Lee Davy recaps the week’s headlines including a jail sentence for a British World Series of Poker bracelet winner, the end of Bluff magazine print edition, the closure of The Linq poker room, and a round-up of the action at the World Poker Tour, World Series of Poker Circuit and the 2015 Aussie Millions.

The week started out with news that the former 888Poker sponsored pro, PokerStrategy coach, and World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet holder, Darren Woods, was sentenced to 15-months imprisonment, and told to return £1m to those he had wronged, or else his sentence would be extended to one of six years.

The young man from the UK was said to have a net worth far exceeding £1m, giving you an understanding of the amount of money he was able to draw from the online poker industry, during his multi-accounting and fraudulent affiliate activities.

Woods has already been ordered to return £287,673 to an unnamed online gambling company. An amount believed to be on its way to the players he duped in due course.

Bye-Bye Bluff Magazine

Young Woods will have plenty of time to read whilst doing porridge, but one piece of literature he won’t be getting his hands on is a copy of Bluff magazine.

Earlier this week, Bluff Media, declared that the print version of their February issue would be their last. The dawn of the new age was upon them, and future issues of Bluff would be available in a digital only format.

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A new online poker bill has arrived in California courtesy of Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (pictured right). Titled the Internet Poker Consumer Protection Act of 2015 (read it here), the bill differs from Mike Gatto’s AB 9 legislation by allowing state racetracks to join Indian tribes and card clubs in the state’s online poker industry.

More importantly, the AB 167 bill contains no specific ‘bad actor’ clause, at least, not the boilerplate prohibition of any company that accepted wagers from state residents after Dec. 31, 2006. Instead, it deems companies/people to be ineligible if they have “contemptuously defied a legislative investigative body” of a US state, the federal government or a foreign jurisdiction “when that body is engaged in the investigation of crimes relating to poker, official corruption related to poker activities or criminal profiteering activity or organized crime.”

Ditto for anyone convicted ‘in a court of competent jurisdiction of a felony for either having accepted a bet over the internet in violation of United States of California law, or having aided or abetted that unlawful activity.”

The bill also doesn’t contain any mention of the dreaded phrase “covered assets,” clauses that block the use of software, brands, databases and other tools of the trade if said tools had anything to do with any felonious activity. As is, the bill offers the least possible resistance to Amaya Gaming and its new PokerStars property of any California online poker bill to date.

Not so lucky is any tribe that operates a gaming site that accepts wagers from players not physically present on Indian lands, which would be ruled ineligible. This clause is directed squarely at the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel and their Desert Rose Bingo site, which utilizes virtual private network technology to interact with gamblers outside its tribal boundaries.

FELONIES FOR PLAYERS

Alarmingly, the bill warns that “any violation” of the Act would be punishable as a felony. The language states that “the offer or play of any gambling game provided over the Internet that is not an authorized Internet poker game permitted by the state” would be prohibited. For Californians, merely patronizing an unauthorized site is a felony, “punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code.”

Sports books are still dealing the New England Patriots as -1 favorites. I’m guessing that all this brouhaha about those deflated balls during the AFC title game hasn’t dampened the Pats’ outlook ahead of the big game. Not that it should because all the controversy surrounding this deflated balls really is being blown way out of proportion. But hey, people need to have stories to write and fans need something to talk about, right?

God forbid, but with the Super Bowl still 10 days away, we need as many storylines as we can get. So we’ll settle for the DeflateGate, at least until a real narrative comes out. But for now, all the controversy surrounding those deflated balls hasn’t turned off people from betting on New England. Now here’s the question: is this really the actual number or are the Seahawks getting tremendous value right now without anybody noticing it?

The simple answer is “no” and “yes”.

See, a lot happened during the conference championship games. Seattle had to come back from 16 points against the Green Bay Packers whereas the New England Patriots steamrolled the Indianapolis Colts, deflated balls or not. The short-sighted view would be to interpret those results in a manner that put the Seahawks in a vulnerable light and the Pats as the all-conquering powerhouse.

Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what happened because the Seahawks went from -2.5 favorites to 1-point underdogs, even before the Pats-Colts game finished. The public bet on New England pretty heavily and if there was ever a smart play at this point in time, it would be to take the Seahawks as the short underdogs.

That or you can opt to hold off on taking any action and wait for the public to continue pounding on the Patriots. That could drive the number up to -2 for New England, or maybe even -2.5. There is a precedent for this and it actually happened just last year when bettors were all over the Denver Broncos in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. We all know what happened after that. Nevada sportsbooks ended up posting $19.6 million in winnings.

So is it possible that Seattle’s being overlooked yet again? You bet it is.

Nevada has proposed amending its gambling legislation to make it illegal for anyone to profit from affiliate activity with online gambling sites not holding a Nevada license. Senate Bill 40 was pre-filed in December and referred to the judiciary committee in the hopes of passing in the 2015 session of the state legislature, which gets underway Feb. 2.

The one-page bill would amend Chapter 465 of the Nevada Revised Statutes, which includes language dealing with the transaction of wagers through ‘mediums of communication.’ It’s already illegal to accept or receive wagers without a Nevada gaming license, but SB 40 would extend that illegality to anyone who financially benefits from aiding someone offering illegal wagers.

Specifically, SB 40 makes in unlawful “to receive, directly or indirectly, any compensation or reward, or any percentage or share of the money or property played” with any person or entity not licensed for wagering by the state. The prohibition also applies to anyone “accepting or facilitating” wagers placed with unauthorized operators or for “transmitting or delivering anything of value resulting from a bet or wager” with the aforementioned rapscallions.

Assuming SB 40 passes, violators would be guilty of a category B felony, the penalty for which is a federal prison stint of between one and six years and/or a fine of up to $5k. The bill was made public the same day that a new California online poker bill proposed making it a felony for players to patronize any online gambling site not holding a state license. Must be something in the water.

While it seems evident that SB 40 would apply to revenue-sharing affiliates of international online gambling sites, concerns have already been raised that its broad language could be interpreted as applying to people who stake other players in poker games (online or otherwise). It would hardly be the first time legislators’ failure to get specific resulted in collateral damage.

The Macau Government Tourist Office reported that the city received 31.5 million visitors in 2014, a 7.5% increase over 2013.

Mainland visitors rose 8.5% to 28 million. Hong Kong and Taiwan remained the second and third biggest source markets for the city, although the total number of visitors from both jurisdictions registered year-on-year drops of 5% and 4.7%, amounting to 6.43 million and 953,000, respectively, whereas International visitor numbers dropped by 1.1%.

During an annual press conference yesterday, Director of the Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO), Helena de Senna Fernandes, projected 5% growth in the number of visitors travelling to Macau during the Chinese New Year period this year, with around 1 million people expected to visit Macau in the first week of CNY.

“[MGTO] estimates that the number of visitors in the CNY period will have a mild growth compared to last year, with about 800,000 mainland visitors travelling to Macau [during that period].”

Macau casino revenue fell 2.6% to 351 billion patacas ($44 billion) in 2014. Analysts estimates that Macau gaming revenue for the whole of 2015 is likely to fall between 4% and 8% year-on-year. If the prediction of year-on-year decline comes to pass, it would continue a trend seen last year of rising visitor numbers but falling gaming revenue.

“The gambling business went down in the second half of last year, but tourist numbers continued to increase,” said Fernandes. “The growing momentum of mainland tourists was especially strong. We are thrilled to know tourists don’t necessarily come here to gamble.”

MGTO director also remarked that the government will start working on the tourism this year by conducting a large scale study on the city’s tourism, costing up to 20 million patacas.

Russia-facing online gambling sites will be subject to payment-blocking as the country prepares for the launch of its regulated online sports betting market this summer. Online gambling is considered illegal in Russia, but select online sports betting operators expect to receive official legal blessing to operate by June.

Yury Fedorov, president of Russia’s National Association of Bookmakers, told eGaming Review that the plan is for all approved online bookies to channel payment processing through a self-regulatory organization (SRO). This centralized processing will allow Russia’s digital watchdogs to better distinguish between legitimate online betting payments and those made with unsanctioned operators.

Fedorov said the SRO payment processing system was not yet operational, but once all systems were go, other online payment channels in Russia would be ordered to “stop the arrangement of payments for all companies that are not in the SROs.”

Shortly before Christmas, the First Self-Regulatory Organization of Russian Bookmakers (First SRO) was established with Oleg Zhuravsky as president. The SRO’s website claims that it has signed up 11 of the 27 companies currently licensed in Russia as bookmakers. Each of these 11 operators has contributed RUB 30m (US $460k) to a safety fund to ensure players’ financial interests are protected.

On Dec. 30, Zhuravsky told VPROGNOZE.ru that First SRO “intends to fight against illegal betting websites by applying international law.” Zhuravsky said “the decisions of foreign courts will force illegal operators to stop their activities in Russia” and that the focus of the fight would be on large publicly traded firms rather than “small and insignificant operators.” Zhuravsky suggested the first actions against these bigger companies would take place this spring.

In December, Russia imposed harsh new fines on anyone caught organizing gambling – land-based or online – outside the country’s designated gambling zones. Last March, Russia instructed internet service providers to block over 50 online gambling sites, including domains belonging to the likes of PokerStars, William Hill and Ladbrokes. Both Ladbrokes and Betfair subsequently announced their withdrawals from the Russian market.

Russian also recently added several Bitcoin-related websites to its blacklist. The sites included both domestic and international domains. The government has provided little information as to what prompted the move but Igor Chepkasov, chairman of the Crypto Currency Foundation of Russia, told Coindesk that it appeared to be “a dress rehearsal for the prohibition of Bitcoin in Russia.”