Ray Henson tops the largest field in World Series of Poker Circuit history, after defeating the six-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, TJ Cloutier, in heads up action at Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma.

There are two things that I know for sure.

1. Poker players may think that re-entries are bad for poker, but they do their very best to keep them alive by ploughing money into them.

2. Once a great poker player: always a great poker player.

The World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) $365 Main Event (Re-Entry), held at Choctaw Casino, Oklahoma, broke the attendance record when four starting days attracted a field size of 4,053 entrants and $1,215,900 in prize money.

With the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) also breaking records under the baking Bahamian sun; 2015 looks like it’s going to be a stellar year for live poker attendances. It’s not just a new influx of players that are affecting these numbers, as the final table of this bad boy demonstrated.

With six-WSOP bracelets, spread over a 35-year career, TJ Cloutier is a veritable legend in the game. His runner-up spot to Ray Henson is testament to both his skill and stamina, as he picked up a $122,040 paycheck – his largest in seven years when he took $240,560 for his victory in the $5,150 Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge IV in Tulsa. Guess whom Cloutier beat in the heads-up phase of that contest – Ray Henson.

Lee Davy brings you a short recap of the first 13-side events at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas.

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) is one of the most prestigious events outside of the World Series of Poker (WSOP). The winner of the $100,000 Super High Roller, $25,000 High Roller and $10,000 Main Event will all take home paychecks containing a lot of zeroes.

Those three tournaments are what make the PCA special, but it’s the depth of side events that makes the PokerStars live events the most attended outside of the once a year jaunt to the desert.

Here’s a short recap of the action that has gone down during the first 13-events.

A fresh new year, and it seems as if the poker economy is going to be strong. Both the $100,000 Super High Roller, and $25,000 High Roller events attracted record numbers (50 & 269 respectively), and at the time of writing Steve O’Dwyer has banked $1.8m as the $100,000 winner, and there are 11-players vying for the $1.2m first prize, with Dominik Nitsche a potential Triple Crown winner, in the $25,000 event.

For the first time since its inception, the Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT) came to the Bahamas and Josh Kay defeated a field of 532 entrants to win the first prize of $367,928 in the Main Event.

Three more six figure winners to catch up on.

UK-listed bookies William Hill have declined to renew their sponsorship of the Lincoln Handicap race at Doncaster due to the imposition of the UK’s point-of-consumption tax (POCT). The tax, which costs operators 15% of revenue earned via online gamblers based in the UK, kicked in Dec. 1. Hills had served as the race sponsor since 2006 but the latest deal ended last March.

On Tuesday, Hills spokesperson Kate Miller said the company “had to review a number of our marketing investments” as a consequence of adjusting to the new POCT reality. Miller told the Racing Post that it hadn’t decided to axe any other racing sponsorships and the Lincoln hadn’t been singled out for special treatment. “The renewal of it came up at an opportune moment.” Track officials say they are “currently in discussions with several interested parties” regarding the now vacant sponsorship.

In more positive Hills news, the company’s US division has been added to the board of the American Gaming Association (AGA). Hills was one of six new firms added to the AGA’s board, joining Nevada bookies CG Technology, casino and racetrack operator Greenwood Racing Inc., gaming device maker Konami Gaming, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and Seminole Hard Rock Gaming, the AGA’s first ever board member from the ranks of America’s Indian tribes.

Finally, Hills recently paid out £2,500 to a Scots punter who bet the bookies he could lose 100 lb. in less than a year. Self-confessed pie eater Gary Connell had tipped the scales at 344 lb. and when he decided to drop the fork he convinced Hills to accept his £25 wager that he couldn’t flay the flab in under a year. Thanks to a pie-free diet and a regular exercise program, the 35-year-old Connell now weighs a mere 240 lb. Hills spokesman Rupert Adams said the bookie normally accepts around 100 such bets each year and called Connell’s accomplishment “a flau-ulous feat.”

New Jersey’s regulated online gambling market earned $10.7m in revenue in December, $2m more than it earned the previous month. The gains are a bit illusory, given the fact that November’s numbers were negatively impacted by a $1.3m slots jackpot paid out by Caesars interactive New Jersey. Nonetheless, the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) is trumpeting the fact that December’s total is up 63% over December 2013, the first full month of the state’s regulated online gambling market.

As usual, the casino vertical earned the bulk of revenue, generating nearly $8.7m, while the poker vertical earned $2.05m, an improvement on November’s record low of $1.87m. The market’s poker vertical peaked at $3.4m in January and has been on a largely uninterrupted decline ever since.

For 2014 as a whole, online gambling earned nearly $122.9m, with $93.8m coming from casino games and just under $29.1m from poker. The state’s annual tax haul from online gambling came to $18.4m.

The Borgata/Bwin.party/Pala online combo earned $3.6m in December, $2.5m (+5%) from casino and $1.1m (+10%) from poker. With no crippling slots jackpots to pay out, Caesars Interactive earned $2.63m, roughly equivalent to what it earned back in September. Caesars’ casino vertical earned nearly $1.7m, while poker earned $950k (+8%).

The Tropicana’s casino-only site earned $2.3m, virtually unchanged from the previous month. The Golden Nugget’s casino-only site earned nearly $2.2m, up $700k from November, reflecting a full month’s contribution from Betfair, who switched over to the Nugget’s platform on Nov. 21.

For 2014 as a whole, Borgata/Bwin.party generated a total of $44.3m ($29m casino, $15.3m poker), easily eclipsing Caesars’ $32.8m ($19.5m casino, $13.3m poker). The Tropicana earned nearly $22.6m while the Nugget claimed $10.8m.

Atlantic City‘s casinos reported revenue of $2.74b in 2014, 4.5% less than they earned in 2013 and a whopping 48% decline from the seaside gaming hub’s peak of $5.2b in 2006. The annual decline would have been 8.5% were it not for the additional $122m in revenue AC earned from online gambling, which was only operational in the state for about six weeks at the tail end of 2013.

The struggles Atlantic City faced in 2014 are well documented, with four casinos closing their doors and the Trump Taj Mahal’s survival still far from assured. Yet there is some indication that AC’s eight remaining casinos may have a brighter future, given that six of these joints reported gaming revenue increases in the month of December, and the elite eight saw their share of gaming revenue rise nearly 8% in 2014.

Stripping aside December’s $10.7m in online gambling revenue, the eight surviving casinos earned $179.8m for the month, up 7.3% from the amount those same eight earned in December 2013. Perennial top dog Borgata maintained its number one position, gaining 13.3% to $49.9m. Harrah’s placed second with $29.8m (+11.1%) while Caesars fell 6.1% to $27.6m. The rest shook out as follows: Tropicana ($20.2m, +23.6%), Bally’s ($17.2m, +5.4%), Golden Nugget ($13.7m, +47.4%), Resorts ($10.6m, +20.9%) and the Taj Mahal ($10.8m, -34.9%).

Up in Detroit, the city’s three casinos posted a modest 1.2% annual gaming revenue decline to $1.33b in 2014. The Michigan Gaming Control Board said the decline would have been much worse were it not for December’s tally, which was up 10.8% year-on-year. The Board had been expecting a decline in the range of 2.5% to 3%, so executive director Richard Kaim figures the real numbers are “certainly manageable.” MGM Grand captured 42% of the city’s casino revenue, with MotorCity owning 33% and Greektown 25%.