Monthly Archives: September 2018

3 Barrels: Wins for Bohn and Weiss; Sochi, King’s and DTD loom large

Three tales from the lands of live tournament poker including Blake Bohn equalling the record number of wins in the Mid-States Poker Tour Main Event, Sam Weiss taking down the Commerce Poker Series Main Event in LA, and a look ahead at the live tours set to close out a quieter September period.

September is online poker month.

Hands down.

But as poker players from Vauxhall to Vancouver compete for over $180 million in online prizes in PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) and partypoker’s POWERFEST online series, a few old-school ilks are still squeezing felt underneath fingernails that smell of sweaty feet.

WCOOP round-Up: Loeliger leads Main Event; Deeb and O’Dwyer on point

Another round-up from the PokerStars’ World Championships of Online Poker including Linus “LLinusLLove” Loeliger impressing in the $10m GTD Main Event, and victories for Shaun Deeb and Steve O’Dwyer.

It’s been a busy week for former online poker proteges who successfully hid their identities for years.

Timofey ‘Trueteller’ Kuznetsov is the new face of partypoker.

Linus “LLinusLLove” Loeliger took down the largest WCOOP prize thus far when he beat 104 entrants to capture the $588,000 first prize in the $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em Super High Roller.

College Football week 4 betting preview

College football bettors don’t have to wait until Saturday in Week 4 to wager on games involving ranked teams as there’s a solid three-game Friday schedule featuring a pair of Top 25 programs.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

A very underrated matchup is Florida Atlantic at No. 16 Central Florida, with the Knights as 14-point favorites. They were champions of the American Athletic Conference last year and ran the table. UCF brings a nation-best 15-game winning streak into this one and will be well-rested after their Week 3 game at North Carolina was canceled due to the hurricane. FAU was an 11-win team last year and won Conference USA. This could have ramifications for the Group of 5’s spot in a New Year’s Six bowl. FAU is 1-4 ATS in its past five non-conference games.

Also Friday, it could be a bit of a trap game for No. 10 Penn State as it heads to Illinois in Big Ten action. The Nittany Lions are -28.5, but might they be looking ahead to next week’s mammoth showdown with No. 4 Ohio State? The underdog has covered five of the past six in this series.

European land-based gaming operators seek to turn back time

Europe’s established land-based gaming operators want national governments to do more to protect their entrenched interests, particularly as it applies to unwelcome online gambling competition.

On Monday, Dietmar Hoscher, vice-chairman of the European Casino Association (ECA), gave a speech in Malta in which he urged European legislators, regulators and gaming industry stakeholders to “join forces and stop the provision of illegal online gambling.”

Hoscher, who also serves as a director of Casinos Austria, urged attendees at the 12th Conference of the European Association of the Study of Gambling to press their governments to ramp up “blacklists, IP-blocking and payment-blocking” of online gambling sites operated by (presumably) someone other than Casinos Austria or any other ECA member.

Around the same time that Hoscher was ordering online gambling operators off his lawn, Torsten Meinberg, managing director of the German lottery and pool betting operator association Deutsche Lotto and Totoblock (DLTB), was urging the heads of Germany’s 16 states not to proceed with plans to amend the State Treaty on Gambling to permit online licensing of international competitors.

Golden Knights partner with William Hill in NHL betting first

The Las Vegas Golden Knights have partnered with bookmakers William Hill in the National Hockey League’s first official sports betting sponsorship deal.

On Tuesday, the US division of UK-listed bookmakers William Hill and the NHL’s head office announced that the league’s Las Vegas franchise had inked a “landmark, multi-year partnership” that will see the partners “collaborate on engaging with fans of legal betting age” through a variety of media platforms.

While the financial terms weren’t disclosed, Hills will get visible signage at the Knights’ T-Mobile Arena, plus a “TV-visible dasherboard,” updated league-wide odds displayed on the arena’s scoreboard during intermission, an “away game watch party” and the proclamation of a “William Hill Line Change” on the arena’s LED ribbon board whenever the Knights head coach swaps his on-ice players.

Hills has an established presence in Nevada’s casino and mobile sportsbook market and Knights President Kerry Bubolz heralded this union of two ‘Vegas Born’ organizations. William Hill US CEO Joe Asher returned the compliment, saying his group was proud to partner with a team that had already proven itself part of the community following its arrival in 2017.

Wynn Resorts’ Boston casino hit with yet another lawsuit

Casino operator Wynn Resorts has been hit with yet another lawsuit in the seemingly endless fight over its right to operate gaming in Massachusetts.

On Tuesday, Massachusetts media reported that Sterling Suffolk Racecourse, which formerly owned the Suffolk Downs racetrack in East Boston, is suing Wynn Resorts in federal court for allegedly conspiring to fix the application process that resulted in Wynn being awarded the sole Boston-area casino license in 2014.

Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that Wynn conspired to “fix the application process, circumvent laws in place to prevent the infiltration of mob elements, and interfere and eliminate various regulations aimed at protecting the public at large.”

Said mob elements are a reference to Charles Lightbody, a convicted felon who co-owned the plot of land that Wynn purchased as the new home of its Encore Boston Harbor venue (formerly Wynn Boston Harbor), which is slated to open in June 2019. The other former co-owners are also defendants in the new Suffolk suit.