French iGaming regulator Autorité de Régulation des Jeux en Ligne has released their Q1, 2015 numbers, and a boost in online sports betting has resulted in a 3% increase in year-on-year gross gaming revenue.

Finally, some good news for iGaming proponents in France, as French iGaming regulator Autorité de Regulation des Jeux en Ligne (ARJEL) released Q1, 2015 numbers, showing a 3% increase in year-on-year gross gaming revenue climbing to €190m.

Gold stars were awarded to the French sports betting division. Participation increased 27% year-on-year with 202,000 accounts as opposed to 159,000. Stakes of €351m were recorded in the first quarter, a 38% rise on the €254m earned a year ago. Gross profits were up 17% to €63m, from €54m this time last year.

Football continues to dominate the sports bettors’ interest with 58% of all bets coming in that sport. Paris St Germain made the quarterfinals of the Champions League before getting their booty kicked by Barcelona 5-1 on aggregate, and one assumes that run had an impact. Tennis (18%) and basketball (13%) are the other two major sports of interest for French punters.

Malaysia’s Genting Group broke ground Tuesday on its new $4b Resorts World Las Vegas (RWLV) casino project.

Genting chairman KT Lim (pictured) and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval were on hand to commemorate the event, the first time in over a decade that Vegas had witnessed work commence on a property of this scale. The event was laden with added significance due to Monday’s closure of the Riviera, one of the last Vegas casinos to trace its roots back to the fabled Rat Pack era.

The four-tower, 3,500-room RWLV will plug the hole left by Boyd Gaming’s aborted Echelon project on the site of the old Stardust Hotel. Boyd put the project on pause after the global economy crashed and eventually sold out to Genting in March 2013 for $350m.

When it opens in mid-2018, RWLV’s gaming floor will occupy around 175k square feet. Non-gaming amenities include a replica of the Great Wall of China, indoor water park, 4k-seat theater and possibly some real live pandas. (Hopefully the kung fu kind, but don’t quote us.)

888Poker has signed Japanese poker player, Akira Ohyama, to represent the brand, as the country’s impending casino bill looms large.

If you want to sign professional forms with an online poker room it seems the value you need to bring to the table is pretty simple. You either have to have a large following on Twitch, or come from the land of the rising sun.

888Poker has signed Japanese poker player Akira ‘Clutch Hero’ Ohyama. He joins the likes of Jackie Glazier, Nico Villa Lobos, Bruno Kawauti, Bruno Foster Politano and Sofia Lovgren as an 888Poker Ambassador (although the 888Poker web tech guy needs to pull his finger out of his ass, as their newest asset is not shown on the ambassador page).

Ohyama first discovered poker when studying in the States. After Black Friday he returned to Japan to play online full time. Records show he has won $1.8m playing online, with over a million of that bounty earned, ironically, playing on PokerStars. He has earned $186k playing on 888Poker. His biggest single cash was for $54,377 in the Sunday 500 on PokerStars.

Caesars Entertainment have followed the recent industry standard by removing all cash from their live cash game action throughout their entire enterprise.

From dipping into a plastic bag full of pennies, in games of Crash with your Grandmother, to sitting behind a wad of $100 bills in a Las Vegas cash game, there’s something authentic about the touch and feel of cold hard cash. It’s a shame that live casinos don’t share the same feeling of nostalgia as I.

Caesars Entertainment have decided to follow the recent industry standard, and make cash unplayable during live cash games. The news came out over the weekend, and the changes will be rolled out enterprise wide.

This means that punters heading to the World Series of Poker will not be able to use cash when playing in the live cash games in the Rio. Instead, all cash will have to be converted into chips, for it to be declared live at the table. Tournaments are unaffected as these were always played with chips.

10-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, Johnny Chan, will chair Frontier Capital Group as they attempt to acquire the Mongolian National Lottery.

10-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, Johnny Chan, has been appointed as Director, and Chairman, of Frontier Capital Group Ltd.

Chan has been appointed to spearhead the proposed acquisition of the Mongolian National Lottery announced on 23 April 2015. The press release issued by Frontier Capital Group also stresses that they ‘have the right to establish the first casino in Mongolia’.

It seems Chan’s high profile presence, coupled with his experience of managing California’s Hustler Casino, between 2003 & 2006, makes him a solid choice to lead the investigations into the gambling promise of a country that houses 3 million people.

A new research paper questions the theory that online gambling is a more addictive form of gambling and suggests that gamblers who only gamble online actually display lower rates of problem gambling behavior.

The study, authored by Southern Cross researcher Dr. Sally Gainsbury, is titled Online Gambling Addiction: the Relationship Between Internet Gambling and Disordered Gambling (read it here). Gainsbury examined a mountain of gambling prevalence and problem gambling research to determine whether online gambling is in fact the express elevator to hell that groups like the Coalition to Stop internet Gambling would have people believe.

Many studies have found that internet gambling is linked with individuals who report problem gambling behavior but Gainsbury found that this was more likely due to problem gamblers utilizing a much broader spectrum of gambling options. Gainsbury found that once you accounted for demographic variables and the number of gambling formats utilized, “participation in internet gambling does not independently predict problem gambling severity.”

Gainsbury also found evidence to suggest that “individuals who gamble online may have lower rates of gambling problems.” Gamblers who exclusively wager online “have lower rates of gambling problems than gamblers who only gamble offline and those who use both online and offline modes.” Gamblers who engage in both online and offline modes “appear to have the greatest risks of harm,” but again, this is likely due to problem gamblers’ omnivorous approach.