Local lad Gary Miller has won the £1m Guaranteed  888Poker sponsored WPT500  in Aspers, Stratford, and the WPT Player Council returns to Amsterdam.

‘Shotgun’ can mean two things.

On the one hand, it can mean taking the passenger seat. “I want to ride shotgun.” It’s a saying that dates back to the early 1900s and was used to describe the man who sat next to the stagecoach driver.

It’s also an impressive weapon, and the man who sat next to the stagecoach driver carried one so he could blow the head off hostile natives.

As the saying goes, “The show must go on.” Despite a tumultuous year for the casino giant, Wynn Resorts will still be holding its Wynn Summer Classic poker tournament this summer. There are a number of games available for just about everyone, and the highlight will certainly be the $1.5-million guaranteed prize pool of the Championship Event.

Among the games, players will see the normal NLHE and Pot-Limit Omaha tournaments. There will also be a couple of senior tournaments for those players 50 years old or older. In addition, two of the NLHE tournaments will have buy-ins of $1,100 and offer a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million each. Action for those events will last for two days, and will have a 40-minute clock.

The Championship Event will be held on July 9-13, and has a buy-in of $1,600. Day 1 levels will last 45 minutes before bumping up to an hour for Day 2. From there, the final day will see levels last 75 minutes before a winner is crowned.

With the exception of the Pot-Limit Omaha and three Super Satellite tournaments, all games will follow the Big Blind Ante (BBA) system. The BBA ensures that the ante for the table is made each hand by obligating the player in the big blind seat to pay for the ante of the entire table. It started to be introduced last year, and has been received well by the majority of poker players, especially the high rollers. It helps to reduce confusion regarding who may or may not have anted up, and has proven to allow for more hands to be played.

GVC is certainly becoming a very large company, now that regulators have approved its deal to acquire Ladbrokes Coral. The ever wily GVC is being praised for its genius move of offering Ladbrokes a sliding contingent offer based on whatever the politicians in the House of Commons decide will be the maximum safe allowable bet at fixed odd betting terminals that makes up so much of Ladbrokes’ revenues, and that will end the problem of gambling addiction once and for all. Having covered all the bases before the pitch was even thrown, GVC made an offer that Ladbrokes Coral couldn’t refuse.

GVC’s latest acquisition follows its last-minute sniping of 888 for bwin.party, which itself merged in 2011, rather unsuccessfully. Now with Ladbrokes Coral, GVC is effectively, GVC Ladbrokes Coral bwin.party and friends. Plus a bunch of other satellites that GVC has gathered recently including a Greek gaming company called Zatrix, and Georgian firm called Mars LLC, or the Crystalbet Acquisition. Greece and Georgia. Hmm….

It’s been rather impressive how GVC has managed to accomplish all this roll-up without leveraging itself up the wazoo. Its debt, before the merger with Ladbrokes Coral at least, was only £300M, just over 10% of its market cap. With all the acquisitions it has splurged on, it could be considered something between miraculous and sleight-of-hand.

There is an answer as to how GVC has managed to do all this, but before I just blurt it out, let me say GVC has proven me wrong time and time again. Its share price just keeps marching on higher and higher, despite a less-than-conservative business model, dangerous markets, and, of course,losing money. GVC has lost £178M over the last two years, and £284M overall since its founding.

Lester Edoc has won his third live poker tournament in 2018, winning the Asian Poker Tour Philippines Championships, and the Asian Poker Tour announces a new stop to take place at the Cocobay Beach Resort.

Asian Poker Tour (APT) will visit the Cocobay Beach Resort for the first time in the tour’s history, GGRAsia revealed over the weekend.

There is presently no schedule, but we know the APT will take over the resort’s poker room between October 3 – 14 where it will carry the sigel of the APT Vietnam Da Nang Championships. It will be the penultimate APT event of the year before the tour moves to Macau for the big finish.

The new event is a collaboration between the APT, Win Poker Club and the Bridge and Poker Association. The APT moved into Vietnam for the first time in January when the Pro Poker Club in Ho Chi Minh City took care of business Jan 19 – 28. German pro, Adrian Esslen defeated 664 entrants in the Main Event to bank $57,718 in prize money.

3: Barrels of pure value including Ari Engel winning the Mega Millions tournament at the Bicycle Casino in California, Tiffany Michelle hosting a new poker show live from the Gardens Casino in California, and online gambling fails to make the final New York state budget once again. 

I like the play the game of “I wonder?”

I wonder what would have happened to Britain if Vivienne Westwood was the Prime Minister and not Margaret Thatcher?

I wonder what will happen when Artificial Intelligence exceeds human intelligence and ingenuity?

On Easter Sunday, Florida lawmakers hatched a plan to bring the dead gambling legislation back to life.

The Sun Sentinel reported that Florida lawmakers are considering a call for a special session this month to talk about the future of gambling in Florida. The idea cropped up over the weekend when Florida’s current gambling deal with the Seminole tribe.

State Rep. Jared Moskowitz said there had been talks for lawmakers to hold a special legislative session and, once and for all, come up with a gambling legislation that all parties will agree on.

Moskowitz clarified that there’s no consensus yet on whether to hold a special session for gambling bill. He likened the status for a planned special session on gambling bills to two individuals who just met on dating app Tinder.