Lee Davy brings you all of the weeks top news stories including 888 Holding’s successful bid to buy bwin.party digital entertainment, Bluff magazine to shut down operations and Ben Warrington opens up his heart over his Venetian $5k debacle.

Last week the poker news feed was as cold as a coffin. This week things got a lot warmer after bwin.party digital entertainment plumped for 888 Holdings instead of GVC Holdings/Amaya Gaming in the highly publicized acquisition race.

The deal is not 100% secure, but for the time being it seems that bwin has accepted an £898m (€1.3bn) offer from 888 Holdings. That’s despite the joint force of GVC/Amaya offering £900m. The way is open for GVC to still make a counter offer, but CalvinAyre’s resident Gordon Gekko Rafi Farber doesn’t think that makes much of a difference.

Cue the flow of champagne bubbles blubbering up to the surface like a case of the bends. Poker players love PokerStars. That’s way everyone plays there. But there has been this growing sense that they have been getting a little too big for their boots. Let’s hope the newly formed company can be the fatted calf we all hope it will.