The US Supreme Court will consider New Jersey’s quest for legal sports betting, possibly spelling an end to America’s antiquated relationship with gambling and sports.

Just one day after leaving America’s betting fans in limbo, the Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it had granted certiorari to two New Jersey petitions regarding lower court rulings that had blocked the state’s plans to permit legal sports betting at Atlantic City casinos and state racetracks.

The two petitions – one by the state government and the other from the state’s thoroughbred racehorse owners’ association – have been consolidated and will be granted a total of one hour for oral argument before the Court at some point during its 2017 session, which gets underway in October.

The Court has yet to set a specific date for that oral argument but New Jersey’s legal eagles and the state’s opponents – the US Department of Justice, four major professional sports leagues and the NCAA – will begin filing briefs to the Court in August, with deadlines for reply briefs extending through October. The point being, it will likely be well into 2018 before the outcome of this case is decided.

Banking giant Barclays has reportedly broached the topic of digital currencies “the equivalent of bitcoin” to UK’s top financial regulator.

Specifically, Britain’s largest bank pitched the idea of bringing cryptocurrencies “into play” to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), CEO Ashok Vaswani told CNBC. Vaswani did not elaborate on what the “play” means, but he noted that the bank has been with working with the financial regulator as well as fintech start-ups for projects focusing on blockchain.

“We have been talking to a couple of fintechs and have actually gone with the fintechs to the FCA to talk about how we could bring, the equivalent of bitcoin, not necessarily bitcoin, but cryptocurrencies into play,” Vaswani told the news outlet.

Despite being known for fostering innovation in the fintech space, the FCA is cautious towards investing in cryptocurrencies. Recently, the financial regulator underlined the volatility of cryptocurrency as it urged the public to be wary of trading in digital currencies like bitcoin.

The Crown Resorts executives who got arrested last October for telling rich Chinese people that they could gamble in Australia, have been sentenced. Practically, they will be released in a few weeks. Lesson learned. Companies that hold their money in other countries best watch out. Beijing wants to keep money in the country and the Chinese people be damned if they want to move it out. Because what people actually want to do with their money doesn’t matter. What matters is how many currency units you can keep within a certain territorial border. Whoever has the most, wins the game. Or something like that.

The news brought Crown shares down about 1.4%, mostly because convicting executives sounds bad. But the verdict isn’t exactly surprising. I wouldn’t call the Chinese judicial branch independent. They do what they’re told. They were told to use these Crown executives as a warning to other non-Chinese companies. A not guilty verdict would have been embarrassing for the Chinese government.

But the practical effects of the verdict itself are nil. In These people are lucky they got off relatively easily. We can only hope nothing too terrible happened to them in prison. Crown isn’t going to be risking advertising in China again any time soon. They got the message.

Fortunately for Crown shareholders, the damage has already been done. The VIP segment is already down close to 50% across the board and yet Crown shares are almost at the same level they were at before the October arrests. At the time of the arrests, I said Crown was a buying opportunity and that has proven correct. The stock is up 14.6% since the day of the arrests. It’s a good time to take some profits now on up days, but not because Crown is in any particularly dangerous situation. It’s more of a China-centric issue that could temporarily hurt Crown, though not any more than other companies reliant on Chinese tourism.

The tribes are now up in arms over plans of the New Mexico government to claim tens of millions of dollars in back revenue from their casinos.

anta Fe New Mexican reported that three pueblos have joined forces to block New Mexico Gaming Control Board’s plan to impose a $40 million as result of their alleged failure to pay for the free play credits.

The dispute between the state regulator and the Tesuque, Sandia, and Isleta pueblos stemmed from a long-disputed interpretation of an old agreement for sharing revenue from tribal casinos.

The three tribes contend that credits are not included when calculating the revenue tribes that will be shared with the state under the 2015. Casinos give gamblers free-play credits to entice them to play slot machines

This is a guest contribution by Valéry Bollier of Oulala Games. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you. 

A majority of the iGaming operators are now convinced than in order to attract millennials, they need to integrate a number of social elements in their offer. That is a great first step! However, instead of offering new types of games, they are “gamifying” their existing offer.

Can all games become successful social games?

A social game is, by definition, a game that you want to play with your friends.

PokerStars frontman, Daniel Negreanu, has joined the Major Series of Putting, as a brand ambassador and player, as the Lune Rouge funded company looks to crown the putting champion of the world.

Malcolm Gladwell has a robust constitution, and he thinks that golf is nothing more than ‘crack for rich white guys.’

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/11-a-good-walk-spoiled

The Major Series of Putting (MSOP) is set to do something about that, with the introduction of the MSOP Championship. Think crazy golf without the craziness, and you have a course with nothing but opportunities to putt, and that’s what MSOP aims to provide. It’s sex with nothing but the orgasm, and Daniel Negreanu is joining the new idea as an ambassador and competitive player.

Two stories imbibed with a partypoker flavour as the three-time Wimbledon winner, Boris Becker, is declared bankrupt, and Robertas Gordonas takes the £150,000 first prize in the £1m GTD partypoker LIVE Grand Prix UK in Nottingham.

Who can forget a 17-year old Boris Becker diving, racket in hand, on Wimbledon’s Centre Court as he went on to become the iconic tournament’s youngest ever winner?

On Wednesday, Becker’s reputation also took a dive. It didn’t look as good, and the only racket was coming from the throats of the people that filled The Bankruptcy and Companies Court in London.

The three-time Wimbledon champion’s reputation was taking a beating after private bankers Arbuthnot Latham & Co made a bankruptcy application against the former German tennis ace, relating to a debt dating back to 2015.

Maria Ho joins Amazon as the ambassador of their esports initiative including hosting the Mobile Masters Invitational in New Jersey, and Poker Night in America launch a new app giving players an avenue to the live TV cash game.

Maria Ho is taking a break from the poker amusement park that is the World Series of Poker (WSOP) to earn a few bucks on the Amazon payroll.

The Poker Central Ambassador is currently at New Jersey’s Prudential Centre where she is acting as on screen host for Amazon’s Mobile Masters Invitational.

Amazon’s esports initiative is a stray dog of an event, focusing on mobile devices instead of a desktop, meaning players will hunch over mobile phones and tablets, instead of the usual mouse and keyboard configuration.

Phil Hellmuth Jr reacts to a Terrence Chan bad beat by calling him a moronic motherfucker, and Phil Ivey escapes harm in Bobby’s Room thanks to his bodyguard.

If the sticks and stones police were on duty at the Rio this past weekend, there would have been a warrant out for the arrest of one Phil Hellmuth Jr.

Deep in the business end of the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship, Hellmuth clashed with Terrence Chan, in a hand where Hellmuth was in the lead with a flopped set of Jacks, and Chan made a loose river call chasing Broadway.

Chan hit his miracle card on the river to win the hand, and Hellmuth ditched the harp sounding ‘Well Done’ mate tap of the table, for the Megadeth heavy metal guitar sounding, ‘Moronic Motherfucker’ 10-minute rant.

Portugal has issued its seventh online gambling license as operators continue to believe they can make money online despite the government’s tax-heavy regime.

On Monday, the Serviço Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos do Turismo de Portugal (SRIJ) regulatory body announced it had issued online gambling License 007 to Sociedade Figueira Praia, who will offer online sports betting under the Casino Portugal brand at Casinoportugal.pt.

The new license brings Portugal’s total number of online sports betting sites to three – joining Betclic Everest Group and Bet Entertainment Technologies (BET) – since the country launched its regulated online gambling market in May 2016.

The SRIJ has also issued three casino licenses and one poker license, although two of those casino licenses were granted to Betclic and BET, so the addition of Sociedade Figueira Praia brings the number of unique companies operating in Portugal’s regulated online market to just five.

UK-licensed bookmaker William Hill is shutting its Israel office and consolidating most of its online operations at its Shoreditch facility in London.

On Monday, Leaprate broke the news that Hills planned to vacate its office at the Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv and was holding individual meetings with the roughly 250 workers employed at the facility. Some of the local workers will be offered relocation to Hills’ European offices but the closure is expected to result in over 200 redundancies.

Hills reportedly found that the increasing disparity in the value of the English pound and the Israeli shekel meant that the Tel Aviv salaries and office rent no longer made economic sense. The primarily online marketing functions of the Tel Aviv operation will be shifted to Hills’ other offices in London, Leeds, Gibraltar and Krakow, Poland.

Hills’ online operations have had a presence in Israel since 2008 but the experience hasn’t always been smooth sailing. In 2011, Hills endured the so-called ‘Israeli insurrection,’ which saw the mass walkout of its Tel Aviv staff due to differences in opinion between Hills’ management and Israeli technology firm Playtech, which at the time was Hills’ joint venture partner in William Hill Online. Hills eventually paid £425m to get Playtech to walk away from the joint venture.