Authorities have announced a breakthrough in the case of murdered professional poker player Susie Zhao. Police have charged Jeffery Bernard Morris, a convicted sex offender with Zhao’s death.

Authorities revealed that Morris met with the victim the night before her body was discovered in the parking area in White Lake Township. The Oakland County Medical Examiner stated that the exact cause of death remains unknown, pending a toxicology report. 

A local resident discovered Zhao’s charred remains on the morning of July 13 and police believe she may have been targeted because of her poker profession.  

Early reports from authorities indicate that they were able to use cell phone records to show that Zhao had met Morris at the Waterford Motel the previous evening, but the nature of how the victim knew her attacker remains unclear.

Poker and Esports are both games that have previously lived in the shadows of society rather than the foreground, but now form a major part of both children and adults social lives. Gaming is big business, but it is also a salvation to many people who enjoy games such as online poker, and video games such as Fortnite, League of Legends, CS:GO and Dota 2 to name just a few.

Matt Hunt is a successful poker player who has cashed for over a quarter of million dollars at the live felt alone, including a score of $159,000 when he finished 2nd in a World Series of Poker event in Las Vegas in 2018. He’s also a passionate advocate of the power of video games and their benefits to mental health. He correlates a direction connection between the two for him personally.

“Personally I use poker as a surrogate for playing videogames.” He said in a thread on Twitter regarding poker players playing the game as a ‘surrogate’ for another passion.

Personally I use poker as a surrogate for playing videogames. That was the thing I enjoyed most growing up.

Most areas in the U.S. don’t have greyhound racing anymore, and those that do know it’s days are numbered. If Tony Cardenas, a congressman from California, gets his way, that day will be very soon, as he seeks to prohibit all greyhound race gambling.

House Resolution 7826, labeled the Greyhound Protection Act, was introduced on July 29 and it would amend the Wire Act to prohibit gambling on commercial greyhound races. It would also ban open-field coursing.

“Greyhound racing is cruel and must end,” Cardenas said in a statement. “My bill allows for a sensible wind-down of an already-declining industry that will ultimately outlaw greyhound racing. As a longtime animal welfare advocate, I am committed to always speaking up for the voiceless.”

Cardenas is known for his animal protection efforts, and this bill has much more to do with protecting the dogs than it does banning the gambling. “Greyhound racing will soon end in the United States, and this bill allows for a managed phase-out of the activity to enable planning to provide homes for the dogs and certainty for the owners, workers, and breeders in the industry,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action. “Greyhound racing is dying, and it’s best to manage the shutdown of the industry to allow for a soft landing for the people and the animals involved.”

In the fast moving world of gambling, sometimes you might miss news that could be important to you. To make sure you’re all caught up on gaming industry news, be it online or brick and mortar, we’re rounding up the some of the announcements and partnerships from the last week that you might have missed.

Don’t miss out on all of the latest announcements. Our Press Release section is updated constantly.

GrooveGaming gets connected to LatAm specialist BetConnections.

Yet again aggregator GrooveGaming is in the news with a deal to supply content to LatAm specialist BetConnections, as GrooveGaming continues to expand rapidly on the back of some of the most robust technology in the iGaming industry.

Seth Fischer has won his first-ever World Series of Poker golden bracelet and a massive $444,869 in Event #56, the $1,500-entry GGMasters WSOP Edition. 

It took 14 hours of poker, but with over $3 million in the prize-pool and 2,153 players, no kind of profit margin like winning the lion’s share of half a million dollars for a $1,500 buy-in was ever going to be easy. 

For Fischer it was a case of returning to a point he last reached in 2008 – a heads-up battle for the WSOP bracelet. Back then, he was denied by the precocious youngster Dario Minieri, but after cashing an incredible 28 times in his World Series of Poker career, the American player Fischer has finally broken his duck. 

Plenty of big names reached the money but missed the glory in this event, with Belgian superpower Davidi Kitai surviving a brutal bubble. Hours later, the bubble for the final table would be just as tough to negotiate. With Scottish pro Niall Farrell busting, play was soon nine-handed.

Although progress has been slow, Macau is slowly starting to open its doors back up to tourists. After months of slowly allowing in different types of non-residents, the special administrative region (SAR) will start allowing more residents from China’s Guangdong province to apply for individual and group tourist visas on August 12.

Although not open to the entire province, analysts from Sanford C. Bernstein expect the whole province should be free to travel to Macau by the end of September. Hopes are that at some point in the near future, the full Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) will be reimplemented, allowing visitors from 49 Chinese cities to return to Macau.

The areas current allowed to apply for IVS visas only make up a small percentage of Macau’s usual visitors, but Guangdong as a whole made up 46% of visitation in 2019. That adds up to 30% of mass market revenue and 20% of VIP revenue, so if these first steps go well, opening up to the whole province will be huge for the SAR.

Hong Kong will have to wait though. Residents of the region next door are still restricted from entering Macau due to a recent spike in infections. That curve has started to flatten, but until it shows that numbers are consistently down, the situation isn’t expected to change.

If one of science’s most recent revelations is accurate, the solution to creating clean, drinkable water anywhere in the world may have been right in front of our eyes all along. The idea of creating potable water is certainly not a new concept and there have been a number of alternatives created over the past several decades. However, they all rely on external sources for their purification processes that make them cost-prohibitive or impossible to use in many situations. It turns out, water can be made drinkable by using another resource of which there is clearly an abundant supply. The key lies in the sun. 

According to results of an investigation just published in the journal Nature, scientists from China and Australia have figured out how to filter water using sunlight, instead of heat or electricity. They use a porous material that can remove salt from brackish water, leading to potable H2O that can be made virtually anywhere. Since it only takes one kilogram (2.2 pounds) to make 40 gallons of drinking water, the implications are far-reaching. According to the scientists, the resulting water exceeds purification guidelines established by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The study’s lead author, Huanting Wang from Australia’s Monash University, explains, “Thermal desalination processes by evaporation are energy-intensive, and other technologies, such as reverse osmosis, has a number of drawbacks, including high energy consumption and chemical usage in membrane cleaning and dichlorination. Sunlight is the most abundant and renewable source of energy on Earth.”

The material used in the process is a kind of metal compound that, at its root, contains ions that form a crystalline pattern, similar to the pattern found in salt. Because of this pattern, there are gaps in the compound, which results in a surface area much larger than the compound itself. The researchers assert that the makeup is so porous that one teaspoon can hold the equivalent of an entire football field. 

South Korea is doing what the US can’t, or won’t, do. It is grabbing the proverbial bull by the horns and taking cryptocurrency to an entirely new level. While some countries, including the US, apparently are still unable to fathom the benefits of digital currency, South Korea is bringing it to established consumer channels that will have far-reaching positive results for wider adoption on a global scale. For everything from ordering take-out to travel to gambling, crypto is gaining momentum in all industries. 

South Korea was one of the first countries to understand the role crypto can play as the next cycle of currency, and has been behind some of the biggest leaps forward over the years. Going forward, it will add even more support, which will lead to greater awareness and utilization. Card and cash payments provider Innotech and CIC Enterprise have teamed up to launch a project that will allow crypto to be used to purchase services along some of Busan’s beach areas, which will make the necessity of having to carry a wallet obsolete. 

Thanks to the program, tourists will be able to use several digital currencies to pay for things like life jacket or parasol rentals, watersports and more. There is no need to use a separate app – just an existing crypto wallet and a QR code – and the payments are processed in under ten seconds. CIC Enterprise said in a statement, “We hope that the virtual currency used in the Haeundae-gu beach system will be more widely used in real life. We will try to provide a cryptocurrency payment environment.”

South Korea is also bringing crypto to its toll roads. KEB Hana Bank has entered into an agreement with the Korea Expressway Corporation (KEC), the country’s state-backed highway system manager, to allow blockchain-based payments at highway toll booths. The system will be in place by the end of the year, and drivers will be able to make and defer crypto payments, and even request refunds, using KEB’s Hana One Q app. KEC head of sales Kwang-Ho Lee explains, “We will continue to expand customized non-face-to-face (contactless) services to the public by applying blockchain technology, which is part of the Korean version of the digital new deal policy to lead the global economy after the coronavirus.”

The Ivy League and the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) called off their college fall sports programs because of the coronavirus, and at least two more – the Big 10 and the PAC-12 – are expected to do the same. The SEC and the ACC have yet to make a decision, although an announcement is expected as early as today. In the meantime, with the hopes of college football dwindling, sportsbooks around the world are beginning to make changes to their lines and are completely pulling down odds that had already been posted. 

Most college football leagues just announced their schedules last week, and the sportsbooks were quick to start putting up the lines. All that analysis and hard work were for nothing, though, as the leagues reversed course only a few days later. FanDuel and PointsBet were among the first, followed by William Hill. FanDuel’s director of publicity, Kevin Hennessy, said in a statement to Casino.org yesterday, “College football is very popular. It varies a bit, but it is usually a top four sport. We are taking things as they come. Once official notices are set, we will make adjustments for our customers.”

DraftKings hasn’t been ready to throw in the towel just yet – it’s just dangling it over the water. The sportsbook has halted action on the NCAA football national championship game, but has left up the odds for the conference games in the Power 5, except those for the Big 10. Athletic directors in the conference met yesterday to explore options and the presidents are expected to meet today.

The ACC would like to see football move forward this fall, but the decision will ultimately rest with the conference’s leaders. Scott Satterfield, the head coach for the ACC’s University of Louisville in Kentucky, wants to remain optimistic, telling reporters yesterday, What we understand is the ACC is moving forward, and we’re relying on our medical group at the ACC. And what they’re are projecting to us is that we’re moving forward with everything. So that’s where we are today. We know how things change and how fluid it is, but that’s where we are.”

Online gaming of all types, from eSports to poker and slots to sports gambling, is the future, despite the wishes of certain retail gaming pundits determined to hold onto yesteryear. iGaming and live gaming will be able to coexist peacefully and existing brick-and-mortar casino operators who grab a piece of the digital action will be one step ahead of the companies that are just trying to get started. A handful of casino companies has already been willing to embrace the future, and an investment heavyweight is positive that more are coming. That’s why InterActiveCorp (IAC) has spent the past couple of months buying chunks of stock in MGM Resorts International, determined to see it expand further into the iGaming realm. 

In a letter sent to investors this week, IAC chair Barry Diller spilled the beans, admitting that the company has injected $1 billion into MGM. Diller is also the chair of the Expedia Group and is the founder of the Fox Broadcasting Company. The purchase of the MGM shares was made possible after IAC recently spun off Match.com, of which it owns 80%, into its own company. As a result of that deal, Match shareholders took ownership of the online dating site and its sisters, OKCupid, Tinder and Hinge.

In the letter, which was signed by both Diller and IAC CEO Joey Levin, the company, which also owns The Daily Beast and Care.com, explained that the investment was a smart move, given MGM’s current weak position in the iGaming industry makes it ripe for growth. The casino operator has already been taking steps toward further online gaming action, and IAC asserts, “We believe MGM presented a ‘once in a decade’ opportunity for IAC to own a meaningful piece of a preeminent brand in a large category with great potential to move online.”

MGM is behind the BetMGM online sportsbook and partypoker, which are operated through the ROAR Digital subsidiary, an entity formed from a partnership with GVC Holdings. Last month, the two added $250 million to back ROAR, which followed an investment of $200 million from 2018. ROAR is expected to be live in 11 states by the end of 2020, and that number could increase significantly within two or three years. 

Epic Risk Management CEO Paul Buck knows more than most about the issues problem gambling can cause. Epic Risk Management was founded by Buck to tackle problem gambling and Buck has been on the front lines of that war over the last decade. Buck sat down with our Becky Liggero Fontana, opening up about his experiences led him on his crusade to help other problem gamblers fight back.

Buck founded Epic Risk management in 2013 after more than a decade battling his own demons. “I was working my way up some of Europe’s largest banks whilst I was also suffering a pathological gambling disorder,” he said. “During that decade I transacted 5 million pounds across 93 different betting accounts. I lost £1.3 million and suffered all the negative effects that came out of it, including a prison sentence. During that decade I had 16 credit cards with a credit limit of £180,000 and I kept putting it on and taking it off again when I had winnings. The credit gambling played quite a big part of my gambling career, whilst at the same time I was earning a lot of money working in a bank as well.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GOGowa-yDE?feature=oembed]

The U.K. Gambling Commission are moving in the right direction, Buck says, with the recommendation to ban the use of credit cards for problem gamblers. “People would gamble on credit with money that they can’t afford to lose and I think if we are all aiming for this to be what it should be which is a sustainable and responsible gambling industry.”