The Maltese live poker infrastructure looks more interesting this morning after the Battle of Malta creator Ivonne Montealegre created the Malta Poker Festival to compete with the Casino Malta’s newly acquired asset.

I see a man standing in the middle of an arena. Sand coagulated in blood leaving it a Monkey-brown. There is a whistle in his mouth. He blows, and the operators charge towards the prize – the Battle of Malta is on.

A few days ago, before I made a pinhole at either end of an egg and blew out the double-yolk so I could decorate it for my daughter, I told you that Net Gaming Europe AB, the owners of Highlight Media, who in turn own PokerListings – were selling the Battle of Malta (BOM) brand name, concept and domain name to Malta Casino Limited for €300,000.

It seems someone smelled the scent of weakness in the sale of the great Maltese poker institution.

Australian casino operator Crown Resorts saw its half-year profit slump despite celebrating the return of its Asian VIP gamblers.

On Thursday, Crown announced that its revenue hit A$1.78b (US$1.4b) in the six months ending December 31, up 0.8% from the same period one year earlier. Earnings eked out a 0.3% gain to A$400m but net profit after tax (NPAT) slipped 12.4% to A$155.7m.

Using the ‘normalized’ results – a fiction that imagines a world in which VIP gambling win never deviates from a fixed percentage – the company’s earnings improved 11.2% to A$447.7m and NPAT nudged up 1.4% to A$189m. Also, in a normalized world, Crown boss James Packer can gorge on all the ice cream he wants and never gain weight. Just saying.

(To be fair, the statutory year-on-year comparisons are a mess, given that the previous year’s H1 results included Crown’s share of the Melco Resorts & Entertainment (formerly Melco Crown Entertainment) profits, from which Crown divested itself fully last spring.)

Two more live tournament victories to catch up on including a win at the partypoker LIVE UK Poker Championships High Roller for Steven Morris. And Juha Helppi wins the OlyBet Kings of Tallinn Main Event. 

partypoker continue to spread their LIVE tournament brand around the world, this time with the partypoker LIVE UK Championships in Dusk till Dawn (DTD) Nottingham.

In the prelude to partypoker becoming the king of the live poker tournament scene, they partook in this event as the sponsor of the World Poker Tour (WPT). How quickly things have changed.

The UK Poker Championships stretches from 17 Feb to the 25 Feb, with buy-ins ranging from £100 to £5,300, and the first major event has just ended.

Former PKR players who have money left on the site after the 3D online poker room went into administration have until Feb 28 to create or access their PokerStars account to access those funds before they end up as nothing more than a distant memory.

When PKR players logged into play on May 3, 2017, and saw a closure sign, one imagines an all too familiar slew of dark thoughts came tumbling in like Cirque du Soleil gymnasts.

The conductor had blown his whistle for the last time.

The PKR Express had left town, never to return and with all the player’s money hidden in the Caboose.

Eastern European casino operator Olympic Entertainment Group (OEG) is looking to make inroads into Italy’s regulated online gambling market.

On Wednesday, OEG announced that it had registered a new wholly owned Italian company, Olybet Italia S.r.l.. The new entity is intended to allow OEG “to develop the legal platform for the expansion of OEG group’s activities in the business of remote gambling.”

OEG currently operates online gambling under its Olybet sports betting brand. One year ago, OEG established a Malta-based subsidiary for similar online expansion into unspecified markets.

For the record, Olybet already operates a .it site, but while it offers services in English, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Russian, it doesn’t actually have an Italian language option.

The UK gambling industry’s self-funded problem gambling charity group has been tasked with a new campaign to alert gamblers of the early warning signs of problem gambling behavior.

On Wednesday, Campaign Live reported that the GambleAware charity was on the hunt for a creative agency to help craft a new £7m public awareness campaign. The campaign, which was initially suggested last October as part of the government’s triennial review of the gambling industry, is expected to launch this August and to run for at least two years.

Instead of persuading problem gamblers to seek help, the new campaign will target ‘at risk’ gamblers – young men, in particular – whose activity has yet to progress to the problem gambling stage. The idea is that encouraging individuals to think more critically about gambling products could prevent their behavior from escalating into more problematic activity.

UK broadcasters have committed to granting the new campaign up to £7m worth of free media. GambleAware will work with the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) to select an agency for the campaign. GambleAware’s existing relationship with the 18 Feet & Rising agency won’t be affected by the new campaign.

Casino operator Las Vegas Sands has won the latest auction for Pennsylvania’s new satellite casino licenses.

On Wednesday, Sands submitted the winning $9.9m bid that won the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board’s fourth auction for the new Category 4 licenses. Sands has elected to build its new mini-casino in Mercer County close to the Ohio border.

Sands operates the state’s number two casino Sands Bethlehem, which has been the subject of acquisition talk over the past year or so. It remains to be seen whether the Cat 4 license pursuit reflects the company’s intention to stay in Pennsylvania or whether it’s simply bulking up its local presence to make Sands Bethlehem a more alluring takeover target.

Sands Bethlehem president Brian Carr did his best to convey the former impression, saying Pennsylvania “remains a great gaming market and we believe some parts of the state are actually underserved.” Carr promised to offer further details on the company’s Cat 4 property in due course.