LeoVegas Gaming Ltd.’s misleading ads and its failure to protect vulnerable customers have left a £600,000 ($818,000) hole in the company’s pocket.

On Wednesday, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) meted the Swedish mobile gambling specialist with a hefty fine “for failings relating to misleading advertising and the handling of customers at the end of their self-exclusion period.”

During its investigation, the British gambling regulator discovered that LeoVegas did not “take all reasonable steps” to prevent problem gamblers from accessing its offerings.

“Our investigation found, and LeoVegas accept, that that there were weaknesses in its systems relating to the proper management of self-exclusions, and it and its affiliates’ marketing material was non-compliant,” UKGC Chief Executive Neil McArthur said in a statement.

Net income of state-run Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR) has grown at a slower pace in the first three months of 2018, government data showed.

Latest figures from PAGCOR indicated that the state regulator’s net income was at PHP1.42 billion (US$27.3 million) in the first quarter, 7.6 percent higher than the PHP1.32 billion (US$26.5 million) it recorded during same period in 2017.

However, PAGCOR’s net income growth for this year was slower than the 26.9 percent revenue climb last year. The state regulator didn’t provide an explanation behind this year’s slower net income and what fueled the income growth for the first quarter.

PAGCOR’s total revenue grew at a modest pace of 12.5 percent to PHP15.80 billion in the three months ending March 30, 2018, compared with the 26.7 percent growth or PHP14.04 billion in the first quarter of 2017.

It was only supposed to be a book. A book that explored how the poker mind works in tournaments. But it turned out to be so much more, and now, Maria Konnikova has turned the project into a profession, and an up-and-coming star in professional poker.

To prepare for the book, the two-time New York Times best-selling author talked poker pro Erik Seidel into letting her “shadow” him in a tournament. From there, other players, like Jason Koon and Isaac Haxton, got involved, letting her watch them, as well. Konnikova explained to Poker News: “It was an insane experience. It was a beautiful learning experience that really accelerated my ability to learn the game. I think they all want to see me succeed because they all want poker to become a bigger game. They all think it’s a cool and interesting project and they’re excited about the book and glad to be involved.”

From her first experience with Seidel, the psychologist was attracted to the game. Konnikova took part in a few low-stakes tournaments, finishing in second place in one and pocketing $2,215. And that was it—Konnikova was hooked on poker. She continued to play in tournaments, moving up to games with higher stakes. She cashed at several tournaments during the PokerStars Championship Monte Carlo and WSOP events, and participated in PokerStars’ 2018 Caribbean Adventure (PCA). She won first place at the $1,650 PCA National, earning $86,400 and a $30,000 Platinum Pass for the 2019 PokerStars Players NLHE Championship.

“PCA was the moment where everything kind of came together,” Konnikova said, “I’m learning and it’s sticking and I’m playing well. It’s a really wonderful feeling when you’re studying and working to have that validated.” Her success prompted her to consider her book plans, which have now been relegated to second place behind tournament participation.

UK-listed gambling operator Rank Group has brought in a veteran gambling executive to be its new CEO. Rank has tapped John O’Reilly for the position, capitalizing on his extensive career that spans over 25 years. O’Reilly was formerly with Ladbrokes, where he was responsible for developing online betting operations and expanding the company outside of the UK.

O’Reilly picks up where Henry Birch leaves off. Birch announced his resignation in March with plans to move to the UK-based online retailer Shop Direct. O’Reilly, who left William Hill last April 30, officially begins with Rank on May 7.

After 25 years with Ladbrokes, O’Reilly joined Gala Coral in 2011. He was the managing director of the company’s Coral Interactive arm and oversaw the relaunch of Coral’s online operations. He left the company in 2014 and was subsequently appointed as a non-executive director on William Hill’s board.

Rank Chairman Ian Burke expects O’Reilly to bring with him “a wealth of gambling industry experience, particularly in digital.”

With the 2018 FIFA World Cup now just six weeks away, police forces across Asia are gearing up for their crackdowns on the expected surge in illegal sports betting.

Thailand’s Royal Thai Police (RTP) recently announced plans to launch an operation center dedicated to combatting illegal online football wagering on World Cup action, which gets underway on June 14. The center, which will connect the RTP head office with regional offices, officially began its work on Tuesday and may become a permanent fixture.

The RTP’s new anti-betting brigade includes staff from the Central Investigation Bureau, the Immigration Bureau and the Anti-Money Laundering Office. The force will target sites whether their servers are based in Thailand or abroad.

Concerned citizens are being urged to fink on suspected illegal betting activity – in Thailand, all gambling except the lottery is illegal – and deputy national police chief Chalermkiat Srivorakhan suggested that the owners of Facebook accounts that promote betting activity could face charges of violating both the Gambling Act and the Computer-related Crime Act.

Martin Jacobson is the most high profile wildcard entry for Season 2 of India’s Poker Sports league, opening up the 888Poker brand to the countries eyeballs for the first time. 

People pay well over a hundred pounds to travel First Class on the Great Western train from Swansea to London Paddington, and it’s crap. The trolley guy just asked me if I wanted anything. I asked for a cup of green tea and a bag of crisps. They only serve crisps in the afternoon. The wi-fi doesn’t work, and there is only one toilet. It never works.

A few weeks ago, I went to the cinema to watch Ready Player One, and there was an ad for Great Western. It amused me. I wondered how much money they had wasted? If I want to travel from Swansea to London, I have to take the Great Western train, ad or no ad.

Marketing comes in many forms.

An update on the Korean Overwatch cheating scandal that saw 13-people arrested in January, and news of five bookmakers offering live odds on pre-recorded events from South America. 

I couldn’t tell what the South Korean President, Moon Jae-in said to his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, as they shook hands in the demilitarised zone, but I wonder if it was something like this:

“Kim, look, I know you are well up for dismantling all of your nuclear weapons, but could you save one warhead and aim it at the hackers and cheats that are fast turning my country into the laughing stock of the esports world.”

Blizzard Entertainment’s first-person shooter, Overwatch, is becoming one of the most popular video games in the world. esports athletes compete for six and seven figure sums in professional leagues all over the world, and yet a dark cloud hangs over the sport.

Wannabe cryptocurrency online gambling operator ZeroEdge has announced a second round of its initial coin offering, despite ample evidence that the entire operation is a scam.

ZeroEdge held the first pre-ICO sale of its Ethereum-based ‘Zerocoin’ crypto token in late February, reeling in investors with the company’s pitch of launching an online sports betting and casino business that would corner the online gambling market with its 0% house edge (which, as we pointed out in our original coverage, isn’t actually zero).

Echoing the adage that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce, ZeroEdge is now planning a second ICO round in June, this time offering a 58% discount on the price of its token. That hefty discount suggests either the first round didn’t sell as much as the company had hoped or the company has been forced into the hard sell routine due to some damning evidence that their business is a sham.

On March 28, Medium.com published an in-depth examination of ZeroEdge that determined “the casino and the ‘Zerocoins’ they are launching on March 27 are all fake.” We strongly advise everyone to read the full article to understand the lengths to which scammers will go to flog their useless pump-and-dump tokens.

The Winning Poker Network’s flagship online poker site, America’s Cardroom, has been hit for six this weekend, after being plagued by Distributed Denial of Service cyberattacks.

The European police force Europol has confirmed that Dutch and British authorities has taken down the world’s largest marketplace for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) cyberattacks.

The investigation led to the arrest of six administrators of webstresser.org, the home of 136,000 users and the conduit for more than 4 million DDoS attacks. For as little as $18 per month, webstresser.org, allowed naughty boys and girls who like to pop balloons at kid’s birthday parties to rent stressers and booters to carry out DDoS attacks on people they didn’t like. And it seems none of these 4 million DDoS atatcks were aimed at Americas Cardroom (ACR) because for the past week they have been getting shafted like a bull elephant on a poodle.

Joey Ingram doesn’t believe that either the Winning Poker Network (WPN) or ACR have a security team, after finding several loopholes that allowed humans and bots to take advantage of him and other grinders on the site. And that may be so, but they do have a DDoS Mitigation Team according to a blog post that appeared on the ACR site this week.