Jason Brin is the inaugural World Poker Tour Choctaw Main Event winner after topping a final table that housed World Poker Tour Champions Club members Darren Elias and Andy Hwang.

Champagne bubbles will be flowing like the bends in the household of Jason Brin as he tops a tough final table to win the inaugural World Poker Tour (WPT) Choctaw Main Event.

Brin defeated 1,175 players – a field size that almost guarantees the WPT will return to Choctaw – to capture the first prize of $682,975, denying Darren Elias his third WPT title in just 11-months.

Up until this magical moment Brin was a regular on the Heartland Poker Tour (HPT) and Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT). He had made three HPT final tables, without ever finishing any higher than fifth place, and one MSPT final table appearance finishing fourth. This was his first WPT cash.

Japanese government plans to regulate trading of bitcoins and other virtual currencies amid the investigation of Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox.

Finance Minister Taro Aso said in a press conference that the Japanese government plans to regulate trading of bitcoins and other virtual currencies. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) will likely introduce a system in which operators are required to register, obtain a license, confirm the identity of their clients and improve their internal management systems.

Taro also noted that the government has to carry out studies on how to properly regulate virtual currencies, as a response to an international trend of bitcoins being used for money laundering and extortion.

Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles was arrested in Tokyo for manipulating transaction records in his company’s trading system to inflate the balance of an account under his name.

Secretary of Justice Leila De Lima has ordered the immediate deportation of Bo Wang, who has been accused of heading a P91-billion illegal gambling network in the Philippines.

The Philippines’ Department of Justice wants Bo Wang to leave the country now. Secretary of Justice Leila De Lima ordered the immediate deportation of the Chinese fugitive who has been accused of heading a P91-billion illegal gambling network.

In a resolution dated Aug. 4, 2015, De Lima reinstated the March 5, 2015 Summary of Deportation Order (SDO) against the Chinese national, saying there’s no more reason for the order not to be enforced because she had already junked Wang’s appeal.

“After a careful consideration of the grounds stated by the Movant, as well as the discussions proffered, this Office is unconvinced and finds no reason to reverse its June 8, 2015 resolution,” De Lima said in a statement.

I love content marketing and I enjoy consuming the innovative content fanned out by all sorts of different companies across the web and other channels.

An example of a company that I think does a great job with content marketing is Pact Coffee, the UK coffee delivery company I subscribe to.  Not only is their coffee amazing, but they also include fun facts and figures about coffee in the package, they produce a creative newsletter, they reward sharing on social media and so on.  I find myself looking forward to receiving any communication from Pact because its interesting, its entertaining and I love coffee.

There are many examples of successful content marketing strategies these days and to keep ahead of the game, every company should have one, affiliates too.  The online gambling industry has been talking about content marketing for the past year or so and our conference sessions are now reflecting this new-ish area of interest.

One of our industry’s experts in the content marketing field is Nichola Stott of The Media Flow.  In order to provide an introduction to content marketing for those of you who are just now starting to learn, I sat down with Stott for a little 101.  For more granular advice, be sure to check out her CalvinAyre.com Content Marketing Tips of the Week, she is a wealth of information.

Online payments processor Optimal Payments has been given the green light to proceed with their $1.2 billion acquisition of competitor Skrill.

Optimal Payments PLC has taken another step forward in the journey to acquire their competitor Skrill. The UK-listed online payment processor has received the receipt of change of control approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in line with the proposed $1.2 billion reverse takeover.

News of the proposed acquisition first came to light back in March when Optimal announced the reverse takeover of Sentinel Topco Ltd. – Skrill are one of Sentinel’s many subsidiaries and the jewel in the crown for Optimal as they look to place some of their eggs in non online gambling baskets. Skrill is accepted in over 156,000 businesses of varying degrees.

Skrill is the e-commerce business formerly known as Moneybookers. In 2013, the business was acquired by CVC Capital Partners in a reported €600m deal. They are currently one of the US customer’s e-wallets of choice in all three regulated states: Delaware, New Jersey and Nevada.

The Minnesota Lottery has set an Aug. 31 deadline for ending f its online sales but questions remain as to how to compensate the technology vendors for early cancellation of their contracts.

In May, state legislators voted to kill off the Lottery’s online scratch tickets along with a program to sell lottery tickets at automatic teller machines and gas station pumps. On Wednesday, Lottery director Ed Van Petten told Minnesota Public Radio that the ATM/pump sales would end Aug. 29 and the online sales two days later.

The Lottery had been given until the end of September to wrap up its doomed operations but Van Petten apparently decided there was no point in dragging out the matter. Online players discovered this week that they could no longer top up their online accounts.

The Lottery originally launched an online subscription service selling traditional draw tickets in 2010. In February 2014, the site expanded into online instant-win scratch tickets, becoming the first US state lottery to offer this product, which critics have likened to online slot machines.

Lee Davy talks about the power of forgiveness in the hope that more members of the poker community can learn to embrace the power that it holds.

What is your secret?

We all have one, hiding in the back of our mind like a lonely cross on a whitewashed wall. We all have our Gargoyles, our imperfections – the drum beat rolls and yet we never hear the great big crash of the cymbals.

The reason your secret is wrapped in duct tape is because you are frightened. That’s why you prefer to wear the cloak of anonymity. You are scared. You tremble. You worry. You are immersed in anguish. And it’s all because you don’t think you will be forgiven.

Maryland’s casinos posted record revenue in July but fell just shy of cracking the $100m mark.

The state’s five casinos posted revenue of $98.95m, up 8% from June’s total and up 30% from the same month last year. However, stripping out revenue generated at Horseshoe Casino Baltimore, which wasn’t open last July, like-for-like revenue at the state’s other four casinos was down 2%.

As ever, Maryland Live was the state’s top money-maker, although its revenue slipped 2.2% year-on-year to just under $57m. The Horseshoe ranked second with $24.4m, an improvement on June’s $23m but $300k less than the property’s personal best month in March and much less than the $31m monthly revenue the property was projected to earn prior to its opening last August.

The other three casinos were a mixed bag, with Hollywood Casino Perryville falling 8.1% to $6.9m, Ocean Downs rising 4.9% to $6.3m and Rocky Gap up 4.1% to $4.3m. It remains to be seen how these also-rans will fare when the state’s sixth and final casino, MGM Resorts’ $1.3b National Harbor property, opens sometime in the second half of 2016.