In a bid to reach out to younger players, Gamblit Gaming has teamed up with game publisher Lima Sky to bring popular game Doodle Jump to the casino floor.

Launched in 2009, Doodle Jump has been released across multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, Arcades, Windows, Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS, and has been downloaded more than 250 million times. Now, a real money version of the game will hit casino floors in early 2018 on Gamblit’s TriStation game machine and G-Sports eSports platform.

Matt Turetzky, chief operating officer at Lima Sky, said: “Real-money wagering will add another level of excitement and engagement while still keeping true to the core elements of the game that have made Doodle Jump such a long-standing hit among fans.”

Gamblit’s Model G game tables are live in Las Vegas, while the TriStation platform is scheduled to launch this summer. Gamblit’s hardware and games have been deployed in several locations, including Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, the Hakkasan Group managed Level Up gaming lounge at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, Caesars Palace Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, the LINQ Hotel & Casino, Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, and The Venetian Las Vegas.

A new casino may soon join Vietnam’s gaming resort projects.

On Tuesday, Viet Nam News reported that Thua Thien Hue authorities have lodged a proposal before the central government to allow a casino in the province.

According to the report, the Thua Thien Hue Provincial People’s Committee (PPC) wants the government’s permission to increase Lang Co Laguna beach resort’s investment capital to US$2 billion and to open a casino in the complex.

Located in the North Central Coast region, the beach resort project has a current capital of US$875 million and is spread over 280 hectares. Under the proposal, PPC expects the casino facility to cost nearly US$250 million and will be implemented in the second, third and fourth phases of the project.

The Philippines will no longer sweep dirty cash from casinos under the carpet after President Rodrigo Duterte signed the country’s newly improved Anti-Money Launder Law.

According to The Philippine Daily Inquirer report, President Duterte signed Republic Act 10927 on Wednesday in a bid to beef its security against illicit cash inflows.

With the new law, transactions worth PHP5 million (US$100,000) will be reported to the Anti-Money Laundering Council. The law now extends its reach to casinos including internet- as well as ship-based operations.

The non-gaming ‘covered persons’ had their threshold set at just PHP500,000 (US$10,000).

Thirteen members of the Japan Cryptocurrency Business Association (JCBA) will suspend bitcoin deposits and withdrawals on August 1 in anticipation of a possible network hard fork.

Bitbank, Bitpoint Japan, Quoine, Fisco Cryptocurrency Exchange, Coincheck, Btc Box, Tech Bureau, GMO-Z.com Coin, Campfire Corporation, Bit Trade, Bitcrements Bitcoin Exchange, Tokyo Bitcoin and Minnano Bitcoin have agreed to halt bitcoin-related transactions on their respective platforms on August 1 at 00:00 Japan time.

In a statement, JCBA said if a fork occurs, “the first priority item as virtual currency exchange industry is protection of customer assets.”

“We examined several ways to deal with this technical fork by dealing with technical countermeasures at the virtual currency exchange trader, but it is difficult to predict the degree of confusion [caused] by the fork,” the association said.

The World Series of Poker Main Event has reached the final table with more stories than a Hans Christian Andersen notebook, including Antoine Saout & Ben Lamb making repeat final table performances, and John Hesp making dreams come true for amateur players the world over.

World Series of Poker (WSOP) Player of the Year winners, bracelet winners, high stakes poker pros, former near misses, and 64-year olds who play once a month in a £10 rebuy at the local casino – this is the final table of the 2017 WSOP Main Event.

7,221 players entered, nine remain, and the ESPN scriptwriters couldn’t have done a better job if they were to handpick a cast worthy of this most amazing tournament.

Leading the way is Scott Blumstein with 27% of the chips in play. Blumstein is making his third WSOP cash of his career, with nothing much to shout about before this. Before locking up a million bucks, Blumstein had earned $312k playing live tournaments, with most of that coming in 2016 after defeating 2,368 entrants to capture the $200k first prize in the Deepstack event at the Borgata, in Atlantic City.

PokerStars has visited the job centre for the second time in a week, with the announcement that Twitch stars Fintan “EasyWithAces” Hand and Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg have joined Team Online.

“It’s what I have been working towards.” Said Fintan “EasyWithAces” Hand after he was unveiled, alongside Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg, as the two newest recruits for Team PokerStars Online.

There was a time when most young professional poker players felt like Hand. I imagine most of them still do. The days of logging on and grinding 24-tables in the midst of shitty nappies, empty cans of Red Bull, and a large flat screen showing Buffy the Vampire Slayer are long gone.

Online poker has gotten serious on us.

American Dustin Johnson has missed the cut in his last two tournaments on the PGA Tour. Fellow American Jordan Spieth is coming off a win in the Travelers Championship. Both Johnson and Spieth top the betting board for the 146th British Open as +1400 co-favorites at Royal Birkdale Golf Club.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

The Open Championship gets underway on Thursday in Southport, England. Johnson and Spieth are both looking for their first victory in the Major, with defending champion Henrik Stenson of Sweden setting a record last year by shooting 20-under par. Johnson’s best finish in the British Open was a tie for second with American Phil Mickelson in 2011 while Spieth tied for fourth in 2015. Mickelson won it two years later.

Stenson and Mickelson are two intriguing contenders to consider, although neither of them are playing well right now. Stenson is listed at +2500 after missing the cut in four of his last five tournaments this season. The 41-year-old is still searching for his first win on the PGA Tour this year, with two Top-10 finishes, the last coming back in March.

Thailand‘s lottery officials are investigating ticket agent practices that enabled a man to win the country’s largest ever jackpot.

A 75-year-old man recently won 180m baht (US $5.35m) after presenting 30 pairs of pre-printed tickets with the same winning numbers to the Government Lottery Office (GLO). The payout is triple the amount of the previous largest lottery payday.

GLO agents aren’t permitted to offer more than one pair of tickets with the same number, but this case apparently involved a bunch of agents who traded tickets among themselves until one agent was able to offer a 30-ticket bundle with the same numbers to the 75-year-old winner.

The GLO doesn’t intend to punish the lucky senior citizen but the Bangkok Post quoted GLO Director Maj Gen Chalongrat Nakartit saying the agents who traded the tickets that created the bundle could have their contracts revoked.

A poker player has won $500,000 in a prop bet after losing 24.2% body fat in 6-months thanks to backing from Dan Bilzerian, and Bill Perkins.

I don’t know what’s more remarkable?

John Hesp making the final table of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, or Bill Perkins finally winning a prop bet.

Perkins and his prop bet buddy Dan Bilzerian backed their poker playing friend Walter Fisher when a gambling acquaintance offered Fisher a $100,000 wager that he wouldn’t get his body fat below 10% within six months.

Brazil is considering legislation that would ban the use of credit cards or other forms of electronic payments involving internationally licensed online gambling sites.

Brazil has been trying to modernize its gambling market for years now but two competing gambling expansion bills remain stuck in their respective legislative chambers with no apparent sign of movement. And while the country appears no closer to approving locally licensed online gambling, the country’s senators are now trying to ensure that Brazilians can’t gamble online with sites based outside the country.

The PLS 213/2017 bill regretfully acknowledges that the nation’s current crop of politicians appear incapable of approving gambling liberalization plans despite “research that indicates that society accepts the exploitation of gambling.” The bill’s sponsors even express their hope that the pending gambling bills eventually do become law of the land someday.

Regardless, until those politicians get their act together, the bill insists that Brazil needs to close the “legislative loophole” that allows local residents to spend an estimated BRL 3b (US $951m) per year gambling online with international sites. Because, really, why shouldn’t political ineptitude be compounded by collective punishment of those not responsible for said ineptitude?

For the second successive year, 888Poker will be the primary sponsor for the World Series of Poker Europe and will offer online qualification to the €10,300 WSOPE Main Event via their multi-steps program.

The partnership between 888Poker and the World Series of Poker (WSOP) continues to flourish after the online gambling behemoth had announced they would be the main sponsor of the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) held at the King’s Casino, Rozvadov, Czech Republic.

The news comes after another successful WSOP in Las Vegas, where 888Poker were the primary sponsors for the third successive year. 888Poker was also the principal sponsor the last time there was a WSOPE, in Berlin, in 2015.

The deal means 888Poker owns the monopoly on the online satellite qualification route to WSOPE Main Event. The course takes the shape of the good old-fashioned Multi-Steps with players able to participate for as little as a cent, and a $1,050 buy-in satellite is running 2-3 times a week.

South Korean researchers hope their experiments with administering cocaine to rats will help lead to more effective treatments for problem gamblers.

A new study by researchers at Seoul’s Yonsei Medical University have come to the not-at-all-utterly-predictable-well-in-advance conclusion that using cocaine aggravates poor decision-making.

The researchers wanted more insight into how the interaction of trait and environmental factors affected risk preference in animals, in this case, everyone’s favorite gambling guinea pigs, rats. The study involved introducing rats to a touch-screen chamber featuring four different light signals that produced different reward and punishment outcomes.

Once the rats had been categorized as either risk-averse or risk-seeking, the scientists injected some of them with cocaine, then re-tested their reactions while “cocaine-challenged.” (I considered myself cocaine-challenged once, after my entrepreneurial friend Eric got busted, but I suspect that’s not how the researchers define the term.)