Switzerland is well on its way to joining other digital currency trading friendly countries.

On Friday, online bank Swissquote announced that it has partnered with Bitstamp to offer bitcoin trading with euro and U.S. dollar on its platform. Under the agreement, Bitstamp will provide a full-stack solution for all of Swissquote’s requirements. The two companies plan to expand their partnership in the future “as Bitstamp brings Swissquote’s range of services to its customers.”

Luxembourg-based Bitstamp is Europe’s first licensed digital currency exchange, while Gland-based Swissquote provides online financial and trading services in Switzerland and also has offices in Zurich, Bern, Dubai, Malta, Hong Kong and London.

CEO Marc Bürki said it’s Swissquote’s “first foray into the world of bitcoin,” which was why the company sought to work with a partner like Bitstamp, whose “focus on regulation and compliance, as well as its payment institution license, made it the standout choice for our needs.”

The Japanese government is nipping the casino industry’s full potential in the bud with its restrictive regulatory framework even before it blooms, a financial analyst warned.

“Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” was how Grant Govertsen of Union Gaming Securities Asia Ltd. described Japan’s newly crafted Integrated Resorts bill, which he thinks would place burden on potential casino investors.

In his Monday note, Govertsen noted that the framework is becoming “more restrictive by the day” that it might become worse than the failed gaming expansions of Korea and Vietnam.

“Japan is on the verge of one-upping the failed gaming expansions of Korea and Vietnam by moving forward with a gaming construct that [it] can’t fulfill the #1 stated goal of Japan’s IR development – tourism growth, and [it] is so poorly designed that ROIs shrink to a level that makes participation on the part of the global IR developers much less likely,” Govertsen warned.

Traders who have played the markets for a very long time tend to believe that news does not move markets long term. Though I have not played this game for very long, I do believe that news is mostly irrelevant. News may wiggle markets, but unless it is some sort of enormous development like a world war or the discovery of cold fusion, capital markets will keep doing what they were doing before anyway.

The reaction to the news is what matters. It betrays the market mood, what traders’ plan B’s are. If a minor piece of news causes a 5% plunge, it means that positions are being held by weak hands, looking for an excuse to sell. If they’re all looking for an excuse to sell, you don’t want to get caught up in the stampede if and when it happens. That’s why last Friday’s 5% Macau plunge, though brief, was interesting. The excuse for the selling is yet again another crackdown on junkets. It’s getting boring already, repeating this same thing over and over. Suncity Group apparently warned its employees to be very careful moving money from mainland China to Macau. Traders panicked.

Fair enough, but don’t junkets say that every day? Be careful. OK. It’s not like Beijing is suddenly cracking down on junkets. They’ve been doing that since 2014. So why the 5% plunge on Friday? I believe two reasons. First, the difficulty in moving money may have something to do with the fall in bitcoin and other digital currencies. Moving money with bitcoin may be technically easy, but converting it back into Patacas or Hong Kong dollars is the hard part. That takes time, and time is dangerous when your currency is wildly fluctuating. As long as bitcoin is more or less stable, it can be used to move fiat money, whatever its fiat price may be. If it isn’t stable, it can’t. That may be partly why junkets are suddenly having a harder time moving money.

The second reason, which I believe to be the main reason, is that the money supply in the United States is about to collapse to zero growth for the quarter. It will happen in about 4 weeks. The last time it happened was in 2008/2009. It has not happened since. The closest we got to zero growth was in late August 2015. Stocks crashed globally, though briefly in the US. Chinese stocks generally still have not recovered. From June to August the Shanghai composite was cut nearly in half, 45%.

Fedor Holz continues his incredible run of live tournament victories with a win in the 2017 Triton Super High Roller Series $HK250,000 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Max High Roller in Montenegro.

There is a reason Fedor Holz spent a lot of time and money creating his Primed Mind app – it works.

When a tournament reaches the business end, Holz is like that man I saw on the news the other day, mowing the lawn, with a massive tornado gathering pace behind him.

“I was keeping an eye on it,” said the lawnmower guy.

There’s no more legal impediment that will bar investors of the Eastern European betting and lottery operator Fortuna Entertainment Group from voting on its proposed acquisition of four Romanian gambling companies after a Dutch appellate court dismissed a petition against the firm’s move.

SeeNews reported that the Amsterdam Court of Appeals threw out the petition for injunction that Franklin Templeton investment funds as it seeks to stop the purchase of Bet Active Concept, Bet Zone, Public Slots and Slot Arena.

Per Widerström, CEO of Fortuna, lauded the court’s Monday decision, saying the company may now move forward with their plans to boost the company’s Romanian market presence. The company has scheduled an extraordinary meeting of shareholders planned on August 1 to vote on the acquisition plans.

“This acquisition, together with previously acquired Casa Pariurilor (as part of Hattrick Sport Group), means that Romania will become our biggest market and that Fortuna Entertainment Group will become the number one regulated sports betting and gaming operator in the Romanian market,” Per Widerström, CEO of Fortuna, said, according to the news report.

The Swedish online poker room Unibet has surprised everyone by announcing the next stage of their Unibet Open live tour will take place at the Wynn Las Vegas.

I like Unibet.

While PokerStars, 888Poker, and partypoker each try to prove they have more than a pinkies worth of dick, the Swedish online poker room quietly goes about its business, hidden from the glare of the camera, creating profit and pleasure.

For the past decade, the Unibet Open has become one of the most exciting live events on the european calendar. Not too small, and not too big, they have managed to retain that girls and lads club feel to the event that the players crave.

Pennsylvania casinos enjoyed table game revenue growth in their most recent fiscal year but it wasn’t enough to prevent a decline in overall gaming revenue.

On Monday, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) reported the state’s 12 casinos generated table gaming revenue of just under $70m in June, a 2.16% rise over the same month last year. June’s figure brought the fiscal year table total to $866.5m, up 3.25% over the 2015-16 fiscal year.

Combined with the $2.33b the state’s slot machines generated in the 12 months ending June 30, Pennsylvania’s overall casino gaming revenue totaled $3.2b, a decline of less than 1% from the previous year’s record $3.22b.

The slots and table figures had very different trajectories throughout the past fiscal year. Slots experienced statewide declines in 10 of the 12 months, while table games reported nine months of gains.

This is a guest contribution by Martin de Knijff of Metric Gaming. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

The eyes of the sporting world will descend on Royal Birkdale this week, as the annual celebration of golf that is the Open Championship takes place for the 146th time.

There’s no doubt that the history of the Open puts it right up there with the world’s great sporting occasions, such as the Fifa World Cup, the Olympic Games and the Super Bowl. Golfers dream of the famous Claret Jug, and have nightmares about the challenges thrown up by the links courses that dot the coastline of the UK. We have moments that have gone down in sporting folklore, from the sublime head-to-head battle between Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson in 1977 to the ridiculous sight of poor Jean van de Velde getting his feet wet as he threw away what seemed certain victory in 1999. We’ve had amazing performances from multiple winners such as Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods, as well as shock, flash-in-the-pan successes like Paul Lawrie and Todd Hamilton.

While the competition on offer in the Open always seems to ascend the greatest heights, I’ve felt for some time that the betting sector is failing to fully embrace this glorious sport. For me, it’s a gimme that golf should be a Major winner in the in-play betting era. It’s an entertaining sport rich in data and the potential for volatility, and millions of golf fans worldwide would love to put their knowledge to the test if only operators would offer them a wider variety of markets.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) reported record race betting handle in its most recent fiscal year thanks to international wagering nearly doubling.

This past Sunday (16) marked the end of the HKJC’s 88-day racing season, during which total wagering topped HKD 117.4b (US $15b), a 10.7% improvement over the 2015-16 season total and a new record high for Hong Kong’s betting monopoly. It’s also a reversal from 2015-16, which saw local racing turnover dip 2%, the first such decline in eight seasons.

The 2016-17 year did benefit from five additional mid-week race meetings, although HKJC CEO Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges was quick to point out that this amounted to only 22 additional races. In a true apples-to-apples comparison with last year’s 83 meetings, turnover was still up 6.9% year-on-year.

Engelbrecht-Bresges credited the HKJC’s expansion of international commingling as the real driver of the past year’s turnover growth. Total commingling turnover in 2015-16 was HKD 3.47b ($440m) or 3.3% of total handle, while the 2016-17 season saw commingling turnover leap 87% year-on-year to HKD 6.5b or 5.7% of the total. Engelbrecht-Bresges said the increased international interest in the HKJC gave him “significant optimism” for the monopoly’s prospects in the 2017-18 fiscal year.

The World Series of Poker has blown through Day 6 of the Main Event and the man who accidentally won a bracelet in 2015, Christian Pham, leads the final 27-players. 

The man who accidentally won a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, when in 2015, he accidentally registered for a $1,500 2-7 Single Draw event, learned the game on the fly, and beat 219 players to take the title, is the chip leader in the Main Event with only 27-players remaining.

“It’s the hope of every poker player, we go to the final table, or we go the top 27, 18 something like that,” Pham told PokerNews. “And now, my dream’s come true. I’m very happy about that.” 

Pham must be feeling dizzy given the heights to which he has climbed in this event, particularly when you consider, he has spent much of the 48th Annual WSOP competing in the $235 Rio Daily Deepstack events.

A trade show decorator from Los Angeles beats an air traffic controller from Norway in the heads-up phase of the $1,111 Little One for One Drop raising close to a million dollars for charity in the process. 

Adrian Moreno began the World Series of Poker (WSOP) with a win, and he ended it in the same way.

The 48-year-old trade show decorator from Los Angeles, defeated 81 entrants to win a $235 Rio Daily Deepstacks on May 31, and six weeks later took down the penultimate event of the series, the $1,111 Little One For One Drop.

As a part-time poker player, that opening salvo was crucial for Moreno, who went on to finish 19/8120 in the Crazy Eights event, and 23/6716 in the Monster Stack. At one point he was 11/12 in the chip counts and even began the heads-up phase with a 3:1 deficit, but he was simmering under the surface and began boiling at the right time.