We learn the true identity of cumicon, the man who earlier this week posted a graph of $7.4m in Pot-Limit Omaha winnings, and catch up on tournament wins by David Peters and Martin Finger. 

In 1990, De La Soul told us that the Magic Number was Three. Online Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) cash game grinder, cumicon, has a slightly higher magic number – try $7.4m.

A few red crosses of a calendar ago, cumicon shocked the world of poker by posting his near perfect graph of PLO winnings on the 2+2 forum. Now, we’re not talking about tournament bullshit where your expenses are hidden. We are talking about 100% pure profit.

But who was this guy?

US racing and gaming operator Churchill Downs Incorporated (CDI) has agreed to sell its Big Fish Games social gaming operation to Australian gaming technology firm Aristocrat Leisure Ltd. for nearly $1b.

On Wednesday, CDI announced that it had reached a deal to sell Big Fish Games to Aristocrat subsidiary Aristocrat Technologies Inc. for $990m. The all-cash deal is subject to the usual regulatory approvals but CDI’s board expects the deal to close sometime in Q1 2018.

It was three years ago this month that CDI announced it had paid $885m to acquire the Seattle-based Big Fish Games. Many observers blinked hard at the notion of CDI detouring so far from its race betting roots, but Big Fish quickly became CDI’s biggest revenue contributor.

However, CDI’s most recent earnings report showed the social and mobile gaming division’s earnings tumbling due to rising user acquisition costs. In May, CEO Bill Carstanjen said social casino growth had “slowed and competition has stiffened” but insisted that Big Fish still had “a great deal of unreached potential.”

Life just gets better for David Baazov, the former CEO of Amaya Gaming, who is being sued for embezzlement by a Kenyan charity.

On Wednesday, Business Daily Africa reported that the Lion’s Heart Self Help Group had filed suit against Baazov and his fellow former Amaya execs Daniel Sebag and Benjamin Ahdoot, as well as Amaya’s Kenyan subsidiary, for allegedly embezzling Sh73m (US $707k) that was earmarked for the Lion’s Heart charity.

The suit alleges that Amaya Gaming Group (K) Ltd, which began lottery operations in the country in 2010, failed to remit the promised 25% of its earnings from the Kwachu Mamilli lottery to Lion’s Heart. The suit also targets local financial institution NIC Bank for allegedly colluding with Baazov et al to open accounts through which the embezzled funds flowed.

Lion’s Heart has been joined in the suit by Amaya Gaming Group (K) director Kennedy Odhiambo Nyagudi, who claims that only he and Baazov were authorized to open local bank accounts on behalf of the company. Nyagudi claims NIC Bank was aware of this limitation, yet still opened accounts on behalf of the other Amaya execs, who then funneled the aforementioned millions out of the country.

Turkish authorities are at least attempting to make good on their threats to combat the country’s thriving illegal gambling market.

On Wednesday, Turkey’s Trend News Agency reported that the Turkish Banking Supervision Body (BDDK) was imposing new restrictions on money transfers, as well as on withdrawals from ATMs, in a bid to combat financial fraud and illegal gambling.

A BDDK spokesperson said that, nationwide, “about five million people are involved in illegal gambling, for participation in which money is withdrawn through ATMs.” As a result, individuals prone to withdrawing their maximum daily limits via ATMs will now be subject to enhanced scrutiny.

In July, Turkey announced it was launching a two-year campaign to combat illegal gambling, which is pretty much all forms of gambling except the state-run lottery and sports betting services. In September, Finance Minister Naci Agbal singled out ATMs as conduits for illegal online gambling proceeds, with taxi drivers allegedly serving as runners/collectors for illegal operators.

New statistics show that Australian gamblers are spending more money on sports betting but the activity remains a relative sliver of the nation’s overall gambling expenditure.

On Tuesday, the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office released the 33rd Edition of the Australian Gambling Statistics (AGS) report, which tracks the ups and downs of the entire range of legal gambling products available to Australian punters.

Australians spent a total of A$23.65b (US $17.9b) on gambling in fiscal 2015-16, which works out to nearly $1000 for each one of the 24m-odd Aussies. The bulk of this spending (A$12.1b) came via gaming machines, followed by casinos (A$5.2b), TAB race betting (A$3b), lotteries (A$2.1b) and sports betting (A$921m).

Sports betting’s relatively minor importance to the nation’s overall gambling market was also on full display in last week’s Gambling Activity in Australia report by the Australian Gambling Research Centre.

Nevada police are still searching for the armed bandit who brazenly robbed a cashier at the MGM Resorts’ Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas on Tuesday afternoon.

Word of the robbery initially came via Twitter, as noted actor/poker player/right wing crank James Woods informed his followers that he’d been “playing poker at the @BellagioPoker and a guy walks up with a gun and robs the cage thirty feet from us ten minutes ago.”

Woods hailed the “cool under pressure” Bellagio staff for having “surrendered the money quietly, so no customers would get hurt. Nobody even realized it was happening.”

Police later confirmed that a robbery had occurred and that the robber had fled the scene in a silver Chevrolet Cruze. Police subsequently announced that they’d recovered the vehicle, but the suspect remains at large, although Capt. John Pelletier confidently claimed that “those that commit crimes like this on the Strip will be hunted down.”

German authorities are investigating what a Berlin restaurant owner was doing with a deck of playing cards marked with a radioactive substance.

On Tuesday, German police announced that a routine inspection earlier this month at a waste treatment facility in Berlin-Lichtenberg had turned up playing cards dosed with iodine 125, a radioisotope used in medical procedures.

The radioactive trail led police to a garbage truck, and an investigation into the route taken by this truck and other garbage found with the cards eventually led police to an unidentified 41-year-old restaurant owner. Police said they found a total of 13 irradiated playing cards, all of which were “the same color.”

The Berlin police noted that they detected higher than usual radioactivity in the suspect’s restaurant, as well as in some adjoining facilities, including an Asian market, a karaoke bar and an apartment.