Alex Gersh is stepping down from his position as chief financial officer of Paddy Power Betfair, the latest in a growing list of departures from the betting giant.

The London Stock Exchange-listed operator confirmed in a brief statement on Monday that Gersh notified the Paddy Power Betfair board of his plans to leave the group “once a successor has been appointed.”

The betting operator has already tapped an executive search firm to help with the process of appointing Gersh’s replacement.

Gersh, a former executive at digital payment services provider NDS Cisco, joined Betfair in 2012 shortly after Breon Corcoran became the bookmaker’s chief executive. Gersh was instrumental in transforming Betfair’s corporate strategy. The finance chief worked with Corcoran to redevelop and reposition the bookmaker’s products, and was also a key stakeholder in the £5.5 billion merger with Paddy Power in 2015.

Nominations for the Women in Poker Hall of Fame Class of 2018 are open to the general public, and I vouch for Jennifer Tilly, Kara Scott, Maria Ho and Haley Hintze.

Jordan Peterson is becoming one of the most talked about people in the world, right now. Then again, I doubt the podcast noise that creates my worldview, is the view of the world. He would make a cracking Count Dracula, but that’s irrelevant.

His interview with the Channel 4 journalist Cathy Freeman has been viewed 7.8m times with 227k thumbs up and only 6k thumbs down. It’s a car crash with Freeman hellbent on imposing her view that he pisses on the matriarchy – a move that led to death threats by some viewers who have apparently gone mad eating too many tins of butter beans.

For me, the interview showed one thing.

It’s now official. The Aussie Millions series of tournaments is taking the lead as the favorite event among poker enthusiasts. This year’s Aussie Millions went out with a bang with a total of 7,746 entries in all of the tournaments. An all-time high of 800 entrants descended on Melbourne to participate in the Main Event, which has become the most prestigious series of tournaments in the southern hemisphere.

Over $16 million in prize money was handed out to winners and to those that made it to the cash. Twenty six championship events were held, and saw action from some of the most visible players in the history of the game. Feder Holz, San Greenwood, Martin Jacobson, Kristen Bicknell, and Matt Salsberg were just a few of the big names that went after titles during the series.

The biggest draw took place with the Aussie Millions Main Event. The tournament has been held at the Crown Casino since 1998 when it only cost $1,000 for the buy-in and saw 74 players taking to the felt for the chance to win a piece of the prize pool. Alex Horowitz won that debut, pocketing around $20,000.

Fast forward to 2018. Twenty years later, the prize pool sat at $6.2 million, with the winner taking home a purse worth almost $1.4 million. It would become the largest prize pool in the history of the series, and first place would eventually go to Toby Lewis. The 28-year-old British player won $1.17 million and a custom diamond-laced gold bracelet.

The post originally appears on http://www.gamblingandthelaw.com/ and we republished with permission.

“Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” Otto von Bismarck

On December 4, 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in the New Jersey sports betting case. Almost every Justice was actively involved in the questioning, which touched upon everything from obscure statutory interpretation to the importance of states not controlled by the federal government.

The case revolves around a statute, the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which is unlike any other act of Congress passed before or since. Worse, New Jersey’s attempt to get around PASPA involved its State Legislature passing a law that no other state had ever even considered.

With the Poker Player’s Alliance needing to raise $25k by the end of the month just to survive, Lee Davy shares his opinion on where things may have gone wrong for the institution that’s been lobbying for poker players rights since 2005.

“Hi, my name is Frank, how can I help you?”

Frank, is a Canadian who works in the philanthropy business convincing people to give him chunks of cash so he can use it to be James Bond.

We were sitting next to each other at the Effective Altruism (EA) Summit in San Francisco waiting for the Hollywood actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt to take the stage.

partypoker suffered the embarrassment of a critical server error in the middle of what should have been one of the most talked about Sunday’s in the online poker room’s modern era, dividing the poker community, and tarnishing the company brand.

As I watched the new partypoker LIVE advert on YouTube, promising the world, I looked at Philipp Gruissem and couldn’t picture a more perfect looking German.

I never did German in school. It was French and Welsh for me. But I do know one German word, and I see it used all over the poker community, today.

Schadenfreude.