Norway is ratcheting up its protectionist crackdown on internationally licensed online gambling sites by targeting their advertising campaigns.

Linda Hofstad Helleland, Norway’s culture minister, recently announced plans to introduce legislation to restrict the ability of international gambling operators to beam marketing pitches into the country from satellite television channels based outside Norway. The plan is to introduce the changes in the spring and have them approved by summer.

According to Helleland (pictured), Norway’s already restrictive advertising rules only “hit a part of the market” as operators have learned to “adapt” their lines of communication to circumvent the restrictions.

Norway Today quoted Pernille Huseby, acting secretary-general of Norwegian anti-addiction outfit ACTIS, saying international gambling operators were running an average of 62 commercials per hour via Norwegian-language channels including TV3, Viasat4, Max and Eurosport Norge, which are based in other European Union member states.

Former National Hockey League enforcer Sami Helenius’ brief foray into online gambling has been checked into the boards by police in Finland.

In late October, Helenius announced the launch of Kasino Curt, a new online gambling affiliate marketing site he claimed was focused on Swedish gamblers. Late last week, Helenius posted a notice to the site under the funereal inscription: “RIP Kasino Curt: 25.10.2017 – 8.12.2017.”

Helenius wrote that his intention was for Kasino Curt to become “the first legitimate online casino marketing site in Finland.” As Finland’s gambling market is reserved for the state-owned Veikkaus monopoly, Helenius made sure everyone understood that Kasino Curt’s plan was to produce “Swedish-language material for Swedish adults.”

However, Swedish is Finland’s second official language and Finland’s internet watchdogs don’t (yet) block Finns’ access to internationally licensed online gambling sites. As a result, Helenius was visited by members of the Finnish National Police, who’d determined that Kasino Curt was likely in violation of the nation’s gambling laws.

Fewer minors are gambling in the UK, which somehow has the usual anti-gambling media suspects crying bloody murder.

On Tuesday, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) published the results of a new Ipsos Mori survey that explored gambling activity by individuals aged 11-16 years old in England, Scotland and Wales.

The survey found that 12% of those queried had gambled in some form in the past week. This is down one-quarter from 16% the previous year, and well off the 23% figure reported in the 2011 survey. Those who did gamble reported spending an average of £10.

Roughly 0.9% of respondents were considered to be problem gamblers, more than twice the 0.4% reported in 2016, although it’s worth noting that the previous study involved unweighted data for 12-15 year olds in England and Wales, rather than the 11-16 year olds in England, Wales and Scotland used in the 2017 survey.

Casino operator Genting Malaysia BHD hopes to bring more tourists to its Resorts World Genting (RWG) casino resort once the redevelopment of the gambling facility is completed.

Online travel publication Travel Biz Monitor reported that Genting plans to attract more visitors from across the globe by showcasing the new and improved attractions of its Malaysian integrated resort, including the world’s first Twentieth Century Fox World (Fox) theme park and its indoor theme park, Sky Troopolis.

The aging Sky Troopolis is scheduled to be reopened to the public in February 2018 after undergoing an intensive renovation, which started more than four years ago.

RWG also plans to open the $490.7 million Fox theme park late next year. The company said that it will have 25 rides and attractions.

The fundamentals for SegWit1X (BTC) are deteriorating. Average transaction cost has broken above $20, and the median above $14, making it almost as expensive to transact as a bank wire. This, just as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has added nuclear fuel in the form of futures trading to a market that is already blasting off at way beyond record speed, on the eve of the holiday season when families will be gathered around their Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s dinner tables and the local family “crypto-expert” will be bragging about how much money he’s made in just a few weeks.

If BTC doesn’t collapse by New Year’s, it will probably go even higher into 2018 as the subject will be the holiday talk of nearly every family in the Western World, in a market that operates 24/7, inspiring other reluctant family members to buy in as well. If this doesn’t scare you, then you should probably stand up to charging rhinoceros for a living. In this case though, we all lack the depth perception necessary to determine when the rhinoceros will actually hit. We’re all just sitting there looking at it run towards us thinking how awesome and fearless we are.

Heck, it feels like I just covered this yesterday, when in fact it was just one month ago, and BTC was below $6,000 at the time. It’s tripled since then. Yawn. But at current transaction costs, BTC is not the least bit conducive to retail transactions or anything at all close to it. Even those who use BTC debit cards are probably no longer able to use them, since in most cases the wallet providing the service sells your BTC for you and charges you the mining fee. If you can’t use it in small transactions, you can only sell in humongous chunks, which means when people want to get out, we may see an insane traffic jam triggering a breakdown of mining equipment and worse.

But it gets more ominous. The average transaction value as of December 11th is (!) $120,000. The median value is over $1,000, which means there are some enormous players out there selling millions of dollars in BTC at a time. At this point there is enough enthusiasm to absorb all that selling, but it won’t always be that way. How long will there be enough enthusiasm? Think of it this way:

The number of suspicious transactions reports (STRs) that Macau casinos flagged jumped by almost 37 percent in the first half of 2017, according to Macau’s Financial Intelligence Office (FIO).

In its latest newsletter, the FIO announced that Macau casinos reported a total of 1,074 suspicious transactions during the January to June 30, 2017 period, surpassing the 780 cases reported in the same period last year.

The FIO further noted that the  gaming sector remained to be the leading source of such transaction reports, accounting for 70.3 percent of the STR statistics in the city state, followed by the financial institutions and insurance companies sector with 27.1 percent.

According to the government agency, casinos consider transactions to be suspicious when there is an incomplete or failure of customer due diligence (CDD), such as in cases of third-party remittance to junket promoters. A transaction is also flagged when there is failure to produce ID information or other personal information when buying or redeeming chips, and when players refuse bank remittance and third-party remittance transactions.

The United States Department of Justice has revealed a partnership with officials on the island of Guernsey that has led to them receiving a 50/50 split of $25.4m put in a Guernsey bank for safekeeping by the former Full Tilt CEO, Ray Bitar.

I wonder if Ray Bitar has a cardboard box in his basement rammed full of memorabilia?

Or did the cops take that also?

The former Full Tilt CEO, who pleaded guilty to unlawful internet gambling, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, is in the news again, six years after being uncovered as poker’s Wizard of Oz.

A former Australian poker player ends up with a busted jaw after receiving a tomahawk to the face, and Jason Somerville confirms a partnership with the Aussie Millions for the third year in a row. 

I used to think that karma was the name of an Indian curry, but now I learn that it’s something that smacks you in the face with a tomahawk if you’ve been a naughty boy.

In 2014, Australian police arrested, Bill Jordanou, on alleged fraud charges (142 of the things). Officials believed that the 58-year-old Australian poker player was implicit in a scheme that used false documentation to con the banking system to pass on $76m in fraudulent loans.

Jordanou was acting as a ‘financial advisor’ to the accountancy firm Zaia, Arthur and Associates who forged documents to defraud clients so they could borrow $76m from various banks for ghost property developments.

A 77-event World Series of Poker schedule has been leaked into the poker community showing 12-bracelet events expected to begin after the Main Event has started, with the Big One for One Drop ending things.

It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid, that is, unless, you are the World Series of Poker (WSOP) employee who accidentally leaked the 2018 WSOP schedule.

Coming from Wales, I like a good leak, but if I were the WSOP, I would be seriously pissed off about this one. It’s become Christmas custom to receive a spot of festive cheer from the most iconic festival of poker in the world, with a glimpse into the summer series structure, but now, any fanfare with come, without the fanfare.

The schedule ended up on the Club Poker website. It didn’t stay up for long. Fortunately, or unfortunately dependant on where you camp, a few eagled-eyed poker fans took screenshots of the schedule, and it’s since done the rounds.