Roman “Romeopro” Romanovsky, has ended Niklas “leno9000” Åstedt’s 10-month reign at the top of the PocketFives Leaderboard after an impressive start to the year.

Many moons ago, Philipp Gruissem was ready to walk away from poker. Frazzled by the spotlight, the happiness that money provides having plateaued, the German star sought sanctity in the shade.

Then he met some extraordinary people.

They called themselves ‘Effective Altruists’, and when they learned how much money Gruissem could earn playing poker and that he was considering retiring to run away to some remote part of the world so he could make a difference, they nearly wet their pants.

How desperate does the anti-scaling cryptocurrency community have to be to align itself with accused murderer John McAfee?

A few weeks ago, CoinGeek founder Calvin Ayre took a trip to Cuba, where, as he is wont to do, he posted some photos and videos of some lovely local ladies engaging in the popular posterior pumping art form known as twerking.

The youthful appearance of some of the dancers led some Twitter trolls to comment that Ayre – whose 58th birthday celebration will be part of the next CoinGeek Conference in Toronto on May 29-30 – was just too damn old to be hanging out with such fair flowers of Cuba’s feminine pulchritude.

Predictably, McAfee (pictured), founder of software firm McAfee Associates and serial advocate for any crypto startup that will pay him to tweet positive things about it, felt the need to add his voice to the discussion, claiming that Ayre was dragging the crypto community down “a dark alley.”

Poland’s Totolotek sports betting operation is only a competition watchdog’s rubber stamp away from becoming part of the Gauselmann Group.

Last December, Polish media reported that XTiP Polska, a joint venture of Gauselmann’s Merkur Sportwetten GmbH subsidiary and Warsaw-based professional investment and consulting group TMT Investments SA, had made a play to acquire Totolotek from its parent company, Greek lottery and betting operator Intralot.

On Monday, Money.pl reported that a share purchase agreement between Gauselmann and Intralot had been reached and the German firm had submitted an application to Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) for approval of the deal. The application was reportedly filed on March 21.

Merkur Sportwetten CEO Niko Steinbraub issued a statement hailing the acquisition of Totolotek’s 260 retail points of sale as well as its popular online and mobile betting operations. Steinraub called the addition of a strong presence in Poland – accompanying the Merkur brand’s current operations in Germany, Australia, Denmark and Belgium – “an important part of our development strategy.”

Online gambling operator 188Bet has abruptly announced the cessation of its activities in the UK, Ireland, Gibraltar and the Channel Islands.

On Tuesday morning, visitors to the 188Bet.co.uk website were greeted with a notice informing them of the operator’s decision to exit the UK/Irish markets. Customers were assured that 188Bet’s UK parent company Annatar Ltd was in no financial difficulty and that they would have until August 30 to withdraw any remaining funds in their 188Bet accounts.

The notice said 188Bet would honor any winning bets from pending wagers on events scheduled up to the end of June 30. Similarly, multiple bets with legs up to the end of June 30 will be honored, while any specific portions of a multiple bet that can’t be settled until after that date will be voided.

The notice didn’t offer much in the way of explanation behind its decision to curtail UK-facing operations, saying only that “this action is a commercial decision in a very competitive market.” The closure “relates to 188Bet.co.uk only” and doesn’t affect other 188Bet-branded websites.

Rumors are gathering that that merger talks are brewing between Eldorado Resorts and Caesars. We knew something like this would happen soon, given that Carl Icahn has been agitating for Caesars to sell itself. Besides Eldorado, Tilman Fertitta looks to be gathering cash to make an improved offer over what would have been a $13 a share reverse merger. If Caesars already turned that down, a 50% premium over current market value, then Eldorado is going to have to make a much bigger offer of at least $12-13 billion. Fertitta’s previous offer would have valued Caesars at $8.1B and it was unanimously rejected by the board, so $10B probably wouldn’t cut it

Putting it bluntly, if Eldorado merges with Caesars, it would be deeply mortgaging its future and might even end up destroying itself. Just like Caesars dug itself into such a deep hole in its 2008 deal with Apollo Management that the only way it could even keep existing as a going concern was to dump $18.4 billion in bad debt into a corporate trash bin called Caesars Entertainment Operating Company, and have all its pissed off junior bondholders try to sue that zombie for whatever they felt like while Caesars ran away with whatever value they could sneak out the back door with.

Watching the same mistakes being made over and over and over again is tiring. We’re at the tail end of a business cycle and discussing huge leveraged buyouts involving Caesars again. Listening to analysts use complicated finance terminology and whip out a bunch of numbers based on past trends just assuming that everything continues as is forever makes my eyeballs tired from rolling. (It’s also pretty boring to read besides.)

Yes, if Eldorado and Caesars merge, then it would be one of the biggest gambling companies in the US, controlling a whole bunch of stuff, and have a huge top line. So what? Eldorado is already pretty deep in debt though doing a fine job of acquiring good properties at bearable costs in today’s rate environment at least. Biting off more than it can chew specifically now will make any downturn, even a mild one, extremely difficult to handle. And I don’t believe the upcoming downturn will be a mild one. You can’t just take one company, show everyone that’s it’s doing well, and then on that credit alone assume it can handle and fully digest one of the most intractable financial messes in the gaming industry like it was just another one of its synergy projects.