Lee Davy shares his votes for the seven categories of poker excellence scheduled for high praise at the World Series of Poker’s ‘First Fifty Honors’ celebration, including a mid-opinion piece decision to not vote at all.

There is always an ache in my heart at this time of the year. After three years of World Series of Poker (WSOP) abstinence, I still miss the Rio. I feel like a wolf removed from the taiga and dumped into a zoo. My zoo is currently Starbucks in Cardiff city centre.

I made my debut in 2011, working for PokerNews as a live reporter. I was in for the entire series, with a week respite to play $1/$2 cash games in Bally’s with visiting friends. It was the only year that I worked the full series in this capacity. Days of the week vanished, ambushed by Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and so on. My lungs ached for air, brutalised by the chill of the air conditioning units, carbon dioxide and bad beats.

In the ensuing years, I divided my time between playing in WSOP events and live reporting. I eventually put a bullet through the last part of that tandem and restricted my work to interviews.

The World Series of Poker continues to big-up the 50th Anniversary of their unique poker festival by announcing the ‘First Fifty Honours’ dinner and ’50 Greatest Poker Players’ initiative.

If you Google ‘why we love lists,’ you end up staring at an article written in The New Yorker by Erik Seidel’s young padawan, Maria Konnikova, called ‘A List of Reasons Why Our Brain Loves Lists.’

The former PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) National Main Event winner’s research reveals that ‘lists’ alleviate the ‘paradox of choice’, taking away the uncomfortableness that too much information creates in our psyche.

Konnikova wrote:

Casinos in the Philippines are on the lookout for gamblers attempting to pass off phony US currency as the real thing.

Last week, the Philippine News Agency reported that three individuals had been arrested at the Resorts World Manila casino for attempting to purchase gaming chips with fake US currency worth around PHP288k (US$5,500).

The three men – one Chinese national, one South Korean national and a former Philippine police officer who was dismissed in 2018 following numerous administrative violations – were rumbled after an alert casino staffer noted that the $100 bills all featured the same serial number.

Major Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, director of the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO), said the three men had fingered a different South Korean national, James Park, as the source of the funny money. Police have yet to locate Park but have opened an investigation to determine whether there is more counterfeit cash currently circulating through the local casino market.

A collection of stories with a hint of PokerStars essence including the signing of Dmitry Guberniev, Daniel Negreanu hitched, Andre Akkari on his friendship with Neymar, and Fatima de Melo Moreira on the ever-growing confidence of women.

People collect rubbers. Not the things you put on the end of your penis to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted babies, but the ones that you use to rub out your mistakes in school (posh people call them ‘erasers.’)

On a side note, one of the hardest parts of the ‘birds and the bees’ chat with your child is explaining the role of rubbers.

“Why would you wear a rubber if you only have sex when you want to make a baby?”

Nineteen online gambling operators have reportedly applied to receive one of seven licenses on offer in Argentina’s largest province Buenos Aires.

Last week, the Instituto Provincial de Lotería y Casinos (IPLyC) of Buenos Aires published the official rules of its online gambling licensing derby. The province approved its online legislation last month and the official deadline for submitting license applications is June 25.

A six-member committee has been appointed to score applicants on a variety of fronts, including each applicant’s approach to responsible gambling initiatives, anti-money laundering practices, the types of casino games and the number of in-play sports betting events they’re capable of offering.

Applications for the 15-year licenses must be accompanied by payment of ARS5.5m ($122k). The lucky recipients of Buenos Aires licenses will be required to pay ARS65m, with 40% upfront, another 40% due at the end of the first year of operations and the remainder at the end of year two. Licensees will also have to put up a guarantee of ARS130m to ensure there are funds to cover any involuntary implosions.

Spain’s ombudsman is urging the government to impose a total ban on advertising gambling products and services, albeit with an explicit carve-out for state-run lottery operations.

On Monday, Spanish media reported that Acting Ombudsman Francisco Fernández Marugán (pictured left) had submitted documentation recommending that the government consider a total ban on gambling advertising – in particular online gambling advertising – with the notable exception of the state-run SELAE and ONCE lottery and pool-betting operations.

Last October, Spain’s Finance Minister María Jesús Montero announced plans to restrict gambling advertising much as the nation restricts advertising tobacco products. Gambling ads would be prohibited from airing on any broadcast media – television, radio, internet, etc. – during periods in which minors might be watching/listening. The government would also ban celebrity endorsements and gambling signage at sports events.

Marugán says that these restrictions would be reasonable if a total ban isn’t imposed, while suggesting that infractions of the proposed restrictions could result in revocation of an operator’s gambling license. But Marugán justified the idea of a blanket ban by claiming that the right of a business to advertise was not enshrined in Spanish law. Marugán further argued that gambling was “a public health issue that requires a regulatory framework with imperative legal norms.”

Kenyan gambling operators owe the government over a quarter of a billion dollars and these operators’ foreign execs risk deportation if they don’t pay up.

On Monday, Kenya’s Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i (pictured) told a Betting Control and Licensing Board (BCLB) stakeholders meeting that the local gambling industry owes the government Ksh26b (US$257.2m) in unpaid taxes.

The Star quoted Matiang’i saying efforts by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to collect this unpaid sum “have not been fruitful because the key industry operators have found refuge in judicial processes where all manner of court orders are sought and issued.” Matiang’i doubled down on his threat to revoke the license of any operator that fails to demonstrate their tax compliance by July 1.

Earlier this month, the KRA reported that it was trying to collect a back-tax bill of Ksh14.9b from Kenya’s leading betting operator SportPesa. The KRA has accused SportPesa of failing to collect a 20% tax on gamblers’ winnings, while the company claims its hands are tied by legal challenges of the winnings tax filed by one of its customers.

Australian online sports betting operator Sportsbet is looking at a AU$5.2m deficit after paying out early and incorrectly on the country’s election results.

Late last week, Sportsbet, the down under online sports betting unit of UK-listed gambling operator Paddy Power Betfair, announced it was paying out two days early for customers who’d bet on the Labor Party emerging triumphant in Saturday’s federal election.

But the incumbent Liberal/National coalition defied pollsters by winning a third three-year term to rule the country. Sportsbet paid out AU$1.3m to bettors who’d backed Labor to win based on the company’s assertion that 70% of its election wagers were on Labor and “punters rarely get it wrong on elections.”

Actually, bookies have proven as unreliable as pollsters on numerous occasions in recent election markets, including the UK’s Brexit vote and the 2015 General Election. In 2016, Sportsbet’s parent company paid out £1m early on Hillary Clinton defeating Donald Trump, an upset that, combined with winning Trump wagers, put a £5m dent in Paddy Power Betfair’s annual profit.