As the bitcoin scaling conflict enters its fourth year, more and more “creative” solutions are popping up, complete with sensationalist headlines that oftentimes mislead readers into seeing vulnerabilities where none exist.

Case in point: Early this week, bitcoin developer and entrepreneur Jimmy Song posted an op-ed piece on Medium discussing how the sidechains project can empower developers and miners by allowing them to “try out new, riskier features” without the need “to get anyone’s approval for doing so.”

The piece, which CoinDesk reposted on its site, described sidechain as a separate blockchain where users can deposit and withdraw bitcoins, offering “all sorts of new features” but “won’t actually affect bitcoin.” This, Song wrote, is “the key” as it allows miners and developers to control separate, smaller domains that they could use according to their needs and desires.

A sidechain is essentially an off-blockchain service that allows bitcoin users to transfer the value of the cryptocurrency away from the bitcoin blockchain to avoid issues such as blockchain bloat. So far, two sidechain implementations have already been deployed: Blockstream’s Liquid, which still needs enough trusted entities, and Paul Sztorc’s Drivechain, which requires a soft fork where miners will have to validate new rules.

In this week’s Calling the Clock there were wins at the World Series of Poker for Mr Angry and Mr Grumpy, Usain Bolt signs for PokerStars, and Kristen Bicknell signs for partypoker.

Let’s begin with the craziness that is the World Series of Poker (WSOP), the once a year poker marathon that turns everyone slightly schizophrenic.

14 bracelets have leapt onto the wrists of some of the most skilled and luckiest poker players in the world, and here is a run down of them all starting with, arguably, one of the very best, Adrian Mateos.

At 22-years of age, Mateos became the youngest player to win three bracelets when he defeated the 70-year old Purple Heart recipient, John Smith, in the final encounter of the $10,000 Heads-Up Championship. Mateos cashed in the same event last year; Smith was also the runner-up last year.

The Pokerography series continues to delve deep into the thought provoking 48-Laws of Power by Robert Greene, this week taking a look at the ninth law: Win Through Actions, Never Through Argument

As a parent, I can finally understand the pain I caused my mother when she saw my face, after using it to block a series of foreheads that came my way. After the massacre, I blew my nose to clear the blood and heard my zygoma crack.

As a half-caste Chinese kid from England, growing up in the xenophobic South Wales Valleys, I had a few fights with people big enough to behead me with their bare hands.

As the roar filled the school yard with the force of some pissed off God, people told me I looked fearless, but I was frightened beyond belief. Once, after a bully had called me a Chinky Chinaman I replied:

The Philippines’ gaming regulator is looking for an intermediary to audit its new online gambling licensees’ financial activity.

Last week, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) issued a request for expression of interest for the procurement of consulting services for the development, operation and management of an intermediation platform/audit program for its Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) licensees.

PAGCOR began issuing its first POGO licenses last fall as a means of exerting more control over the country’s burgeoning online gambling industry. Some 42 licenses have been issued to date and more applications are pending, but PAGCOR said last week that it could temporarily cap the number of available licenses at 50 until it has a better sense of whether the market is saturated, and it will only be able to make that determination once there’s a system in place to automatically track online gambling revenue.

PAGCOR is looking for an “experienced and qualified consultant” who will be tasked with developing this intermediation platform and audit program. The system will be required to be operational this year, and PAGCOR will require a test run covering at least 50% of the existing POGO licensees before the final switch is flipped.

The SKS365 Group’s PlanetWin365 betting brand held on to second place in Italy’s online revenue charts for the second straight month.

Figures compiled by Italian gaming news agency Agimeg.it show Italian-licensed online sports betting sites handling total wagers of €486.6m in the month of May, down roughly 10% from April’s €542m handle. The combined online and land-based betting handle totaled €860m.

As usual, Bet365’s Italian site claimed the largest slice (€150.2m) of the online betting pie, but PlanetWin365 ranked second for the second straight month with €49.1m, edging out Gala Coral’s Eurobet brand at €46.5m. Snaitech and Sisal rounded out the top five with €31.4m and €31.1m, respectively.

The online casino vertical reported revenue of €46.3m, up €1.1m from the previous month but a full one-third higher than the casino vertical reported in May 2016. Lottomatica remained top casino dog with a 10% share, followed by Sisal (7.5%), Amaya Gaming’s PokerStars brand (7.2%), Eurobet (6.9%) and William Hill (5.8%).

Romania is the latest country to consider new restrictions on locally licensed gambling operators’ ability to advertise their products.

For over a year now, Romanian legislators have been trying to reduce the volume of gambling advertising on local airwaves. In May 2016, members of the opposition National Liberal Party proposed a ban on “audiovisual commercial communications related to games of chance” while limiting gambling adverts to specialty publications and “premises intended for the organization of games of chance.”

Romania’s government is now seriously considering this suggestion, with only the Senate’s final approval standing in the way of the changes becoming the law of the land. But the vagueness of the bill’s language has Romanian-licensed online operators concerned that they will be prohibited from promoting their wares online, even via their own websites.

Lexology reported that parliamentary commissions have issued opinions that the bill’s references to ‘premises’ could be construed to include the websites of Romanian-licensed operators. But these opinions lack the force of law, opening up the possibility that the government could arbitrarily choose at some future date to seek penalties against online operators who advertise via the internet.

Japan’s legislators may prohibit or severely limit the role of junket operators in the country’s casino gambling market, according to new reports.

On Thursday, GGRAsia reported that the Office of Integrated Resort Regime Promotion – a panel of civil servants advising the government on the drafting of the Integrated Resorts (IR) Implementation Bill – has recommended a prohibition on junkets ferrying high-volume gamblers to Japan’s as-yet unbuilt casinos.

The report offered no specifics on the justification for the civil servants’ anti-junket recommendation, although questions regarding junkets’ financial operations – the issuing of credit and collection of gambling debts, in particular – were said to have been raised.

Singapore’s casino regulatory regime has often been cited as a model Japan would like to emulate, so if Japan does opt for a blanket ban on traditional junket operations, it’s possible that it could allow Singapore-style ‘player agents’ to fill the role of middleman between casinos and gamblers.

Russia’s regulated sports betting market could triple its turnover over the next five years thanks to new market entrants and high-profile sports events like the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Russian gambling affiliate Bookmakers Ratings recently issued a new report that pegged current annual turnover of the Russian betting market at around RUB 677b (US $11.75b), of which around 60% is claimed by Russian-licensed operators. Annual betting revenue in this country of 144m people is estimated at RUB 47b (US $816m).

The report projects that the growing number of licensed online bookmakers, coupled with interest driven by Russian-hosted marquee sports events – such as this year’s Confederations Cup and next year’s FIFA World Cup – and new rules permitting bookmakers’ sports sponsorship opportunities, could push the legal betting market’s annual turnover to RUB 1.3t ($22.5b) by 2022.

The report notes that roughly 65% of Russian bettors continue to patronize unauthorized internationally licensed online gambling operators. Yuri Krasovsky, president of bookmaker Liga Stavok, estimates this figure is closer to 80%.