Deciding on whether to have a casino in their hometown has taken priority over any other matter in Taiwan’s outlying island of Kinmen. Even music festivals.

Held in the island every year, the Kinmen Tunnel Music Festival is considered to be the largest tourist attraction and is one of the first activities planned for each year, Su Cheng-ji, spokesperson for the Kinmen National Park where the festival is held, told CNA.

This year, however, organizers decided to postpone the music festival to make way for the gambling referendum, which will be held on October 28.

The organizers said that aside from the tides being “too high for a pleasant concert,” they also want “to encourage everyone to vote on this important gambling referendum,” which would increase Kinmen’s tourism industry and create jobs in the island.

Philippine-listed Berjaya Philippines is bent on regaining the exclusive rights to supply lottery equipment to the state-owned Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) in the Luzon territory – even if it means dragging the government to court.

Berjaya disclosed that the country’s Makati City Regional Trial Court (RTC) has issued a writ of preliminary injunction stopping PCSO, a lessee of Berjaya Philippines’ subsidiary, Philippine Gaming Management Corp (PGMC), from conducting the bidding process.

“In order to protect its interest, PGMC went back to court praying for a temporary restraining order, and a preliminary injunction,” Berjaya said in a regulatory filing before the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE). “On August 3, 2017, the Court granted the application for preliminary injunction, and, therefore, stopped the bidding process for the supply of lottery equipment, only for the Luzon territory in the meantime that the arbitration and these cases are pending.”

The dispute for the supply of lottery equipment stemmed from the twin cases that the PGMC lodged against the PCSO five years ago. PGMC, in its petition, claimed that PCSO violated a court-approved agreement by allowing Pacific Online Systems Corp to supply lottery terminals in the Luzon territory.

Authorities in Russia are gearing up to take over the Primorye gaming zone.

In July, the federal government of Russia announced that it will start streamlining the management of the gambling zone, following widespread criticism over the lack of progress in the province of Primorye Krai.

With this goal in mind, the Russian Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East has started drafting amendments to the country’s gambling laws, Russian media outlets reported. The legislation is expected to be enacted in December 2017.

“The Far East Investment and Export Agency is now tasked with attracting new large international players to the project,” a ministry source said, according to the reports.

Gambling.com is arguably the best URL in existence for any B2C online gambling business.  Charles Gillespie has been the owner of this coveted URL since 2011 and recently rebranded his entire digital performance marketing company to The Gambling.com Group (formerly known as KAX media) to reflect what his organization does and where it is headed.

Founded in 2006, according to Gillespie, the Gambling.com Group is the fastest growing performance marketing company in the online gambling industry today.  The Group has succeeded in doubling the size of the company in the past year without any acquisitions, an outlying statistic for this sector of the online gambling industry.

“Growth has been driven by our new media buying division and higher search rankings for Gambling.com We are now operating successfully in the hyper competitive UK PPC space which is increasing the topline substantially and producing decent margins”, shared Gillespie.

“We are first and foremost a casino shop and have historically spent all of our effort there…but we are now ranking quite well for a number of important sports keywords as well. This is exciting as we are also pushing into sports PPC in the UK this month with the start of the football season”, he added.

A round-up of the action from the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Big 4 including victories for Martin Kozlov, John Andress, William Foxen, Brian Altman, and two final table appearances for Joe Kuether.

For the third year running, the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open (SHRPO) in Hollywood, Florida, rolled out their Big 4 concept, and once again it went down a treat.

All told, there were 18 events, and $9.3m in guarantees, with $6.5m guaranteed for the Big 4, where the final tables of four of the biggest events played out simultaneously, streamed live and filmed for TV.

Martin Kozlov Wins The $5,250 No-Limit Hold’em SHRPO Championship 

Esports organisation, Ninjas in Pyjamas, have pulled out of their sponsorship deal with Betway, and the former Dutch footballing ace, Edgar Davids, successfully sues Riot Games over Lucian skin likeness.

In September, the relationship between esports and gambling was as strong as the one between Caesar’s apes after Betway invested in a high six figure deal with the esports organisation Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP).

Today, the tenuous relationship between these two forms of entertainment came to light when NiP pulled out of the deal due to rules within the sport that bar the promotion of gambling companies on their match day attire.

NiP made the call after deciding to re-enter Riot Games’ League of Legends Championship (LCS) series. Riot Games is the video game developer responsible for creating LOL, and as part of their terms and conditions (TOCs) forbid participating teams from advertising gambling products on their match day shirts, an important clause in the Betway deal.

In a case reaching back to 2009, Lary Kennedy, and her legal team are still trying to convince the legal system that Full Tilt Poker and their associates should stump up $900m in damages over an ever shifting series of allegations.

When reaching out to our good God Google to seek information relating to: “Lary Kennedy Files Third Class Action Lawsuit” I got the response “Secret Memo Shows JFK Demanded UFO Files 10 Days Before Death.”

But there is nothing alien about the Lary Kennedy case.

Poker Royalty founder Brian Balsbaugh tweeted that Kennedy and Greg Omotoy are still trying their utmost to convince judges that they deserve $900m+ in damages from Full Tilt Poker (FTP), their subsidiaries, and a handful of prominent poker players affiliated with the company.

The former Secret Service agent already serving a six-year sentence for stealing bitcoins while investigating online black market Silk Road has confessed to pocketing even more sacks of the digital currency.

In 2015, Shaun Bridges admitted that he funneled 20,000 bitcoins worth more than $820,000 to his personal account through a series of “complex” transactions in May 2013. Bridges was part of a task force investigating the dark net market along with former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Force, who also pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering, obstruction of justice and extortion.

Bridges left the Secret Service after pleading guilty to money laundering and obstruction charges. A month later, federal authorities said the former agent transferred over 1,600 of seized bitcoins from the digital wallet—which he had access to—to an account in a different digital currency exchange.

On Tuesday, Bridges, 35, pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering in connection with the missing 1,600 bitcoins, worth approximately $6.6 million today.

3: Barrels of a live tournament flavour including a round up from the World Series of Poker Circuit in Harrah’s Cherokee, schedule details for the Wynn Poker Fall Classic, and a new poker tour from the Poker King Club in Asia.

World Poker Tour (WPT) Champions Club member, Harry Arutyunyan, has added a World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) gold ring to his trophy cabinet after taking down the $1,675 buy-in Main Event at Harrah’s Cherokee.

The Los Angeles based entrepreneur and part time poker player, topped a field of 1,022 entrants to capture the $283,597 first prize, the second largest win of his career, outside of the WPT Legends of Poker event he won in Season XIII that netted him over half a million bucks.

Arutyunyan came into the final day 2/19 in chips but managed to collect every single one of them by the day’s end. The 33-year-old becomes the first player to reserve a seat in the 2018 WSOP Global Championships, an event his good friend Sean Yu just tucked away for $300,000 at the same casino. Yu was standing on Arutyunyan’s rail like a faithful dog, as was Arutyunyan when Yu was taking down his bracelet.

UK bookmaker William Hill has announced plans to extend their relationship with the Arena Racing Company, by opening branded betting offices in six of their UK racecourses.

William Hill and the Arena Racing Company (ARC) have agreed to a partnership that will see the UK bookmaker open up branded betting facilities in six of the ARC’s 15 racecourses.

Writers of the press release acted after the racehorse bolted from the starting gate with the Doncaster facilities having opened in June, Wolverhampton cutting the ribbon on 10 August, and Royal Windsor doing likewise on 13 August. Southwell opens on 20 August, with Lingfield Park and Worcester scheduled to repeat by the end of the summer.

The ARC is the largest UK racecourse owner in the UK, with 15 tracks. In July, the ARC’s television offshoot The Racing Partnership (TRP) ended their seven-month feud with Ladbrokes Coral and Betfred after reaching a deal to show racing from the 15 tracks within their stores. Ladbrokes Coral has 3,820, and Betfred adds another 1,688 to that figure.