Monthly Archives: July 2017

WSOP Main Event TV coverage nitty-gritty; WSOP Online UK to close

The TV schedule for the World Series of Poker Main Event has been released for all the green-eyed monsters who don’t possess ESPN, ESPN2 or PokerGO, and WSOP Online UK plans to close for good on July 20.

The first time I experienced the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event. I mean, standing in the room as everyone prepared to take their seats. I placed my palms on my cheeks like the man standing on the bridge in the Munch painting. The screams were silent to all but me. It was an exhilarating experience.

And then, a few days on, when the business end of the tournament kicked in, and people were playing for some serious money, I felt like a yacht hanging around in a windless sea. Bored, uninspired, and stuck with nowhere to go.

Poker is like that.

Becky’s Affiliated: How Blockchain can revolutionize the online gambling industry with DAO.Casino

Several weeks ago my friend Eric Benz, one of my “go to guys” for anything Bitcoin and Blockchain, pointed me in the direction of DAO.Casino so I could educate our readers on “why this gaming protocol is so revolutionary for gaming as a whole”.

According to DAO.Casino, their protocol is “an open ecosystem for gambling games that doesn’t rely on a trusted third party. Its decentralized governance system built on Ethereum offers rewards to developers, security auditors, and community members for their contribution to the platform where players can discover and play scam-free games with a straightforward user interface”.

I appreciate this description can be a bit difficult to wrap your head around, but all you really need to know is the casino platform has been built on the Ethereum Blockchain and offers “provably fair” games for players while completely removing the need for third parties such as regulators and RNG testing services.

Rather than going into a lot of technical detail on how DAO.Casino is powered, the point of this interview is to highlight the uses for Blockchain technology in the gambling industry and explain why we could be on the brink of a revolution here.

888Poker on the philosophy behind ‘Taking Back the Game.’

Lee Davy sits down with a representative of 888Poker to talk about their philosophy behind their new long-term strategy: ‘Taking Back The Game’.

When it comes to writing, I’m like a squirrel that spies a bird feeder full of nuts. I have to return to the same thing again, and again, and again.

When I write about Phil Ivey, I refer to him as the greatest poker player alive. PokerStars is the largest online poker room in the world. And when I write about 888Poker, I refer to them as the second largest online poker room in the world.

If I’m Phil Ivey or PokerStars I’m happy with that, but what if I’m 888Poker?

Baha Mar faces further delays due to undelivered lounge chairs

Stop us if you’ve heard this one, but the Baha Mar resort casino in the Bahamas could face further delays in completing its oft-delayed construction.

The $4.2b Baha Mar held its soft-opening in April, although it didn’t begin accepting hotel reservations for another month and only one of the property’s planned three hotels is actually ready to accept guests.

Other non-gaming amenities of Baha Mar also remain unfinished and Baha Mar’s principal contractor China Construction America (CCA) is now warning that a dispute with a US-based supplier could cause CCA to miss the government-mandated October 15 deadline for the “substantial completion” of the project.

On Monday, the Bahamas Tribune obtained legal filings in which CCA accuses a Florida-based supplier of “commercial extortion” due to its refusal to fork over 1,420 lounge chairs, representing 50% of the total number of chairs the Source Outdoor firm was contracted to deliver.

Betfair sponsor Juventus; Unibet sponsor Aston Villa

Another week brings another round of online gambling operators forging highly visible ties with sports teams, leagues and pretty much anyone who can lace up a pair of trainers.

On Wednesday, UK exchange betting operator Betfair announced it had signed on as the new official gaming and betting digital partner of Italian football powerhouse Juventus. The deal follows the expiration of the six-month gaming partnership the club signed with Betsson’s StarCasino brand in January.

Betfair’s deal takes effect with the start of the upcoming 2017-18 Serie A season and will continue for an unspecified number of years. The company gets to use the Juventus name and image rights in promotional material, while Betfair’s logo will be splashed across the team’s Allianz Stadium and its various digital channels.

Back in Betfair’s home market, the Kindred Group’s flagship Unibet brand recently announced it had inked a deal to become the new Principal Partner of Birmingham-based Championship side Aston Villa FC. The one-year deal will see Unibet’s logo emblazoned on the front of the kit of both the men’s side and the ladies team.

New York lottery takes $20m winnings from welfare recipients

A controversial program has allowed New York state to claw back close to $20m in lottery winnings over the past four years from recipients of social assistance programs.

Lots of people arched their eyebrows this spring when Republicans in the House of Representatives unveiled their proposed (and ultimately rejected) health care legislation, which devoted an inordinate amount of its copy to specifics on how to deny Medicaid benefits to anyone lucky enough to have won a significant lottery prize.

At least seven US states have some type of clawback program on their books that allow local governments to deduct unpaid taxes or child support payments from gambling winnings. However, New York state is the only one that enforces this policy against social assistance payments.

Under New York law, anyone wishing to claim a lottery prize over $600 must present themselves at a state lottery center, where their Social Security number is checked against the register of social assistance programs. If the search turns up a match, the state can claw back the entire amount of public funds the winner has received over the past 10 years, provided it doesn’t exceed 50% of the lottery prize being claimed.