In this week’s Calling the Clock we bring you up to speed on all the news from the Super High Roller Bowl and World Series of Poker, a variety of different promotions from the world of online poker and much more.

It’s not often that the World Series of Poker (WSOP) gets pushed to one side, but the Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) has managed to do that this week.

The $300,000 buy-in event is an orphan amidst some pretty important families, but in only three years it has become the most significant high stakes poker tournament in the world.

It was the perfect way to launch Poker Central’s PokerGO subscription service, thanks in part to the inclusion of Kevin Hart. The American comedian eliminated Phil Hellmuth and Fedor Holz and kept the audience entertained until he eventually busted on Day 2 at the hands of Brian Rast.

China’s withdrawal freeze has finally come to an end.

BTC China, the last of the so-called Big 3 exchanges in China, has also resumed cryptocurrency withdrawals on its platform. Bobby Lee, chief executive of BTC China, said in a statement that the exchange has started “testing” withdrawals following the upgrades it made to its anti-money laundering systems.

Industry sources said OKCoin, China’s largest bitcoin exchange by trade volume, and Huobi have also allowed withdrawals.

In February, major digital currency exchanges in China stopped bitcoin and litecoin withdrawals on their respective platforms as they improve their anti-money laundering capabilities to prevent “illegal transactions.” The upgrades were part of the requirements set by the People’s Bank of China, who called on digital currency operators to step up their game against anti-money laundering.

Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) chief Andrea Domingo has called for calm in the wake of a suspected robbery inside Resorts World Manila that has left more than 30 people, including the gunman, dead.

In an interview, Domingo said that they are already closely coordinating with the management of Resorts World to determine whether the integrated resort has committed security lapses despite their advisory two weeks ago.

She pointed out that the state regulator has issued a security advisory to all PAGCOR licensees and casinos to be more vigilant and to have stricter security measures as the government placed Manila on heightened alert to ensure public safety.

Domingo, however, stressed that the incident in Resorts World is just “an isolated case of random violence” caused by “a foreign-looking man who appeared to be deranged” and not by any terrorist groups.

In this week’s Pokerography series Lee Davy takes what he has learned from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century and applies it to poker.

I picked up On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century after listening to the author, Timothy Snyder, talking to Sam Harris on the Waking Up Podcast.

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I bought the book for two reasons.

Quebec’s provincial online gambling site has stopped offering wagers on whether US President Donald Trump will be impeached because the issue is too “sensitive” for the provincial government.

On Wednesday, Loto-Quebec’s Mise-o-jeu online sports betting platform began eagerly promoting its new political proposition wager on whether President Petites Mains would still be leader of the free world by May 1, 2018, or whether the Tangerine Terror would be made to suffer the indignity of impeachment.

But just 24 hours later, the chastened gambling monopoly announced that it was withdrawing the wager from its list of prop bets and refunding all sums wagered on that particular market. Loto-Quebec declined to specify how much action it had taken on this bet, but political props on the 2016 presidential election were the most popular non-sports wagering event in the monopoly’s history.

The request/order reportedly came from the provincial government, with a spokesperson for Quebec’s Finance Minister saying the Crown corporation understood that the subject was too “sensitive” for frivolous activity such as betting.

Day 1 of the World Series of Poker sees the lowest Casino Employee turnout since 2004, and Doug Polk looks to win back-to-back Tag Team events after leading Team Polk to the summit of Day 1.

It’s that time of year again.

The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is back for the 48th time of asking, and I am 5,117 miles away suffering from a severe case of FOMO.

For poker players, the WSOP is like Woodstock for hippies, an aphrodisiac of the highest order. Poker tables lift off the ground because of the sheer excitement. And so it is our duty to bring you as many updates as we can beginning with Event #1: $565 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em.

Problem gamblers display gender-distinct behavioral indicators in their reactions to gambling-related stress, according to the results of a new survey.

Using data from two recent large gambling studies, Australian researchers at the University of Adelaide and the Swinburne University of Technology compared the reactions of 580 male and 605 female slot machine players to prolonged bouts of losing. Their results were published in Springer’s Journal of Gambling Studies.

The 338 male and female confirmed problem gamblers among these groups displayed similar signs of problem gambling activity, but their reactions to losing were markedly different. The male problem gamblers were far more likely to channel their frustration into physical violence, while the females tended to be more emotional and more likely to direct their frustration inward.

The male problem gamblers were more likely to report feelings of anger and frustration and often channelled this aggression into physical strikes against the machine that wasn’t paying out as expected. These men were also rude to gaming venue staff and were prone to engaging in “territorial stand-over tactics” to deter other customers from attempting to use machines the problem gamblers claimed as their own.

Japan’s secondary casino legislation isn’t likely to appear in public until August at the earliest, and it likely won’t come up for debate in the legislature until next year, according to government officials.

On Thursday, GGRAsia quoted a senior official at the Office of Integrated Resort Regime Promotion saying an outline of the Integrated Resorts (IR) Implementation Bill wouldn’t likely be made public before August, after which will follow a period of indeterminate length to allow the public to submit comments on the bill’s contents.

Last December, Japan’s Diet approved legislation to scrap the constitutional ban on casino gambling. The country must now approve a second bill spelling out the nitty gritty of casino details, including how many integrated resorts will be permitted and where they will be located.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had previously suggested he wanted this secondary legislation approved by the third quarter of 2017. But Japanese media reported that the public comment period could extend through year’s end, which would push legislative debate on the bill into 2018.