalls of sports betting.

On Thursday, NSW Government Minister for Racing Paul Toole unveiled the new Betiquette campaign, which targets male bettors between the ages of 18 and 35, based on statistics showing 90% of Aussie online sports bettors are men with an average of 31 years.

Toole said the campaign “tackles a serious problem in a lighthearted way” in order to give it a better shot of reaching its target audience. The campaign, which is funded by the Responsible Gambling Fund, will run ads on radio, websites, social media and in licensed venues during major sports and racing events.

The campaign is framed as a style guide, offering such suggestions as setting a cash limit on betting lest you spend money budgeted for other activities, accompanied by a graphic of a man waving goodbye to his swimsuit-clad friends as they sail away on a cruise.

Lee Davy shares insights gleaned from Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus and his thoughts on why live tournament dealers should be looking for another job. 

It’s difficult getting around California without a car.

It’s a big place.

As I sat in Hertz, reading Yuval Noah Harari’s cracking follow up to Sapiens, Homo Deus, I was struck by the obviousness of a paragraph where Harari preempts a new future for the automobile industry.

Three tales from the felt including PokerStars changing their online tournament payout structure; Celina Lin winning another Macau event, and Muskan Sethi joining Global Poker League India.

PokerStars is back to its testing, tweaking best.

Earlier today, Mike Jones, Poker Operations Manager for PokerStars, penned a blog post titled: Paying More Places: The Evolution of PokerStars Online Tournament Payouts in which he outlined plans to increase the number of ITM cashes.

Jones began his post by reminding people that the standard payouts for online tournaments circa 2002 – 2006 was 10% of the field, taking a line out of the brick and mortar playbook. But over time Jones and his colleagues felt the system was flawed and set out to remedy the situation.

Daily fantasy sports operators DraftKings and FanDuel have agreed to pay $2.6m to resolve allegations of consumer-unfriendly practices in the state of Massachusetts.

On Thursday – just hours before the kickoff of a new National Football League season – Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced that the state had reached a deal that will see each DFS operator pay $1.3m “to address various consumer issues that existed at the early stages of this new industry.”

Healey began looking hard at the DFS industry in late 2015, which by then had become embroiled in a frenzy of negative media attention. Shortly thereafter, Healey proposed a raft of consumer protection regulations, including advertising that reflected the average DFS player’s slim chances of winning anything.

Healey’s proposals have gone on to become the template for many of the 16 US states that have formally authorized DFS within their borders (including Massachusetts, DraftKings’ home state, which joined the club in August 2016).

A pair of eSports promoters has pretty much gotten away with shilling for a skin betting site without disclosing their ownership of said site.

On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission released a consent order of a settlement it reached with Trevor Martin (aka TmarTn) and Thomas Cassell (aka ProSyndicate) for using their social media status to promote skin betting on the CSGOLotto site without revealing that they each owned a 42.5% stake in the site.

Over a year ago, an observant eSports fan revealed that Martin and Cassell were posting YouTube videos showing them betting ‘skins’ – virtual goods earned via game play or purchased with cash – on CSGOLotto, while leaving viewers with the impression that the site was something they just happened to stumble across, but gosh golly wow, was it cool.

The pair also paid four- and five-figure sums to other individuals with large YouTube followings to promote CSGOLotto without requiring these YouTubers to disclose that their endorsements were bought and paid for.

Eastern European gangsters have been charged with arson after allegedly torching a New York City apartment block that housed a rival illegal gambling operation.

In May 2016, a three-story residential building in Brooklyn caught fire, trapping two residents – including a 12-year-old boy – on the top floor. Brooklyn fire fighters were called to the scene and eventually rescued the trapped residents before the building was completely gutted. Two residents and five firemen suffered flame-related injuries.

On Wednesday, federal authorities unsealed an indictment indicating that the blaze was sparked by a gang of Eastern European organized crime members known as Vory V Zakone aka ‘Thieves-in-Law’ who were based in Brighton Beach and Coney Island. The group is believed to have connections with organized crime groups in former states of the Soviet Union and in Israel.

According to the indictment, the gangsters set fire to the building because its ground floor was the site of an illegal high-stakes poker operation. Apparently, the Thieves-in-Law had their own illegal gambling den about one mile away, and business had been suffering due to the unwanted competition.

Yet another gambling company is moving to the blockchain.

If you’ve just joined us, gambling operators have been turning to blockchain to provide the ultimate transparency and trust to their players. There’s Cash Poker Pro for decentralized online poker, while esports and prediction has Herosphere.

Joining the group is another platform, but this time for online dicing.

Ethbet is the first decentralized gambling platform that lets players wager with no house edge in a peer-to-peer manner. Dicing sites have seen improvements in recent years, with many of them offering features such as provable fairness and lower house edges. Some sites even allow users to bet on the house by investing in its bankroll.

Digital addiction is a growing concern across many industries, especially as technology continues to advance. And the gambling industry could have a head start with tackling this topic to benefit all of their stakeholders.

But just how far can the gaming industry run with sustainability and responsibility?

This is one of the main topics that will be discussed at the upcoming World Regulatory Briefing (WrB) in London. The 2017 edition, which will be held at the OXO2 in London on Sept. 12, will explore market developments in the gaming sector and how the industry and its stakeholders can live in harmony with responsible gambling.

One of the panels, composed of MP Philip Davies, Bournemouth University Professor Rainan Ali and Gambling Therapy head of therapy Pedro Romero, will discuss the benefits of indexing, transparency and reporting sustainability, as well as measuring the value of corporate social responsibility from an outside industry model.

South Africa’s gambling market continues to be dominated by its land-based casinos, but casinos were the only gaming vertical to post a revenue decline in fiscal 2017.

On Thursday, South Africa’s National Gambling Board (NGB) released its annual report covering the 12 months ending March 31, 2017, in which overall gaming revenue (excluding lotteries) hit R27b (US $1.2b), up 3.8% from fiscal 2016.

Nearly two-thirds (66.4%) of the total was generated by the nation’s land-based casino operators. The casinos earned R17.9b in FY17, down 1.8% from the previous report, which the NGB blamed on a decrease in operating positions in six provinces.

Casinos also claimed 73.2% of all gambling turnover, but the total amount spent at casinos’ slots and tables was also down around 1.2% year-on-year. In fact, casinos were the only gambling vertical to report declines in both turnover and revenue in the most recent fiscal year.