French online gambling operator Winamax has become the second French licensee to win approval to commence cross-border online poker liquidity sharing.

On Thursday, French online gambling regulator ARJEL published a notice formally approving Winamax’s France-licensed site to share online poker liquidity with the three other nations – Italy, Portugal and Spain – that signed a liquidity deal last summer.

ARJEL previously approved a similar step by the France-licensed site of The Stars Group’s flagship PokerStars brand, which began sharing liquidity with players on its Spanish-licensed site last month. Players outside France and Spain can participate in the liquidity pool by registering via PokerStars.es, provided they reside in a market that has yet to impose its own formal licensing regime.

Winamax has yet to acquire a license from Spain’s gaming regulator but the company signaled its intentions last October when it inked Spanish poker player Adrian Mateos as brand ambassador. The company has also been advertising for new staff who are fluent in both French and Spanish.

China’s social media giant WeChat is warning users that it won’t tolerate illegal gambling being conducted via its networks.

On Thursday, WeChat issued a statement saying it planned to strictly enforce its “zero-tolerance” policy against illegal online gambling activity during the Lunar New Year celebrations that kick off next week.

WeChat said it had beefed up its technical capabilities to detect “gambling-related behavior” on its network and that serious transgressors would have their information forwarded to the police for further sanction.

WeChat said its enforcement efforts over the past two years had uncovered over 2,300 chat groups on its network that were engaged in illegal online gambling, and that 30k users had seen their accounts restricted or disabled entirely. WeChat had also cooperated with police in 28 illegal gambling investigations that resulted in the arrests of 100 WeChat users.

Don’t be surprised if you notice a different sort of festive mood during Swansea City’s game against Burnley this weekend.

For the first time in the history of Premier League, a team will be donning jerseys with Chinese imagery to celebrate Chinese New Year 2018. The commemorative shirts will be worn by Swansea City players on Feb. 10 for their crucial Premier League fixture against Burnley at the Liberty Stadium.

Even though China, which has hundreds of millions of fans watching games every week, is a huge target audience for the Premier League, this is the first time a Premiere League team has designed special jerseys—in collaboration with shirt sponsor LeTou—in honor of the occasion.

Swansea Chief Operating Officer Chris Pearlman emphasized the importance of Asia “as a key market” not just for the team, but also for other Premier League clubs.

Net profit of South Korea’s second largest foreigners-only casino operator Grand Korea Leisure (GKL) plunged by 29.7 percent in 2017 as the Chinese restrictions on package tours to South Korea remain in place.

In a filing to the Korea Exchange, GKL announced that its net profit dropped to KRW80.54 billion ($74.1 million) in 2017 compared to the KRW114.34 billion ($105.19 million) profit in 2016.

GKL, which operates three foreigners-only Seven Luck gaming venues, has been battered by Beijing’s decision in early 2017 to restrict Chinese group tours to Korea as protest to the deployment of a U.S. missile system on Korean soil.

Travel agencies hoped that the icy relationship between Beijing and Seoul would thaw following the election of Moon and the scrapping of further missile deployment plans in the country. In December, the Chinese government reportedly changed its mind about loosening restrictions on package tours to South Korea and rejected applications for group tour visas. The move came after the state visit of South Korean President Moon Jae-in to Beijing.

Video game loot boxes may be restricted in Sweden as early as January 2019 if a legislation seeking to classify it as gambling becomes a law.

Swedish radio station P3 News reported that Sweden is the latest country to suggest that RNG loot drops requiring real-money purchases must be regulated to protect children from gambling, which they claimed are guised as video games.

Sweden’s Minister for Public Administration Ardalan Shekarabi wants loot boxes to be classified as a form of gambling in order for the government to impose a much stringent policy under the Swedish law.

The current Swedish law doesn’t define loot boxes as gambling, which makes it difficult for the government to regulate the product. Shekarabi noted that many gamers get stuck in “an abusive and addictive cycle” of purchasing loot boxes.

An injury to middleweight champion Robert Whittaker has shaken up the betting odds for the main event at Saturday’s UFC 221 card in Perth, Australia. Instead of sitting as a solid underdog against Whittaker, challenger Luke Rockhold (16-3) is now a -160 favorite (bet $160 to win $100) versus No. 1 contender Yoel Romero (12-2).

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

Romero is listed as a +130 underdog (bet $100 to win $130) and coming off a unanimous-decision loss to Whittaker for the interim title on July 8 at UFC 213 in Las Vegas, snapping an eight-bout winning streak. He got the call to fight for the belt again when Whittaker did not properly treat a staph infection in his stomach and was forced to withdraw from his originally scheduled championship bout against Rockhold.

Whittaker had been promoted to middleweight champion when Georges St-Pierre gave up the belt after defeating Michael Bisping at UFC 217 last November 4. The winner of Romero-Rockhold will then take on Whittaker at a later date to unify the titles.

Last year, the online money winner everyone was talking about was ‘BERRI SWEET,’ who racked up over $1.7 million at the virtual tables. This year, however, the anonymous player has been pushed to the back seat and a new name got off to a good start in January.

Gavin ‘gavz101’ Cochrane amassed over $348,000 in online action in less than a month.

Cochrane now joins the ranks of heavy hitters such as SWEET, Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom, and Ben ‘Sauce123’ Sulsky. The British player spends the majority of his time and favors Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO), although he will sometimes participate in 8-Game mixers. Gavz101 played a total of 18,713 hands across 241 sessions, and earned almost twice that of any of his opponents.

One particular game saw him up against BERRI SWEET, playing for his single biggest pot of the month. He was in a four-handed $200/$400 PLO game, and the showdown started with Cochrane leading off with a $1,400 bet from the button against last year’s online money champ. BERRI SWEET raised to $4,600 from the small blind and Cochrane responded after Sulsky got out of the way.

Just a few weeks ago, online poker shared liquidity between Spain and France was launched, and the market has already become the third largest. The launch was a result of an agreement that was reached last summer between the two countries, as well as Portugal and Italy.

Portugal and Italy are expected to join at some point in the near future, but another country has already jumped in ahead of them. Players from the island country of Malta can sign up and play against Spanish and French opponents.

On Tuesdays, Italian poker news source AssoPoker, reported that players on Malta can legally sign up on PokerStars Europe, the new site created for online poker liquidity due to a loophole in Spain’s online poker regulations. That loophole says that players in other countries can legally register accounts on the .es gambling websites.

PokerStars was aware of the loophole and exploited it when the online poker portal launched PokerStars Europe, paving the way for players from foreign countries to participate.