Macau casinos are celebrating after starting off the Year of the Dog more like a mighty mastiff than a wimpy Chihuahua.

According to initial stats released by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), the number of visitors descending on the special administrative region of China over the first four days (Feb. 15-18) of the Lunar New Year holiday is up 10% year-on-year to just over 500k.

Visitors from Mainland China accounted for 354k (70.8%) of the arrivals, representing an 18.5% improvement over the first four days of the 2017 Lunar New Year.

Last week, MGTO boss Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes predicted that total visitation over the weeklong New Year holiday period would be 1-3% higher than last year’s 935k visitors.

Japan hopes to keep criminal elements out of its casino market by requiring would-be operators to shoulder the burden of their vetting process.

On Monday, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the Japanese government’s long-delayed Integrated Resorts (IR) Implementation Bill will contain provisions that require prospective casino license applicants to pay the costs of their background checks, as is common in most other gaming jurisdictions.

These costs will be non-refundable, meaning any applicant with skeletons in his or her closet would have to be willing to risk a six- or seven-figure sum on the chance that investigators won’t discover these disqualifying antics.

The government reportedly believes such an upfront cost will be sufficient to deter unwholesome elements like Japan’s infamous Yakuza from seeking to participate in the country’s casino market.

PokerStars has been the dominant go-to site for online poker play for what seems like centuries now. Partypoker hopes to change all that, and is planning a blockbuster poker party for its final stop in Barcelona as part of its “MILLIONS” festival of tournaments. The poker site is looking to score big with the event, and is putting up a guaranteed €23 million to make it happen.

The Grand Final will be held on April 7 to 16 at the Casino Barcelona. Partypoker is calling it the “largest festival with the highest guaranteed prize pool in the history of poker tournaments ever held in Europe.” The main event guarantee was initially set at €10 million when the site’s series of tournaments was first announced in October of last year, and now eight more events have been added.  All eight have guarantees worth over €1 million. If partypoker makes its mark, it’s possible other sites, such as PokerStars, might try and follow suit.

The final stop draws to a close partypoker’s run around the globe in its MILLIONS series, which CalvinAyre.com has been covering in its entirety. It has launched tournaments in the Caribbean, the UK, Germany, Russia, and Canada. The five countries played host to some impressive poker action that saw winners collecting more than $100 million in prize money. Several events offered a $5-million guarantee, while five guaranteed $10 million each.

Satellite tournaments are available to gain entry into the Grand Final, and they’re available for as little as $0.50. From there, players can earn the chance to participate in the $1,050 final, which has ten $16,000 packages up for grabs. The packages include entry into the Main Event, accommodations for eight nights and $500 for expenses. From the quarter finals forward, the $22 buy-in satellite, players will be able to carry their chips forward to the next round.

Saudi Arabians are simultaneously celebrating and bemoaning their government’s decision to hold the deeply conservative country’s first national card-playing tournament for cash prizes.

Last Thursday, the official Twitter feed of Saudi Arabia’s General Sports Authority (GSA) announced that the country would hold its first card-playing national competition for cash prizes from April 4-8 at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center in the nation’s capital Riyadh.

The contest, which will be overseen by the Saudi Arabian Federation for Electronic and Intellectual Sports, will be centered around Baloot, a wildly popular local trick card game with similarities to the French game Belote. Baloot is also available on multiple Android and iOS mobile apps, some of which are among the top game apps in Saudi Arabia.

The top four finishers of the contest will share a total prize purse of SR1m (US$270k), half of which will go to the overall winner. Many observers expressed surprise at the amount of the prizes, given the lack of precedent for the contest.

The award-winning online poker room Unibet has announced plans to launch their inaugural online multi-table tournament series and season-ending Battle of Champions format.

Tap an online poker room with a tuning fork, and the vibrations trigger mimicry on a grand scale. Except one pitch seemed to miss the ears of Unibet Poker.

The Kindred Group’s online poker room refused to join the pack of wolves howling below a moon that breathed light onto the majesty of the online MTT series.

Until now.

The partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Germany Main Event reached a dramatic conclusion with the 27-year-old Swedish online poker legend Viktor Blom beating over a thousand entries to take the title.

The beggars that make a living sitting outside of the King’s Casino in Rozvadov need to shift gears after the partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Germany bade a fond farewell this weekend.

The 1,022 entrant field for the €5,300 buy-in MILLIONS Main Event confirms that unless there is an America’s Cardroom (ACR) style PR disaster, John Duthie and the gang have reached their goal of being the #1 live tournament operator in Europe.

It was another magnificent success for the online card room, and with each success comes more and more support. PokerStars, who don’t have to play catch up too often, will have to flog the back of saints if they are to get back into this race.

Three stories of a Betway flavour including a pairing with West Ham and Esports team Ninjas in Pyjamas, three more sponsorship deals with Ghanaian Premier League clubs and an entrance into the Nigerian mobile gambling market.

Who is the best shooter?

West Ham’s Michail Antonio or his teammate Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez?

It’s a no-brainer.

Online gambling technology provider NetEnt is celebrating an “eventful” 2017, despite the fact that the company “had expected a much better outcome.”

Last week, the Stockholm-listed NetEnt reported revenue of SEK419m (US$52.4m) in the final three months of 2017, a year-on-year gain of 4.7%. Operating profit fell 3.9% to SEK150m as margins fell over three points to 35.8%, but after-tax profit still managed to rise 1.5% to SEK152m.

For the year as a whole, revenue improved 11.7% to SEK1.62b, while operating profit and after-tax profit each gained 9.5% to SEK587m and SEK552m, respectively.

NetEnt CEO Per Eriksson noted that the year saw the company make forced exits from three markets – Australia, Poland, the Czech Republic – that imposed new restrictions on online gambling operations. Eriksson said these exits negatively impacted revenue by 3% in Q4.

Australia’s poker players are irredeemable gambling degenerates, especially when it comes to their participation in other gambling activities, according to new research.

The Australian Gambling Research Centre (AGRC) published a report last week that draws poker-specific data from last November’s Gambling Activity in Australia report, which was based on the 2015 Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey.

This latest AGRC report indicates there are roughly 132k Aussie adults who regularly gamble on poker. That’s only around 0.8% of Australian adults and just 1.9% of those who gamble in a typical month, making poker the least popular regular activity among the 10 most common gambling activities in the survey.

However, poker players spend an average of A$1,758 (US$1,390) per year on their game of choice, the highest average of the top-10 gambling activities in the survey. By comparison, Aussie sports bettors spent an average of A$1,032 per year on wagering.