The latest GGPoker Super MILLION$ final table looks set to be a thrilling one as superstars such as Connor Drinan, Mike ‘Sir Watts’ Watson and Ole Schemion all chase down Melker Larsson in a bid to become champion.

It is Melker Larsson who leads the final nine into action, and the player who will be taking to the online felt from Mexico qualified for the event by winning a $100-entry satellite. That’s paid for itself 500 times over already and Larsson will sit down with over 4 million chips, but as you can see from the betting market before kick-off on the stream, it is not only Larsson who has attracted plenty of punters to invest in his skills.

Plenty of bettors have picked Ole Schemion as the danger man and it’s not hard to see why given just how successful the German (playing from Austria tonight) has been in his career. Schemion will come into play second in chips with 2.9 million and hoping to build on an already impressive Super MILLION$ resume.

With over $2.6 million in winnings on GGPoker alone, Schemion will be a major threat and is just 5.75 to book the win, as is Larsson. Next in the betting is Daniel Dvoress, the Canadian high roller regular being available t 7.5 and backed by 89 punters, more than any of the other players heading into the action. Dvoress will come into play 6th in chips, but with 2,148,079 fun-discs to play with in a very even spread, could yet prove his backers to be shrewd.

The WPT Montreal Main Event is deep into the money and with just 23 players remaining in the hunt for the $447,859 top prize, it’s going to go down to the wire to find a final nine players from the many talents who are still fighting for the title.

It is Felix Schulze who leads the final 23 Players in the partypoker WPT Montreal Main Event, and he’ll start the penultimate day of action with 20.7 million chips.

The $3,200-entry Main Event saw an ironically off-brand 888 entrants, with just 133 players being paid out. That number was reduced to just 23 after five hours of play on Monday evening, with some big names dropping out of contention.

Day 1b chip leader Luiz Orrico perished in 43rd place, earning $10,214 in the process, with partypoker players Joni Jouhkimainen (31st for $14,699) and Jamie Staples (77th for $7,654) both coming up short in terms of a really deep run.

Crown Resorts is definitely no longer the jewel of the Australian gaming scene and can no longer expect to receive the same level of respect that it had one enjoyed. Tales of money laundering, war criminals, employee mistreatment, machine tampering and more have hobbled the once-great empire and most people believe that it is now on its knees, begging for mercy. It is asserting that it is at risk of having to give away massive amounts of money if credit ratings agencies don’t ease up; however, the agencies are only reaching their conclusions based on the company’s actions and inactions. 

The Guardian reports that Crown could have to repay over AUD$175 million ($135 million) if the agencies continue to mark down the company. Moody’s took Crown to Baa3 last November, which is just one step above being considered junk. The agency is also reportedly considering another push downward, given that Crown is still facing an inquiry by the New South Wales (NSW) Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority (ILGA) and its future status as a casino license holder is still in question. 

Yesterday, it was announced that Moody’s wasn’t willing to rate the $135 million in debt that was offered as euro medium-term notes (EMTN). These notes have been held by Crown for more than 14 years and are thought to belong to a Japanese investor. Although Moody’s won’t touch the debt, both Fitch and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) have rated it, giving it a rating of BBB, which is only two levels above junk. 

Should Fitch and S&P decide to follow Moody’s and either withdraw their ratings or list the debt as junk, that would allow the holder of the notes to claim repayment. That claim could potentially cover the face value, as well as interest that would have been paid between now and 2036, the year the debt would have matured. While Crown is believed to have the money to be able to cover the repayment, it would certainly impact its ability to work on other projects.

We need a new word for what’s going on in the capital markets. “Mania” just doesn’t cut it anymore. The stocks of nearly bankrupt companies are acting like vapid viral tweets, or the next video of an unlucky cat swinging from a ceiling fan and flung into a wall. A vast army of Robinhood day-trading high-school graduates living in their parents’ basements are flush with their Robinhood cash advances for opening a trading account, supercharged with their stimulus checks handed out by Congress, and add on top of that enhanced unemployment benefits to be renewed by the new Biden Administration, and then shifted into ludicrous speed with another $1,400 per person in additional direct payments soon to be passed.

If you’ve enjoyed gaming and casinos all your life, loved the atmosphere, the excitement, the colors, the adrenaline, the ring of a jackpot, then the way stocks have been behaving the last 9 months may be familiar to you, but in a haunted funhouse-mirror sort of way. Aside from the standard tech companies that now pretty much rule the world, the craziest and most widely covered absolutely wild upside action has been in isolated gaming companies of all things. GameStop (GME) just experienced one hell of a historic short squeeze, up about 900% in three weeks to a high of $159.18. Not bad at all for a company that was a penny stock just a few months ago and that has managed to lose $1.15 billion over the last two years.

This is what happens when bored, locked-down, inexperienced day traders with no rent to pay, armed with the right Twitter feed and thousands of dollars in free money coming from every direction, all pile in to squeeze giant hedge funds out of their short positions. It is completely bizarre, a blurring between reality and fantasy, sort of like watching a wrestling match that starts off staged but then gets out of control by accident and you no longer even know if you’re watching an act or something extremely dangerous. So you just sit there awkwardly watching, wondering, waiting.

GameStop may be getting all the coverage now, like some circus freak show that people just can’t turn away from even though they know this is just not right. But GameStop is not the only gaming stock that reached absolutely ridiculous highs yesterday. Penn National Gaming is right on its tail, hitting a new all time high of $111 yesterday at around the same time that GameStop was reaching its own transdimentional peak. What do the two have in common, and can we use the data to try to triangulate the next freak show?

Philippines casinos may eventually offer online gambling, but Okada wants you to know they haven’t started yet. The operator put out a pair of press releases denouncing fake news about their resort on January 25, while also announcing some news of their own.

In the first release, Okada clarified that, at least at this time, they offer no form of online play. Only services advertised on www.okadamanila.com, www.tigerresort.com, and @okadamanilaPH on social media are real, they note, and any site claiming to be an Okada online gambling platform is using their name against their wishes. They will take action against violators of their brand and trademark, they note.

Online gambling could come eventually for the operator, of course. In a December 9 interview with Asia Gaming Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) Chairwoman Andrea Domingo noted that a Liveshot scheme, to allow casinos to service registered players online, is in the works. But at least as of this time, no casino is known to have a service up and running, and Okada wants you to know they definitely don’t have one.

But if you do have a membership (as I do), then you definitely know they want you to visit the casino. They’ll even offer you a free meal and 100 pesos of free play!

Two Minnesota lawmakers are filing a bill to get sports betting in the land of many lakes. But while they want to keep Minnesota from falling behind on the sports betting gold rush, native tribes aren’t expected to take it well.

Republican Rep. Patrick Garofalo co-sponsoring the bill with Democratic Sen. Karla Bigham, and specifically said that what works for neighboring states should be fine for Minnesota. “Allow consumers to have a safe experience, have good consumer protections, and at the same time defunding some organized crime that might be taking place with that money,” Garofalo said.

By Garofalo’s math, Minnesota could generate as much as $50 million in taxes from the activity, and it serves what the people want. “Americans like to bet, Americans like sports,” Garofalo said. “You combine them together, it’s a natural activity.”

Although he makes convincing arguments, for some reason, Garofalo doesn’t like his chances of success. “There’s just something with the government in the state of Minnesota that acts slower than most other states,” he said. “I’m not saying we had to be the first state to legalize this, but why do we always have to be the caboose?”

Rodney Baker is polishing up his resume with one hand while massaging his arm with the other. The now-former CEO of the Great Canadian Gaming Corp. (CGC) has stepped down after it was discovered that he and his wife broke health protocols (and probably a few moral codes) in order to jump in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. His resignation is seen as almost a guarantee that the casino operator will now be sold to Apollo Global Management. 

According to Casino.org, Baker and his wife, Ekaterina, chartered a private jet to take them from Whitehorse to Beaver Creek, both located in Yukon, Canada. The goal of that trip wasn’t to get away to do some last-minute skiing or hiking; instead, it was to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. They showed up at a mobile vaccination clinic operated by Moderna, one of the companies that have produced a vaccine, posing as hotel workers in order to get preferential treatment to receive their shots. 

When the news broke, Baker admitted to what he had done and tendered his resignation. In the meantime, he and his wife could still face charges for their actions and are looking at accusations of having violated Yukon’s Civil Emergency Measures Act (CEMA). They have 30 days to contest the charges or face penalties of as much as $500 and/or six months in jail. 

Baker was discovered as a result of due diligence on the part of the team administering the vaccine. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation explains that the team, as part of their standard operating procedures, notified the hotel the Bakers claimed to work for after the couple received their shots. The hotel, however, confirmed that the Bakers were not employees, and the ruse unraveled from there.

There were already warnings issued against travel between China and Macau during the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday next month, but those cautions have just been made much louder. Macau has been forced to pay closer attention to COVID-19 as a new asymptomatic case was registered just across its border in the Chinese city of Zhuhai this past weekend. As a result of that, and the fact that China is beginning to see pockets of outbreaks, CNY vacation plans are already being canceled by many would-be visitors. 

The Zhuhai COVID-19 case centers on someone traveling from Ukraine to China at the beginning of this month. After arriving in the country, the individual went through the mandatory 14-day quarantine period before going to Zhuhai, where another test was administered on January 23. In addition, Macau saw an internal coronavirus case last week, the first since last June, when an individual arriving on a private charter plane from Tokyo tested positive.

Elsewhere in China, there have been a number of new COVID-19 cases, leading to many travelers calling off their CNY plans and staying home. As of yesterday, there were 124 new daily cases in the country, leading to new travel restrictions and quarantine requirements in Macau. This is forcing the city to remain at much lower operating levels and prolonging the beginning of a much-needed jumpstart to the economy. 

As things stand right now, January’s gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Macau is expected to be around 67% of what it was two years ago. This follows an entire year of subdued gaming in the city last year and is an indication of how slowly recovery efforts in the city are going to be. The next several weeks are going to be key to how the following months progress and analysts with the Sanford C. Bernstein brokerage assert, “GGR declined materially last week as travel from China came under pressure due to rising COVID contagion. China has been instituting larger scale lockdowns and urging a reduction in travel. The travel impediments will lead to reduced visitation into Macau for the next few weeks at least, with Chinese New Year visitation being impacted.”