In this week’s Pokerography series, Lee Davy takes a look at it’s Not What You Sell; It’s What You Stand For: Why Every Extraordinary Business is Driven by Purpose, by Roy Spence Jr, and suggests that poker players go seeking for a purpose.

The first time I played poker in a casino was in Downtown Las Vegas. I was so clueless I kept buying the table drinks and paying the waitress completely unaware that the booze was free.

Back then, poker served a single purpose – to make easy money.

I’m not saying I was printing money. I’m saying, next to a mechanic or a waitress, playing poker as a job, if you can get it right, is a hell of a lot easier.

Raising for Effective Giving has announced seven new ambassadors in a bid to increase the conversation around effective altruism ahead of the World Series of Poker.

Everyone is looking for an icebreaker at the poker table, and the easiest one of all goes a little something like this:

What does that patch represent?

So, if you’re a charity relying on contributions from poker players then it makes sense to slap as many patches onto the chests of as many players willing to act as the voice of your mission, and Raising For Effective Giving (REG) have done that by announcing seven additions to the team.

Skill-based casino games developer GameCo has launched its video game gambling machines (VGM) in its second US state.

This week saw the launch of GameCo VGMs at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. The move marks GameCo’s first product launch in a casino outside Atlantic City and its first launch with a US tribal gaming operator.

GameCo has installed two triple-unit VGM carousels in “high traffic, prominent locations” in the Fox Tower casino. The machines offer two GameCo titles, the Match-3 game Pharaoh’s Secret Temple and the basketball-themed Nothin’ but Net.

Foxwoods CEO Felix Rappaport hailed skill-based electronic gaming as “the next generation of gaming” and said the GameCo partnership was further evidence of Foxwoods’ commitment to offering something to appeal to every visitor.

In this week’s Calling The Clock Mike Sexton changes allegiance from the World Poker Tour to partypoker, Raising for Effective Giving recruits some new ambassadors, and Mike Noori fails miserably in McDonald’s chow down bet.

I missed the early part of this week, and you can blame 888Poker for that. The online poker room invited me to 888Live Barcelona and in a show of gratitude that’s where I will start my news round-up.

888Live Barcelona was the largest live festival since the 888Live brand came into being back in September, last year. The €500,000 Guaranteed €1,100 buy-in Main Event attracted 609 entrants, with Luigi Shehadeh taking the top prize of €110,000. The 888Live production team were in luck as Will Kassouf made a deep run finishing eleventh, and the Global Poker Index (GPI) Female Poker Player of the Year, Cate Hall, finished fourth.

The event also had a €2,200 buy-in High Roller and the 888Live King’s Festival Rozvadov Main Event winner, Catalin Pop, won the €40,000 first prize; 888Poker Ambassador Dominik Nitsche was ninth. The next 888Poker live tour stop will be the £220 buy-in 888Live Local in Aspers, Stratford playing out over the weekend.

Casinos and online gambling operators in the Philippines are one step closer to facing new anti-money laundering (AML) requirements as legislators seek to rein in the industry’s freewheeling reputation.

On Wednesday, the Philippine Senate approved the second reading of SB 1468, which will bring casino operators under the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) for the first time. The bill will likely face its third and final reading next week, in order to comply with a deadline imposed by the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG).

The bill will require casinos – including “internet and ship-based casinos” – to report all gaming-related single cash transactions in excess of P5m (US $100k), which is pretty lenient given that earlier bills had proposed setting that bar at just P150k ($3,200). It’s also a better deal than that offered to non-gaming operators, who are required to report covered transactions totaling P500k ($10k) in a single banking day. US federal regulations for casinos require filing reports on all transactions over $10k.

The Senate needs to pass the AML legislation by next month, in keeping with the APG’s ‘request’ to include casinos under the AMLA ahead of the APG’s next meeting, which is in July. The law revision will also mend fences with the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which has long criticized the Philippines for omitting gaming operations from the original AMLA.

Kenya’s sports betting operators are breathing a sigh of relief after legislators rejected plans to dramatically hike betting taxes, while retaining hikes for other gaming operators.

On Thursday, Kenya’s parliament voted down plans to hike betting operators’ tax obligations from their original 7.5% of revenue to 50%. The proposed change to the Betting, Lotteries and Gaming Act was part of the government’s Finance Bill, which sought to impose a uniform 50% tax on all gambling revenue, be it betting, lotteries or gaming.

Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich said the proposed tax hikes were intended as both a revenue generator for the government as well as a means of discouraging gamblers from going overboard. But betting operator SportPesa mounted a legal challenge based on the argument that the hikes, which were on top of operators’ corporate tax obligations, were unconstitutional.

On Wednesday, members of the Assembly’s Finance Committee rejected the tax on betting operators, issuing a report that said the rate was “punitive enough to discourage such activities.” The report was met with opposition from government representatives, who urged Assembly members to stick with Rotich’s plan for the good of society.

As New Jersey prepares its ‘nuclear option’ for legal sports betting, one of the state’s federal representatives is taking another run at lifting the US betting ban.

On Thursday, New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. introduced the Gaming Accountability and Modernization Enhancement Act of 2017, aka the GAME Act. The bill seeks to repeal the federal PASPA sports betting prohibition that is preventing Pallone’s home state from proceeding with its plan to offer legal betting at Atlantic City casinos and state racetracks.

The main objective of the Act is to prevent the feds from imposing civil or criminal penalties on any person or licensed entity engaged in retail or online betting that their home state has declared lawful. The Act’s definition of ‘bet or wager’ includes sports betting, lotteries, daily fantasy sports and fantasy eSports.

The Act also requires betting-friendly states to enact sufficient consumer protections – data integrity, problem gambling safeguards, a method for redress if these protections aren’t followed, etc. – to ensure bettors don’t get the shaft. The Federal Trade Commission would have a role to play in ensuring these protections are sufficient if a company offered wagering to residents of more than one state.