Gov. Ralph Torres has defended the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas Islands’ (CNMI) reliance on the casino industry as its primary cash cow.

Torres came under fire as critics demand the governor to look for other means to improve CNMI’s revenue, according to The Saipan Tribune.

But the governor shrugged off the concerns of his critics, saying that the casino industry has created a positive domino effect in the CNMI. Since the establishment of the casino industry in the pacific island, Torres pointed out that there had been an influx of tourists in CNMI.

The casino, according to Torres, also brought other investments to CNMI.

Quadrific Media Pvt. Ltd. has been dealt a major blow in its battle to stop Rajat Agarwal from using the Spartan Poker trademark in India.

If you recall, Agarwal filed a lawsuit in January against Quadrific Media and executives including Amin Rozani, Rajeev Kanjani, Rohit Bhalla and Sameer Rattonsey. The four were former members of the Indian Poker Championship (IPC) who launched a new company called the Spartan Online Poker Pvt. Ltd., which operates TheSpartanPoker.com.

It so happened that Agarwal’s group is also operating a website using the name “Spartan Poker,” prompting an ugly legal battle between the two factions over intellectual property rights and corporate governance norms.

To end Agarwal’s association with the Spartan Poker trademark, Quadrific Media filed a complaint before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in April. In its complaint, the company asserted that Agarwal “has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name” because he “does not own the Spartan Poker trademark and is not known in the market as ‘Spartan Poker.’”

Casino operators may be in for the most lucrative Golden Week in the past decade – as indicated by the number of occupied rooms in different Macau integrated resorts.

Bloomberg reported that eighty percent of Macau’s hotels are already fully booked during the Chinese National Holiday that spans from October 1 to 8 – and the percentage continues to rise leading to the Golden Week.

Among the three to five star hotels that are already fully booked for the Golden Week are MGM Macau; Wynn Macau and Wynn Palace; The Star Tower in Studio City; Melco’s Cotai resort; and StarWorld Hotel.

Of course it goes without saying that hotels are expected to charge five times their usual prices. Rates of rooms peddled by hotel booking websites Expedia and Booking.com for the long holiday are now around HK$10,000 ($1,281) a night. Two weeks prior to the Golden Week, the same rooms cost only around HK$2,000.

Lee Davy continues to dive deep into the guts of the greatest poker players in the galaxy, this week poking around in the ribcage of Jim Collopy. 

Jim Collopy was spearfishing when I convinced him to share the secrets to his success.

So this column is much more than an insight into the lives of the most gifted poker players in the world. It saves the lives of sentient beings, baby.

Who are you?

Another round-up of poker news including the outcome of the $10m Guaranteed World Championship of Online Poker Main Event, partypoker unleash a monster, and Phil Galfond involves himself in Daily Fantasy Sports.

The 2017 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) is over for another year, and Steve “SvZff” van Zadelhoff is the Champion of the World.

The man with the most cultivated beard in the business defeated a field of 2,183 entrants to capture the $1.64m first prize in the $5,300 buy-in event. The Dutch grinder qualified for the event via a $215 online satellite, but alas, swapped action until he only had 16%, good for $262,400.

Another player who is sitting in a backyard somewhere blowing comforting smoke rings while in a deep state of reverie is Nick Petrangelo. The former Global Poker Index (GPOI) #1 ranked player in the world, beat the current #1 ranked player in the world, Bryn Kenney, to take down the $25,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) event for $625,000.

Casino operator MGM Resorts has wowed Massachusetts officials with fresh details about the in-development MGM Springfield resort casino project.

The $960m MGM Springfield is on track to open in the southwestern region of the state in September 2018, and Thursday saw MGM officials provide further details of the project’s progress to members of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC).

For one thing, MGM Springfield president Michael Mathis says the property will have more than the 100 gaming tables listed in the original estimates. Mathis told the MGC members that data from MGM’s new National Harbor casino in Maryland showed that table games were “making a bit of a comeback in terms of the mix with slots.”

Mathis added that younger demographics are “skewing away from the traditional slot product and towards an interactive, communal table game experience.” As a result, the number of tables in MGM Springfield’s poker room is rising from 16 to 23.

The brains behind the successful online poker training site RunItOnce have launched a new Daily Fantasy Sports product called Draftboard.com, and not a new online poker room like people are expecting.

September 2016, Phil Galfond announces to the world his intention to open an online poker room.

The timing was brilliant.

Pissed off grinders had thrust PokerStars into the role of the bad boy and in rides one of the white knights of poker to put things straight.

Pennsylvania’s online gambling hopes got a major boost on Thursday via reports that the state’s bickering legislators had reached tentative agreement on a gaming expansion plan.

Late Thursday, City & State Pennsylvania quoted sources saying state legislators had agreed that online poker and casino sites would form part of the $225m in extra gaming revenue the legislature had already agreed would contribute to the $32b budget for the state’s current fiscal year.

The Senate is now reportedly looking to get $250m from gambling into the budget, and the extra $25m could come from increased taxes on casino table games. At present, casinos pay 16% tax on their table revenue, but scuttlebutt has it that this could be raised to 20%.

It’s unknown whether legislators have tweaked the fee and tax structure of their earlier online gambling plans. Earlier this week, GamblingCompliance scribe Chris Krafcik tweeted that his sources indicated online gambling operators would pay one-off license fees of $10m-$15m, while online revenue would face an effective tax rate of 15%-20%.