Earlier this year, the president and CEO of the Kentucky Lottery, 72-year-old Tom Delacenserie, announced that it was time to ride off into the sunset and enjoy greener pastures. He had done what he set out to do and it was time to retire, and the Lottery began exploring its options to determine who would pick up the reins. That decision has now been made and the choice to fill the vacancy probably won’t come as a surprise to many associated with Kentucky’s gaming operations. Mary Harville, the Kentucky Lottery’s now-former senior VP, general counsel and corporate secretary, is taking over. She becomes the first female ever approved for the position. 

Before accepting her new responsibilities, Harville had to be approved by both the Lottery’s Board of Directors and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. She had little resistance with both and will now be able to easily step into her new role. Explains the Lottery’s board chairman, Mark Sommer, “Based upon her many years of senior leadership with the Kentucky Lottery, as Board Chair I can confidently assert that Mary’s selection as CEO is a wonderful step in keeping the Kentucky Lottery moving forward to new and bigger heights.”

Before being tapped to take over, Harville spent 16 years with the Lottery in her previous position, giving her more than ample experience with the operations. Prior to that, she was a lawyer for a law firm out of Louisville, Kentucky, for 16 years. All of her experience and knowledge should prove beneficial for the Lottery, which is coming off one of its stronger years in recent history. For fiscal 2020, it saw $1.2 billion in total sales, 6.2% higher than the $73.8 million from a year earlier. 

Harville knows she’s more than capable of holding the reins and is ready for any new challenges that might come up. She explains, “As a life-long Kentuckian and graduate of a Kentucky university, I am also proud to lead the organization that funds KEES scholarships for Kentucky college students, and my goal is to ensure we continue to provide this much-needed funding.”

The U.K.’s gambling industry is about to suffer another blow. Anytime a new group is formed, of any kind, its first goal is to make a name for itself, and this is undoubtedly what will happen as a result of the creation of the Peers for Gambling Reform (PGR). The goal of this new peer-led group in the House of Lords is to act as a kind of watchdog over the gambling industry in the country, reviewing different aspects of operations and providing recommendations to the government on reforms that should be made. Based on the continued restrictions the U.K. has been placing on the gaming industry, PGR will almost definitely look to crack down even more. 

PGR is going to be led by Lord Foster of Bath, who will serve as its chairman. Joining him as vice chairs are Lord Smith of Hindhead, Baroness Armstrong, Lord Butler and the Bishop of St Albans, Alan Smith, as well as about 145 more individuals. Smith has held his position since 2009 and has a die-hard anti-gambling stance. He is staunchly opposed to fixed odds gaming machines and was one of the figures behind the push the £2 ($2.59) limit on those machines. 

It takes a lot to win a World Series of Poker Main Event, but while it’s often said that no-one remembers the runner-up, that doesn’t apply to the man who lost the heads-up battle in 2009. While Joe Cada celebrated becoming the youngest ever winner of the Main Event aged just 21, Darvin Moon was almost as fondly remembered as the winner himself. This weekend, the poker world mourns a man who was as friendly as he was almost unsuited to the era of poker he had a hand in ushering in.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, Poker Night in America developer Todd Anderson broke the sad news that Darvin Moon passed away, at the age of just 56 years old.

The best person I ever met through poker is Darvin Moon. A man of integrity and honor. And quite possibly the most interesting person I’ve ever known. Truly. He and his wife Wendy became good friends. Sadly, Darvin succumbed to complications from surgery today. He’ll be missed. pic.twitter.com/oq0DmL74Jk

— Todd Anderson (@PokerNight_Todd) September 19, 2020

It took him long enough, but Parker ‘tonkaaaa’ Talbot finally became a WCOOP champion on Day 18 of the 2020 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker festival. When it happened, Talbot couldn’t wait to tell an old friend all about it.

It’s fair to say that Parker Talbot and Ben Spragg have been the best of frenemies at times online, such as the time the pair of them donned Virtual Reality helmets to take each other on in a poker game with a difference.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlBMZCCWo5s]

Talbot, playing under his usual pseudonym of ‘tonkaaaa’ on PokerStars took down the 8-Max Progressive KnockOut (PKO) event which cost $530 to enter and featured 842 players. That mammoth playing field of talent saw Talbot’s top prize end up being a massive $51,168 as he beat a fellow Canadian at the final heads-up stage.

Another high roller tournament win went the way of one of the most consistent performers on the circuit as Steve O’Dwyer once again showed that it doesn’t matter which poker table he plays at; he’s a favourite to win once he gets cards.

In the latest tournament that he dominated the final stages in, there was no final table full of players to beat, just one opponent standing between O’Dwyer and the WPT title, that’s because it was the Heads-Up World Online Championship they were battling for.

With 166 entries all paying $3,200, the #WPTWOC Heads-Up Championship saw the $500,000 guarantee exceeded by $31,200 including the registration fees collected, another decent result for the World Poker Tour and partypoker during an online series which has been something of a success at the virtual felt.

Only the top 32 places were paid once all the registrations were collated and plenty of big players missed out on the money positions, to be expected in a tournament that attracted some stellar names.

The Philippine gambling market saw its revenue fall over 95% between the first and second quarters of 2020, but online gambling operators apparently contributed precisely nothing to this total.

On Friday, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) issued its Q2 gaming industry financial report, which showed total gross gambling revenue of just P2.4b (US$49.9m) in the three months ending June 30, down 95.4% from Q1’s P52.9b.

PAGCOR has dramatically revamped its financial reporting tables, and not in a way that offers more insight into locally licensed gambling operations. For instance, the data on Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) appears to have been folded into one of the categories that remain, although which one isn’t exactly clear.

POGOs were ordered to close in mid-March as the Philippines struggled with its surging COVID-19 infections, which also severely limited land-based gambling options. The first POGO sites weren’t cleared to reopen until late-June, so it’s possible there was simply no POGO revenue in Q2 to report.