Nevada casinos reported a solid November performance driven by baccarat and sports betting, although the overall result failed to top the previous month’s $1b revenue tally.

Figures released Thursday by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) show statewide gaming revenue of just under $967.2m, a 6.4% rise over the same month last year but well behind the $1.06b the market reported in October 2018.

November’s gains were concentrated on the Las Vegas Strip, where revenue shot up 10% to $534.5m. The Strip’s boffo performance can be credited at least in part to high-rollers sending baccarat revenue up 50.6% year-on-year to nearly $97.8m. It also helped that November 2017’s baccarat performance was particularly dire, down 23.5% year-on-year.

Baccarat’s gains allowed it to reclaim the table game revenue crown, despite blackjack rising a respectable 4.1% to $87.6m in November, although this was only about two-thirds of the game’s October 2018 total. The other major table games had a mixed month, with craps up 5% to $30.4m while roulette slumped 13% to just under $28.7m. Slots revenue was up 1.3% to $634.9m.

Mississippi casinos’ new legal sports betting options had another middling month, while broadcaster NBC appears to be staking out its own wagering turf.

Last week, the Mississippi Gaming Commission (MGC) issued its November casino market report, during which statewide gaming revenue hit just over $161m. That’s $1m less than the state reported in the same month last year and more than $6m below October 2018’s total.

The state’s retail sportsbooks contributed $1.67m to November’s revenue total, an improvement over the dismal $1.18m they earned in October, but well below the $5.3m the books reported in September, the state’s second full month of legal wagering.

November’s statewide sports betting handle totaled $44.5m, up significantly from October’s $32.8m and a new record high for the state. But the figure is paltry compared with the nearly $331m that New Jersey’s licensed sportsbooks handled in November, underscoring Mississippi’s lack of online and mobile wagering options, which accounted for nearly three-quarters of New Jersey’s handle last month.

New Year’s Address by Calvin Ayre

All the anti-scaling forces who were in the Bitcoin world have carved themselves away from Bitcoin and have their own altcoin (inaccurately still using the Bitcoin name unfortunately) which no longer has the original Bitcoin economic model. Now that this has happened, Bitcoin SV is clear to massively scale in 2019, while still keeping the original Bitcoin base protocol stable. Ironically…all the anti-scaling forces are now out limiting their alt coins from massive-scaling and wasting time on unnecessarily complex side chains or second layer solutions.

As painful as this was and as fraudulent as this outcome is now that the Bitcoin name is being used to sell platforms that no longer have Bitcoin’s economic model, it at least allows the market to decide without the artificial restrictions that original Bitcoin has been subjected to for the last few years.

Below is a chart of the largest on-chain blocks on different “Bitcoin” chains mined in the 10 years since Bitcoin was invented. You will note that the top 16 records are all done using the Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) implementation (when it was on the Bitcoin Cash chain) or on the Bitcoin SV chain using the original Bitcoin economic model and vision. The last block record was 65 MB mined by Mempool in China on Christmas eve, December 24 of this year. It is interesting to note that this is only one MB bigger than the last world record block mined during the BCH hash war by my mining operation CoinGeek. This seems like a very small increase until you note that the largest ever Bitcoin Core block is just over 2 MB in total. The fees for these small blocks are embarrassing also…you cannot do micropayments with this platform at all.

The Golden Nugget Atlantic City and Caesars Entertainment Corp. were fined by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE), for accepting bets on college games involving teams from the state.

The Press of Atlantic City reported on the violations of New Jersey’s sports betting act, which prohibits such bets on concerns of game results being affected by them.

DGE spokesperson Kerry Langan said, “Prohibited sporting events were posted and wagers were placed on those events… All improperly posted bets were voided and if the gamblers were known, those funds were returned to them.”

She added that “The casino licensees are required to have internal controls in place to prevent prohibited games from being posted for wagering. When those controls fail, there are regulatory sanctions.”

Travellers International Hotel Group, Inc., the joint venture between Philippine-listed Alliance Global Group, Inc. (AGI) and Genting Hong Kong Limited, will continue the construction of the Westside City casino resort in early 2019, to meet a scheduled 2021 opening.

The planned resort, located in Entertainment City in Parañaque, Metro Manila, had previously been set for opening in 2019, but Travellers, which currently operates Resorts World Manila, postponed this back in June 2016 in order to modify the project design. In February, affiliate Megaworld announced $2.3 billion in capital expenditure to develop the 31-hectare property, which will have about 1,500 hotel rooms.

In an interview with reporters on the sidelines of an AGI event, AGI CEO Kevin Tan mentioned that construction of Westside City will be continuing after an upgrade of its plan, to focus on more entertainment activities.

Local news outlet BusinessWorld quoted Tan as saying, “We’re going to be focusing quite a lot on entertainment because we discussed in the past we want to create this sort of ‘Broadway of Asia’ concept there. So we’re putting together theaters in one, because it’s growing and it’s fragmented all over so we’re looking at ways to integrate it into one development where we can put theaters and entertainment facilities.”

CalvinAyre.com is notorious for its conference video coverage, with daily recaps coming out 12 hours after they were shot and dozens of exclusive interviews captured each day on the floor. With one film crew based in London and another in Manila, we are able to hit just about every major iGaming conference around the world and have been doing so for almost 10 years. Locations we visit on an annual basis include London, Manila, Macau, Las Vegas, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Taipei, Lisbon and Malta with even more destinations in the cards for 2019.

The CalvinAyre.com crew has become a staple at iGaming conferences (and the odd party or awards ceremony here or there) and for this we thank you, our dear readers, for your support. We also thank the conference organizers in our space for making this all possible and without further ado, here is our list of the 10 most viewed conference coverage videos of the year.

10. Betting on Sports 2018 Day One Recap

Seeing as nine of our top ten most viewed interviews of 2018 focus on sports betting, it should come as no surprise SBC’s sports betting event recaps were high on our list in terms of views. This recap video features a few words from Snooker legend Ronnie O’Sullivan, covers the relationship between F1 and betting, reveals a solution for 24/7 sports betting content and provides an update on FSB Tech’s exponential growth over the past four years.

The Stars Group has seen the Court of Appeal overturn a Circuit Judge’s order for the online gambling group to pay the State of Kentucky more than a billion dollars in a case stretching back to 2010.

For the second time in a matter of months, The Stars Group (TSG) has proven that they won’t need to climb into the Octagon to learn a few death grips from their new partners: The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), they can handle themselves.

After the TSG legal team gave Gordon Vayo a Hulk Hogan style leg drop it was time for the State of Kentucky to feel the python-like grip of the guns of the online gambling giant.

Staring at the red taillights and exhaust fumes of this thing, back in 2010, State Cabinet Secretary, John Tilley, thought he was innovative by suing PokerStars for failing to remove their hit songs from the state’s online gambling jukebox between the dates of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (2006) and Black Friday (2011).

PokerStars will have a presence in Las Vegas after becoming the ‘Official Poker Partner’ of the Ultimate Fighting Championship starting with the Jones vs Gustafsson dust-up at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday.

The first vacation I ever took with my wife was to Thailand. She booked it, so I had no right to complain, but I did. The World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, Ronnie Bardah, suggested that we check out a Muay Thai boxing camp in Ruawai beach.

Thanks, Ronnie.

I spent a fortnight, waking at 5 am, going through the most punishing of regimes until noon, then a quick glug of coconut milk before heading back for more.