Monthly Archives: August 2020

ASEAN Gaming Summit Postponed to 2021 Q2

Given the continued uncertainty and travel restrictions due to the COVID- 19 pandemic, Asia Gaming Brief has decided to postpone this year’s ASEAN Gaming Summit to Q2 2021.

“While it was a difficult decision to postpone our 4th edition past the 2020 calendar year, we felt it was the correct call to make to ensure our delegates’ safety and to give enough time for the industry to regain its balance,” said Luis Pereira, managing director of Asia Gaming Brief.

“This will also prompt us to concentrate on delivering a truly outstanding event in 2021. We’ll be going for a hybrid approach – A live, physical conference for those local to Asia, with unique and exclusive content and activities specially catered to a digital audience too. In the meantime, Asia Gaming Brief remains committed to improving and expanding its full range of services to the Asian gaming industry” Pereira continued.

Asia Gaming Brief will continue to provide its timely AGB Webinar Series – inviting experts to explore the most pressing developments in our industry.

Work hard, play hard: Parimatch means business in esports

When Parimatch looks for ambassadors, they favour the bold; Connor McGregor, Mike Tyson, and most recently, Daniil ‘Zeus’ Teslenko. However, while the former two are revered for their physicality, Teslenko is famous for equal shows of fighting spirit in esports – a market that Stepan Shulga, Head of Esports at Parimatch, believes will be in the top three for sports betting by 2021.

Parimatch has shown its ambition to remain at the forefront of the esports betting market with the appointment of Counter Strike 1.6 and CS:GO legend Daniil ‘Zeus’ Teslenko as brand ambassador.

Sticking to its philosophy of signing ambassadors who share the brand’s abundance of fighting spirit, Parimatch’s announcement of Teslenko signifies a continued belief that esports will continue to move up the charts as a sports betting market, and Stepan Shulga, Head of Esports, wants Parimatch to remain a leader of it.

“We have long been at the forefront of the burgeoning esports industry, recognising its growth potential early on and paying it the same amount of attention as traditional sports. A significant proportion of R&D at Parimatch is focused on developing esports features to dramatically enhance user experience, which is why the brand is considered to be one of the top esports bookmakers,” he explained. “Having ambassadors in different sports is a great practice, but we think it’s especially important to have ambassadors that exemplify our values of fighting spirit. Daniil is a unique sportsman, his career spanned two parts of the history of the legendary game Counter-Strike, he was the world champion in version 1.6 and reached the same heights in the current version of CS:GO. To do it twice, in different eras, shows more than just talent; it displays an elite mentality, and that’s why we brought Daniil on board.”

The Hendon Mob add player results from online festivals

If you’ve ever won money playing a live poker tournament, you’ve probably gone online pretty soon afterwards to check your Hendon Mob page. For many years, The Hendon Mob hasn’t just been the name of the four men – Barny and Ross Boatman, Joe Beevers and Ram Vaswani – who hailed from Hendon and conquered British poker. The Hendon Mob is also the definintive place to look up a poker player’s live results. 

For many years, however, there have been no online results on the site, with those numbers only being found on Pocket Fives, another website that has become the go-to destination for anyone checking results.

That was until this week, when it was announced that real-name online poker results will soon be added to The Hendon Mob website. We spoke to The Hendon Mob’s Eric Danis to discuss the changes.

“The demand was overwhelming from the poker playing community,” he says. “We love the passion!”

Saturday’s all right for football? Why the NFL can’t be cancelled

American Football has taken many knocks in recent weeks. There was the NFL draft, which this year took place online rather than with all the pomp and ceremony we’ve come to expect. Then there was last week’s opt-out deadline which saw no fewer than 67 players pull out of the season for health-related concerns, including an incredible eight New England Patriots players. 

This week, the very season of football stretching ahead of us seems under threat. With the rumoured cancellation of the CFB (college football) season, the knock-on impact could well affect the regular season in NFL, yet it looks like nothing can derail a runaway train when that train is full of money.

Pete Thamel commented on Twitter that, “Big Ten presidents are meeting today. All options are on the table. There’s some presidential momentum for canceling the fall football season. It’s unknown if there’s enough support to make that decision today.” 

If that’s the case, then the knock-on effect should be that the NFL season is under threat. If it is, then no-one seems to be aware of it. With CFB possibly falling by the wayside, if anything, it might help scheduling towards the back-end of the season, with Saturdays having been used before in the Autumn of other seasons. That could well be a fixture again, but if so, then a new agreement will need to be brokered as current broadcasting rules mean that until December, no games can be shown on Fridays or Saturdays. 

Stanley Cup odds update: Knights, Avs co-favorites

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

No question that the big losers of the NHL’s unique round-robin tournament to determine the top four seeds in each conference were the Boston Bruins and St. Louis Blues – the two teams that met in the 2019 Stanley Cup Final, won by St. Louis in seven games for the first Cup in franchise history.

The Eastern Conference Bruins had the most regular-season points in the NHL this year with 100 and would have had home-ice advantage throughout a normal Stanley Cup playoffs. The Western Conference Blues had the second-most points in the league and would have had home ice against every team in the NHL except for Boston. Both slipped to the fourth seed from the round-robin games. The Bruins are now +750 to win the Stanley Cup and the Blues +1100.

The Vegas Golden Knights earned the top seed in the Western Conference and the Colorado Avalanche the No. 2. They are the co-favorites to win the Cup at +550. The Golden Knights are in just their third season of existence and memorably reached the Stanley Cup Final as an expansion team, losing in five games to the Washington Capitals (+1100). The Avalanche have won two Cups, most recently in 2001.