Jimmy Fricke has decided to branch out and write a food blog. Lee Davy lends his opinion and picks out a few more superstars of poker who could get a thing going with a personal blog of their own.

There is an inextricable link between poker and dining. The two go together like shoes and socks. You travel to the most exotic places in the world, play poker, get knocked out and then spend the rest of the night eating at the most expensive restaurants whilst sweating on the results of credit card roulette.

The World Series of Poker (WSOP) can hit you hard in the pocket, more than most, when it comes to food. If you are not sufficiently organized you could end up doing as much dough off the tables as you do on it. Fortunately, for the WSOP grinders, Jimmy Fricke has come to the rescue.

Gobboboy has started a food blog and his area of concentration is Las Vegas. The blog is aptly named: Jimmy Eats Vegas where he offers you the opportunity to ‘Grow Fatter With Me,’ and at the moment the site contains just one review: Chada Thai.

So do we have another Alan Richman on our hands, or is he nothing but a Mr. Creosote?

I liked Fricke’s first review, and think the idea is an excellent one. If Fricke can focus on the little gems that the rest of us might miss, instead of writing reviews on the more common eateries, then this blog could be a little place of gold.

The greatest thing about Fricke being a food critic, is he eats so much (sorry Jimmy but it’s true). If I were to review Chada Thai you would get two or three dishes, but with Fricke, you get an expansive lowdown on most of the menu. All American Dave, Ronit Chamani & Ryan D’Angelo, and Tatjana Pasalic have got some competition.

PokerStars continue their Inside PokerStars series by delving into the question of gaming security as they once again head to the data center on the Isle of Man.

If you’ve ever wondered why your connection on PokerStars never seems to be disrupted and yet the rest of the online poker rooms have you reaching down your throat to pull your lungs out in despair, then wonder no more.

Inside PokerStars is back for their fifth installment of the “Look at us U.S. congressmen, we run a safe and secure online poker room” series, and this time they are answering the question: “When I’m playing online PokerStars where do the games take place?”

James Hartigan is once again tapping those fingers like a bad guy from a 1970s James Bond movie. He returns to the Isle of Man H.Q and this time he is talking to the Director of IT Operations: Gary Hill.

Hill takes Hartigan on a tour of The Data Center. A place that seems to be more secure than Air Force One. Hill tells Hartigan that only 3-4 people have access to the servers and you need to go through three different levels of security, including two different levels of biometric testing. I watched Demolition Man the other night and all it took was a fountain pen and an eyeball and Wesley Snipes was in – so I’m not so sure.

The Data Center looks like a place Scotty would hang out on the Starship Enterprise. It does give you the feeling of security, but I guess that’s the whole purpose of the series. Whilst I remain cynical about the series (timing and selection of questions, etc), I still think it’s something that should have been done a long time ago, and by every online poker room.

The most interesting thing to come out of the short video was the knowledge that PokerStars have invested in their own Internet to run independently to the real thing thus separating PokerStars players Internet experience from the rest of the world. Now I know why they operate so smoothly, whilst the rest of the pack seem to be haunted by gremlins.

Jersey eGaming (Channel Islands) has announced that it will be exhibiting at ICE Total Gaming on 3rd-5th February 2015, at Excel London. Following recent changes to it’s eGaming offering, Jersey is the newest tier-one eGaming jurisdiction to emerge, offering lost cost, high quality services.  Key features of Jersey’s eGaming proposition include:

Providing the cheapest tier one jurisdiction license costs available

Free Disaster Recovery Licenses

An independent Gambling Commission

No VAT

No eGaming Duty

0% Corporation Tax

The tangled web that is casino operator Caesars Entertainment shows no signs of untangling anytime soon. Just days after Caesars announced it had secured the support of enough first-lien creditors to approve its plan to reinvent its debt-laden Caesars Entertainment Operating Co (CEOC) unit as a real estate investment trust, a group of aggrieved junior creditors made a pre-emptive strike to force Caesars into an involuntary bankruptcy before the company could file for Chapter 11 protection.

On Monday, Appaloosa Investment LP and funds associated with Oaktree Capital and Tennenbaum Capital asked a US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to appoint an examiner to look into allegations that Caesars’ controversial asset transfers had “stripped [CEOC] of most of its valuable income-generating assets and hundreds of millions of dollars of cash, leaving the debtor burdened with massive debt that cannot be repaid.”

Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan, told Bloomberg that the move was intended to secure a jurisdictional advantage, in that Caesars has no casinos in Delaware and thus a judge may be more inclined to weigh the issue without factoring in local concerns over potential job losses. The filing also ensures that any subsequent bankruptcy filing would be halted until the Delaware court determines the right venue for the proceedings.

Caesars’ proposed restructuring would shave nearly $10b off CEOC’s $18.4b debt, most of those savings coming at the expense of second-lien creditors, who are set to receive equity worth pennies on the dollar. The junior creditors say Caesars’ plan treats their notes “as fully unsecured and provide them with equity that even the debtor values at a small fraction of the outstanding principal.”

On Tuesday, attorneys for Caesars Entertainment Corp told a Delaware Chancery Court judge that CEOC intends to file for bankruptcy on Jan. 20 and asked that junior creditors’ lawsuits be put on hold. Caesars’ attorneys note that a bankruptcy judge will be asked to freeze such lawsuits once CEOC files for Chapter 11 protection. Attorneys for the junior creditors said granting the request would represent “extraordinary relief for a third party that is not in bankruptcy.” The creditors have also asked for a stay on any attempt by Caesars to submit its own bankruptcy filing.

Yet another challenge facing Caesars is convincing a bankruptcy judge that the proposed restructuring is ‘fair’ to all creditors. In an unrelated case in Delaware bankruptcy courts, a judge rejected a $42b refinancing plan by Dallas-based power company Energy Future Holdings that offered certain advantages to favored creditors. The high profile of Caesars’ fiscal implosion could similarly sway a judge into requiring a less selectively punitive division of the spoils.

Meanwhile, holders of $5.4b worth of Caesars’ bank loans – including Blackstone Group’s GSO Capital Partners (last seen helping finance Amaya Gaming’s $4.9b acquisition of the Rational Group) and Fortress Investment Group – have reportedly united to force Caesars to sweeten their pot if they are to consent to their version of Caesars’ restructuring plan. Bottom line: don’t expect to wake up from this accounting nightmare anytime soon.

This is a guest contribution by Stephen Padveen, a Senior Partner with t2Marketing International. . You can connect with t2Marketing International at one of their upcoming appearances. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

When it comes to online gaming, players can be sensitive to even the smallest of issues. What’s more, the reality of the industry is such that players can easily move from one operator to another with little inconvenience to their playing experience. So when a potential crisis begins to rear its head, your casino needs to have a proper strategy in place in order to prevent the issue from spiraling out of control and becoming a viral conversation.

The advent of social media in the world of communications has resulted in information travelling at unprecedented speeds. When a problem comes up, it can take as a little as a few minutes to make the rounds before you have a crisis on your hands that threatens the reputation and, in extreme cases, the survival of your brand. Therefore, it is crucial that your business has a comprehensive social media crisis management strategy so that crises can be identified in their infancy and dealt with before they expand.

There are a number of components that will go into a social media crisis management program but there are certain universal elements that every brand should take into consideration when developing policies and best practices.

Start by Listening

This might seem somewhat intuitive, but social listening is far more than simply watching your feeds and streams for comments. In order to effectively listen to online chatter, gaming operators should be using high-level listening tools in order to pay attention to trends, observe volume spikes, monitor sentiment changes and scrutinize comments regarding their brand as well as those of competitors and the industry in general.