It’s a swing and a miss. Strike two for legalized sports gambling in Oklahoma, as a second attempt to pass legislation in as many years has failed, and whether or not the three strikes rule will apply still remains to be seen.

HB 3375 passed both chambers of the state legislation last Friday; however, a rider that would have allowed sports gambling, wasn’t included in the final version when it made it to Governor Mary Fallin’s desk for her signature. The bill did, however, expand tribal gaming agreements in the state, and now allows the tribes to offer “ball and dice” casino games. They had been prohibited since 2004.

Sports gambling is a touchy subject in the Midwest state, as Oklahoma tribes bring in almost $134 million to state coffers. That amount of money gives the tribes a lot of pull, and they have repeatedly fought against efforts to expand gambling operations. A similar bill introduced last year by Rep. Leslie Osborn attempted to legalize sports gambling, but died in committee.

This year’s bill would have authorized a 10% tax rate on sports gambling revenue. In a time that departments are clamoring for funds, it would have seemed like a welcome addition. The tribes provides around $100 million per year directly to the state’s Education Reform Revolving Fund, but this is apparently not enough, as teachers are currently on their eighth day of a strike for better wages and certain tax cuts.

Gaming tables in casinos in the United States have been disappearing. From Nevada to Massachusetts, the number of tables has been reduced, sometimes by as much as about 300. It would appear that these tables are finding a new home, most notably in Macau, and more are scheduled to be introduced.

Following the grand opening of the MGM Cotai in February, there are now about 657 tables available for allocation. When SJM’s Grand Lisboa Palace opens, that number will drop to 482, putting an additional 175 tables on casino floors. The Grand Lisboa is anticipated to open by the end of this year or in the first quarter of 2019.

Macau has a gaming table cap that has been in place since 2012 and which will end in 2022. The government caps the amount of tables that can be released, and began with an initial inventory of 5,500. From now until the end of the cap period, an additional 1,892 tables could make their way into casinos.

The 175 tables that are anticipated to be released in conjunction with the opening of Grand Lisboa won’t all go to the new casino. More than likely, 100 will be issued to it, with the remaining 75 being allocated between MGM and SJM. All is contingent upon how the government wants to divvy things up, and who holds what licenses.

A Chinese gambler has been rescued by Philippine police after he was kidnapped by loan sharks to whom he owed a major debt.

The Inquirer reported that Parañaque City police arrested three Chinese nationals accused of kidnapping Dong Yun Hao and holding him hostage in a room at the Okada Manila casino. Dong had reportedly run up a P5m (US$96k) gambling debt that he couldn’t repay.

Police said Dong had been detained as far back as April 5 and that his captors had made a video of them beating Dong that they intended to send to Dong’s family in Beijing to get them to pay his debt. Dong was somehow able to get a message out to his girlfriend, who contacted police, leading to Dong’s rescue.

The three men under arrest are reportedly underlings of a more senior loan sharking figure. Philippine casinos have been plagued by a spate of similar illegal detention cases based on gambling debts to loan sharks, many of them involving foreign nationals.

Luckbox ambassador Paul ‘Redeye’ Chaloner shares his goal to help provide greater education around gambling in esports prompting Lee Davy to look at the guts of the organisation Redeye joined in February.

Don’t fight it, feel it.

I doubt Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie was thinking about cryptocurrencies when he spat the line into the mic, but it’s apt.

Don’t fight it, feel it.

Russia’s online sports betting operators will likely have to wait until after the World Cup to enjoy a simplified customer registration process.

In late March, Russian legislators introduced Bill No. 423799-7, which aims to, among other things, streamline Russian’s notorious two-stage online sports betting account registration process, which Russian-licensed bookies have long complained puts them at a disadvantage to internationally licensed gambling sites not subject to the same restrictions.

At present, Russian punters must register online with both a licensed bookmaker and the centralized payment hubs known as TSUPIS, and then traipse on down to a land-based betting shop or retail payment partner location to physically present documentation proving their identity. This presents no shortage of barriers, particularly for bettors in rural areas where these retail locations are sparse or nonexistent.

Under the proposed system, the TSUPIS hubs would be given the authority to authenticate a bettor’s identity on their own. The hubs would be given three business days in which to forward their approval (or non-approval) to the online bookmaker, after which the punter would be cleared to open an online betting account and wager to his or her heart’s content.

The U.S. Department of State is back again with its annual list of everything that other nations are doing wrong in the fight against money laundering.

The DOS recently released its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), which does a global whip-round of every country in the world to determine whether or not those countries are doing enough to keep drugs out of American hands, lungs, nostrils, veins et al.

Failure to make demonstrable progress in these areas can lead America to cut off financial aid to a country, although exceptions can be made for any government deemed to be vital to U.S. national interests. So basically, if you’ve got an airstrip that can and will accept B-2 stealth bombers, you can probably export all the fentanyl you want.

The INCSR is split into two volumes, with the second volume devoted to anti-money laundering (AML) efforts and which contains many references to the gaming industry. For example, the INCSR notes that “no casino located in Cambodia has ever filed a CTR” [currency transaction report] and the volume of filed suspicious transaction reports (STR) “is very small, reportedly less than five” in all of 2017.

A former senior exec at the Mohegan Sun Pocono casino in Pennsylvania has been arraigned on charges related to a fixed Easter Egg contest.

On Wednesday, Robert Joseph Pellegrini was hit with felony charges of theft and receiving stolen property along with a misdemeanor charge of conspiracy to participate in a rigged contest that took place at the Mohegan Sun Pocono venue in 2014.

Pellegrini is the casino’s former VP of player development who was sentenced in June 2017 to 32 months in prison for conspiring with Mark Heltzel, a longtime casino customer, to cheat the venue’s free slots credit system. The scam ultimately cheated the casino out of $478k.

These latest charges relate to an Easter sweepstakes in which casino customers were ‘randomly’ selected to pick a plastic egg out of a basket for the opportunity to win a $10k prize. Casino host Kenneth Rowlands enlisted the help of Colin Ray Boecker, another casino staffer, to ensure that Heltzel would be selected to pick an egg, and that Heltzel knew in advance which egg was the grand prize winner.