iGaming North America has officially kicked off at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, an event dedicated to opportunities within and regulation surrounding the US iGaming Market.

Over the course of the next three days, several hundred gaming professionals will gather for sessions, lunch meet-ups, post-conference drinks and whatever else one gets up to when spending time in Las Vegas.

Day one of the event attracted a solid crowd, with an almost full house assembled for the opening session, a 2015 Visionaries Panel covering the state of the industry.

Unfortunately two of the key speakers, David Baazov and Brian Mattingley, were unable to make it last minute but Gavin Isaacs of Scientific Games and Renato Ascoli of IGT with Sue Schneider as moderator delivered a solid session.

New Jersey’s regulated online gambling market earned nearly $13.2m in March, a new revenue record in the market’s 16-month history.

The gains were entirely driven by the casino vertical, which earned $10.9m this March compared to $8.6m a year ago. By comparison, the struggling poker vertical fell from $3.2m last year to just $2.2m in March 2015. Poker revenue rose nearly 10% on a sequential basis but March also had 10% more days than February, meaning the vertical was essentially flat, so don’t go popping those champagne corks just yet.

The month’s overall revenue total is a significant improvement over the $11.9m the market recorded in the same month last year. The numbers are up even more from the $10.4m the market generated in February 2015, although those numbers were artificially depressed due to a $1.5m jackpot at Betfair’s online casino site.

On an individual operator basis, the Borgata/Bwin.party/Pala Interactive sites generated just under $4.2m in March, up from $3.7m in February. The poker vertical earned $1.23m (+9%), while the casino earned $2.96m (+15%).

Online gambling sites have come under a fresh wave of distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks by malicious programmers looking for a quick payday.

Over the weekend, the Twitter helpdesk of UK-listed operator Betfair reported that both its betting exchange and fixed-odds sportsbook were down for the count. On Monday, Betfair revealed that it was “currently experiencing a DDOS attack on our site, which is stopping all site traffic.” Later messages confirmed that the site’s issues were the result of “a deliberate attempt by a third party to interrupt our service.”

By late Monday, Betfair was reporting that its site was “stable for now, however we are still monitoring to see if this malicious activity re-occurs.” However, as of Tuesday, the site said it continued to experience “technical issues beyond our control” that were affecting its in-play feed.

Traditionally, DDOS attacks on online sportsbooks are timed to coincide with marquee sporting events, in the hopes that operators will consider a ransom payment an unwanted but worthwhile expense in order not to miss out on significant betting volumes. Betfair’s unknown assailants appear to have timed their attacks around this weekend’s Grand National racing fixture and Sunday’s climax of golf’s Masters event.

Atlantic City’s eight surviving casinos bounced back from their weather-related woes to record a small gaming revenue increase in March.

The eight AC casinos that didn’t shut their doors last year generated gaming revenue of $190.7m in March, up 1.3% from the same month last year. The figure doesn’t include the $13.2m the state’s regulated online gambling sites brought in last month. Sticklers will note that the month’s total is down 12.6% if you count the four walking dead casinos that were still operating in zombie mode in March 2014. Regardless, the March total is a significant gain from February’s $168m, so cheer the fuck up.

In purely land-based terms, just three AC casinos posted revenue gains in March, led by the market-leading Borgata. In a case of the rich getting richer, the Borgata’s brick-and-mortar revenue was up 8.8% year-on-year to $56m. The month’s biggest gain came at the Golden Nugget, which rose a hefty 25.9% to $16.2m. Harrah’s was the month’s only other gainer, rising 11.4% to $32.3m.

The month’s decliners finished as follows: Caesars ($23.3m, -4.1%), Tropicana ($21.1m, -4.8%), Bally’s ($15.9m, -11.1%), Trump Taj Mahal ($14.8m, -22.8%) and Resorts Atlantic City ($11m, -1.5%).

Macau will cap the number of visitors it accepts each year from mainland China in order to maintain the quality of life enjoyed by the city’s permanent residents.

Citing a report by the Institute for Tourism Studies, Macau’s government says the city can successfully absorb between 89k and 92k visitors per day. However, during the recent Lunar New Year celebrations, Macau was receiving 147k visitors per day. Macau Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Alexis Tam Chon Weng called this latter figure “well above” the city’s capacity and thus changes were required.

Tam said Macau intends to cap the annual number of mainland visitors at 21m, roughly the number the city welcomed in 2014. That figure represents two-thirds of the city’s total 31m visits in 2014. Macau Business Daily quoted Tam saying Macau wanted to keep mainland visits stable while boosting international visitors in order to achieve “an equilibrium point.”

Tam reassured casino operators that the 21m cap was “not stable” and would eventually increase once the pace of infrastructure development caught up with the frenzied building of casinos and other tourist-drawing attractions in Macau.

American Gaming Association CEO Geoff Freeman believes criminals have been sucking on illegal gambling’s big bouncy breasts for too damn long.

Freeman made his spirited call to arms – to arm-level, at least – at a meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) at MGM Resorts’ Beau Rivage property in in Biloxi, Mississippi. Feeling his oats on home turf, Freeman asked the assembled AGs to go full-on ‘avengers assemble’ mode in the fight against illegal gambling.

Freeman said illegal gambling is a “pernicious form of venture capital investments — the mother’s milk for a host of violent criminal enterprises.” Freeman believes society needs to tear these tainted teats from criminals’ mouths and that the AGs and the AGA should do some tearing ASAP.

Freeman made a clear distinction between upstanding gambling operators and the filthy rabble that lack AGA membership. Freeman says this latter group gets its illegal mom’s milk from four main hooters: sports betting outside Nevada, black-market gaming machines, internet sweepstakes cafes and internationally licensed online gambling sites.