Malta-licensed live casino technology outfit Medialive Casino Ltd wants everyone to know that they’re not connected with Italy’s criminal underworld, they just forgot to pay their taxes.

Last November, Italian authorities announced a crackdown on a network of retail betting shops offering illegal online wagering via computer terminals connected to Malta-based online gambling sites. Among those arrested in the ‘Double Jack’ operation were two Medialive directors, Massimiliano Fullin and Fabio Veglianetti.

Ever since CalvinAyre.com reported on these events, we have been deluged with requests, demands and the occasional threat of legal action from Medialive reps trying to get us to take the articles offline.

Medialive’s commercial director Rob Wheeler went as far as to call the articles “a complete fabrication” and called this writer “a complete story teller,” while vowing to “file a lawsuit and sue you” if the articles weren’t retracted.

Day 1 of the Super High Roller Bowl is in the books with Daniel Negreanu taking a giant lead into Day 2, with almost double the chips of his nearest challenger, Jason Koon, while his nemesis Doug Polk is amongst 18 players who hit the rail, including the 2015 champion, Brian Rast.

Poker Central’s jewel in the crown is currently on display over at PokerGO. The $300,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) looks shiny and new like its mother has gozzed a great pool of spit on the thing and rubbed it dry with the cardy that covers the scar along her wrist.

The mouths that sit on the same faces that connect to the ears that I bend tell me that this thing is THE greatest thing in poker.

Greater than the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event.

In the third of a series of blog posts designed to give RunItOnce Poker players a deeper insight into the mechanisms and decisions behind the big summer reveal, Phil Galfond continues to impress, this time explaining how and why he will make the RIO experience a pure and streamlined one.

The new book I am reading with my daughter is called Carrot and Pea: An Unlikely Friendship.

It starts out:

I am Lee, and I am a pea. 

The World Poker Tour has announced that ALL televised Season XVII Main Event final tables will switch to the Las Vegas Esports Arena in Las Vegas, and publishes the 2018 Season XVII schedule.

I have a spasm an inch to the left of the top half of my spine. The crushed beermat beneath one of the four table legs keeps moving, and each time it does, the water in my glass shakes as if a Tyrannosaurus Rex approaches from the East.

Now my calf is spasming.

I blame the World Poker Tour (WPT).

Australian and New Zealand casino operator The Star Entertainment Group says its Asian VIP gambling segment has been on fire since the year began.

On Monday, The Star held its annual investor day presentation, which included a trading update on the year-to-date up to May 23. The company said total ‘normalized’ gaming revenue is up 16.4% from the same period last year, thanks in part to its thriving ‘International VIP Rebate’ business (aka Asian gambling whales).

The Star said its VIP turnover was up 63.7% year-on-year, due in part to the company’s efforts to expand its quest for VIP customers beyond China – or ‘North Asia’ as the Beijing-crackdown-phobic company euphemistically calls it – to other South Asia nations and also recruiting more non-junket premium mass customers.

While VIP volume was way up, the VIP win rate was below the theoretical 1.35% rate. That trend was on full display in the second half of 2017, during which VIP win sunk to just 1.06% as luck favored the gamblers for a change.

Russia’s government says its gambling advertising rules don’t extend to internationally-based online portals such as YouTube … for now.

Earlier this month, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) announced that its ability to enforce its online edicts extended only as far as three Russian domains – .ru, .su and .рф — and thus it lacks the authority to prohibit Russian-language online advertising available on international sites such as YouTube.

The announcement came as a blow to Russia’s Internet Video Association (IVA), which had complained about Russian-language videos promoting online casinos such as Azino777 appearing on YouTube and (more importantly) on file-sharing sites offering bootleg copies of Russian intellectual property.

However, the FAS later announced that it would submit a “request” to YouTube’s owner Google to ascertain ways of preventing advertising of prohibited services from being beamed across Russia’s digital borders. The FAS also said it would convene a working group of “experts in the field of internet technologies and advertising” to crack this nut.

Thailand’s legions of pretty girls are putting their ample assets to work by visually promoting online gambling sites ahead of next month’s FIFA World Cup action.

Over the weekend, Thai news outlet MGR Online reported that a growing number of the nation’s “pretties” are being recruited by unspecified online gambling sites to promote their website addresses in preparation for next month’s World Cup betting bonanza.

According to the news outlet, some of these girls claimed to have responded to online requests for “a good-looking woman to promote a football website.” The job duties are simple: using pen or lipstick, write the URL of the betting site on a conspicuous piece of flesh, preferably on the cleavage or the stomach below, then ensure photos of the curvaceous calligraphy feature prominently on the girls’ Facebook profiles.

One girl told MGR that her work promoting betting sites was earning her a weekly paycheck of between THB4k-8k (US$125-250). However, higher paydays were possible depending on (a) the size of a girl’s Facebook audience, and (b) the comeliness of the girl, which probably has a direct bearing on (a).

Thailand’s legions of pretty girls are putting their ample assets to work by visually promoting online gambling sites ahead of next month’s FIFA World Cup action.

Over the weekend, Thai news outlet MGR Online reported that a growing number of the nation’s “pretties” are being recruited by unspecified online gambling sites to promote their website addresses in preparation for next month’s World Cup betting bonanza.

According to the news outlet, some of these girls claimed to have responded to online requests for “a good-looking woman to promote a football website.” The job duties are simple: using pen or lipstick, write the URL of the betting site on a conspicuous piece of flesh, preferably on the cleavage or the stomach below, then ensure photos of the curvaceous calligraphy feature prominently on the girls’ Facebook profiles.

One girl told MGR that her work promoting betting sites was earning her a weekly paycheck of between THB4k-8k (US$125-250). However, higher paydays were possible depending on (a) the size of a girl’s Facebook audience, and (b) the comeliness of the girl, which probably has a direct bearing on (a).