Lee Davy talks to Andre Akkari about his role in the Brazilian poker scene, his interest in esports, and his views on the PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championships. 

Andre Akkari helping spread poker like a fever Audio

Wynn Macau’s $6m chip thief remains at large, but three people who spread his face on social media are under arrest.

On Tuesday, an unidentified Macau casino croupier reportedly walked out of a Wynn Macau VIP gaming room carrying a paper bag containing HKD47.9m ($6.1m) in stolen chips. On Thursday, Macau Business reported that the suspect was a 50-year-old male named Lei, who made off with 30 chips worth HKD1m apiece, plus an assortment of smaller-value chips.

Word of the internal theft first broke via social media posts that included a ‘wanted’ style poster with Lei’s name, photo and other personal data. The police denied releasing this information themselves, and on Thursday announced they’d arrested three individuals responsible for circulating the images.

Macau Business reported that these three individuals also worked at Wynn Macau, including a male administration clerk and two female croupiers. Macau’s Judiciary Police (PJ) said the identifying document in question “was sent exclusively to the security department in charge of overseeing casino incidents [and was] not for public access.”

It’s a rough life being a fighting cock, when danger lurks both in and outside the arena.

Earlier this week, police in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh raided an illegal cockfight betting operation in the district of Betul following a tipoff. However, the organizers and bettors in attendance all managed to make good their escape, leaving the police without anything to show for their efforts.

As a result, the police decided to ‘arrest’ the two roosters who were left behind by their owners in the confusion. Before the roosters could lawyer up, local villagers reportedly ratted out the birds’ owners, who were summarily dragged before a local judge on Thursday and fined the whopping sum of Rs 1k (US$15.65) after admitting their guilt.

While the two roosters were required to appear in court alongside their owners, they appear to have escaped further punishment. Although, that depends on how pissed off and/or hungry their owners were after their public shaming.

Europe’s online gambling industry trade group is challenging Norway’s efforts to block payments between gamblers and internationally licensed gambling sites.

On Thursday, the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) announced that it had asked the Norwegian Data Protection Inspectorate (DPI) to investigate efforts by the Norwegian Gaming Authority (NGA) to prevent local gamblers from funding their online activity.

The Norwegian Payment Act formally banned unauthorized online gambling transactions in 2010, but it wasn’t until last May that the NGA ordered Norwegian banks to stop processing transactions with seven companies deemed to be facilitating online gambling transactions. In December, the NGA accused two of these companies of subverting the ban by altering their registration info.

The EGBA claims the NGA violated Norway’s privacy protection rules in order to obtain the account info that led them to the offending payment processors. The EGBA alleges that the NGA effectively hoovered up vast amounts of its citizens’ online data – including from individuals with no connection to gambling whatsoever – in order to glean the compromising payment info it was seeking.

Austria’s government is getting fat off taxing international online gambling operators, even as it refuses to issue local licenses to these same operators.

On Thursday, Austrian media outlet Profil published an interview with attorney Julia Eckhart, who claimed the government had collected at least €155m in taxes and duties since 2011 from 17 online gambling operators, most of which hold licenses issued in Gibraltar or Malta, but who lack the Austrian government’s official approval to operate in their country.

Austria has formally approved online gambling with casino and poker products by exactly one operator, the Win2Day online brand of Casinos Austria’s Österreichische Lotterien subsidiary. But in 2011, the government began imposing a 40% tax on all online gambling revenue derived from Austrian punters.

Malta-licensed online casino operator Mr Green has protested this taxation without representation via Austrian and European Union courts, although this latter effort was cut short in December when the European Commission dropped all infringement procedures against EU member states’ protectionist gambling markets.