A warning to poker players about carrying large amounts of cash after the President Trump administration removes the restraints applied to the Department of Justice’s Civil Asset Forfeiture Program when Barack Obama was calling the shots.

Some crazy shit happened when I was ten. I was in Blackpool on holiday when my uncle bought me a pen with an image of a Marilyn Monroe lookalike on the side. When you held the pen upright, there was liquid in the pen that made it look like she was wearing a black catsuit. When you tipped the pen upside down, the fluid slowly drained revealing a pair of stockings and suspenders.

I loved that pen.

So did everyone who saw it.

Triton Poker and partypoker LIVE have extended their relationship to include two Triton branded events during partypoker MILLIONS Sochi in August.

Martin Jacobson and I are chewing the fat on a couch underneath the dying light of the Barcelona sunshine. We’re talking about the importance of networking, and leveraging relationships, enabling you to progress as a poker player, particularly when you want to play the highest stakes in the game. It seems ‘networking’ isn’t only a necessity for players when it comes to the games that hold the largest amounts of cash in their guts.

In May, the Triton Brand emerged from a Smaug like hibernation, with a humdinger of an event in Montenegro on the Adriatic Coast. The brand, created by the Malaysian businessman, Richard Yong, had made a successful debut in 2017, holding events in places like Montenegro, Manila and Macau, but since then the whole world had gone a little High Stakes nuts.

Would the brand struggle to be heard amongst all of the noise?

Atlantic City casinos suffered another year-on-year gaming revenue decline in May, and this time they can’t blame the weather gods.

On Wednesday, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) reported that Atlantic City’s seven casinos generated total gambling revenue of $217.7m in May, 5.1% less than they earned in May 2017.

The numbers look even worse once you strip out the near-record $24.3m the casinos’ online gambling operations earned in May. Total brick-and-mortar gaming revenue was down 7.2% to $194.4m.

The decline came courtesy of the casinos’ table games, which saw revenue tumble by one-quarter to $48.2m. Casino Control Commission chairman James Plousis noted that May 2017 featured a higher than usual table win for the casinos, while gamblers got their revenge last month. Slots revenue was up less than 1% to just under $145.2m.

New Jersey’s regulated online gambling market had its second-best revenue month in May.

Figures released Wednesday by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) show the state’s licensed online gambling operators generated combined revenue of $24.3m in May, 15.3% higher the same month last year and only $1.3m behind the market’s all-time peak in March of this year.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but the casino vertical was once again responsible for May’s gains. Online casino revenue was up 18.1% year-on-year to just under $22.4m, while online poker was down 9% to a little over $1.9m. On the plus side, May’s poker total was an improvement from April’s $1.76m and the rate of decline was roughly half the 17.5% year-on-year fall recorded in May 2017.

For the year-to-date, total online gambling revenue is up 15.5% to over $116.8m, with online casino up 19% to just under $107.5m while poker is down 13.5% to just under $9.4m.

Saipan casino operator Imperial Pacific International (IPI) is suing a VIP gambler for failing to honor a $5m credit marker.

On Wednesday, the Marianas Variety reported that IPI had filed a lawsuit in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) Superior Court against Yonglun Bao, a high-roller from China who has proven unwilling or unable to honor his gambling debts.

IPI attorneys told the court that Bao was given an open credit line of up to $20m, of which $5m was dispensed for gambling purposes when Bao visited IPI’s temporary casino Best Sunshine Live in February 2017. IPI’s permanent venue, the Imperial Pacific Resort Hotel Saipan, launched in July of that year.

However, Bao failed to repay the $5m by the due date specified in the promissory note he signed. The note calls for an annual interest rate of 24% and also makes Bao liable for collection agency and legal fees should any lawsuit be required to ensure repayment of the loan.