After a year in the making, the $25,000 PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship has finally ended, and a Platinum Pass winner walked away with the $5.1m first prize, with Ramon Colillas beating Julien Martini, heads-up for the title.

Five years ago, a 25-year-old unemployed man posted on Reddit that he had inherited $25,000, and was looking for some advice on what he should spend it on.

The man wrote:

“What crazy stuff can you think of? I am all ears and open to all ideas, except giving it away.”

New Hampshire has introduced legislation that would create the nation’s first standalone sports betting retail shops.

Thursday saw the New Hampshire House of Representatives introduce HB 480, which aims to establish a system within the state Lottery Commission for land-based, online and mobile sports betting. The bill would establish a new Division of Sports Wagering within the commission.

The legislation leaves it up to the Commission whether it wants to offer wagering directly and/or through an authorized ‘Sports Betting Agent’ via “the use of mobile internet devices and through physical sports book retail establishments.” That last bit is interesting, given that, unlike most states pondering wagering bills, New Hampshire currently has no brick-and-mortar casinos.

In other words, the state would authorize UK-style betting shops on its streets, something not even Nevada has okayed, although that state used to feature automated betting kiosks in pubs and bars until mobile wagering made them somewhat superfluous.

A double barrel from the tight waistband of partypoker including news of a new Player Council, and that the 15-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, Phil Hellmuth, will be featuring at the MILLIONS South America event in Brazil.

Learning that partypoker has created a Player Panel gives me the same feeling when I hear that someone learned Latin in school.

That’s pretty cool.

Followed.

Tech giant Google has begun complying with Russian rules on blocking undesirable material — including internationally licensed online gambling sites — from its search engine results.

This weekend, Russian media reported that Google has begun scrubbing its local search engine results of “prohibited internet resources” that have made the blacklist of Russian telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor.

Russian law requires internet giants like Google to connect to the federal state information system (FGIS) to monitor the Unified Register of Prohibited Information, so that blacklisted domains will be automatically blocked from appearing in Russian search results.

Domestic firms such as Yandex and Mail.ru had long since linked their systems to the FGIS, but Google remained a conspicuous holdout. In November, Roskomnadzor opened an administrative case against Google. Two weeks later, Roskomnadzor hit Google with a RUB500k (US$7,500) fine, claiming to have “irrefutable proof filtering is not carried out.”

Lee Davy sits down with the NBA legend, Paul Pierce, at the PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship to talk about his near-death experience, how to deal with the haters and much more.

PokerStars PCA Report: Paul Pierce on the preciousness of life Audio

Lee Davy sits down with the legend of the Octagon, Bruce Buffer, to talk about his parent’s aspirations for him as a child, his views on fear and failure and much more.

PokerStars PSPC Report: Bruce Buffer on fear, failure and much more Audio

With the PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship falling into the final throes it’s time to turn our attention to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, and the first big tournament: $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em.

There was once a dirty magazine underneath the mattress; always on father’s side. Now, there are more categories of porn on the Internet than flavours of ice cream (Joe Stapleton told me).

It’s the same with High Rollers.

Not long ago, a High Roller was a special treat. At the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) they have become so blade of grass like they aren’t even called High Rollers.

It’s another report from the PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship, and this time Lee Davy sits down with PokerStars Team Online member, Fintan Hand, to find out how much he would pay for great sex, his love for puppies, and much more.

The walk to the Coliseum fills with the pounding of 1500+ flip-flops, Toms shoes and Jimmy Choos.

There is a skip to the beat.

I imagine the Pied Piper of Hamlin and the rats because let’s face it, most of these sunny souls will end up drowning at some point, and right on cue there is the Piper himself, dressed in a shocking green suit adorned with shamrocks – it’s Fintan Hand.

Another report from the PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship as the $25,000 event that’s stunned the poker world reaches a final table, and two Platinum Passes are in with a shot of winning $5.1m.

Marc Rivera and Scott Baumstein

When the thought of creating the $25,000 PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship first came into view the innovators hoped that giving away 320 $30,000 Platinum Passes would create one or two Moneymaker type stories that could be used to ferry poker into more mainstream waters.

Well, the final table is here, and we do have two Platinum Pass winners who are guaranteed to send a wire to their bank for $509,000 and could still increase that to $5.1m. The people responsible for selling the narrative will have their fingers crossed.

New York’s upstate commercial casinos continue to perform below expectations, and one of them is likely facing a debt restructuring just to stay afloat.

This week, the New York Times reported on the 2018 performance of New York’s four upstate commercial casinos, whose licenses were issued in late-2015. The last of the four, Empire Resorts’ Resorts World Catskills, opened to the public in February 2018.

The Rivers Casino in Schenectady was the state’s ‘star’ performer, reporting gaming revenue up 19% to $152.5m in 2018. However, the property didn’t open until February 8, 2017, meaning its 2018 figures had five additional weeks in which to goose the gains. Even then, the 2018 figure is less than three-quarters of what its operators projected while pursuing their gaming license.

Tioga Downs in Tioga Country was also up for the year but it too was delivering only about 72% of its projected revenue. Resorts World Catskills projected its first full-year revenue would exceed $277m by the end of 2019 but the property managed only half that number in the 11 months it was open last year.