Ole Schemion takes down the World Poker Tour Baccarat Crystal Tournament of Champions at the HyperX Esports Arena in Las Vegas.

Season XVII of the World Poker Tour (WPT) has ground to a halt with Ole Schemion becoming the fourth player to have his name engraved wherever WPT Baccarat Crystal Tournament of Champions’ have their names engraved.

[Image credit: World Poker Tour via flickr]

The event attracted a field of 76-entrants, four heads down on last year’s record 80-entrant event that saw Matt Waxman finish on top of the pile, and Schemion was in the lineup after winning the WPT European Championships in Berlin, beating 339-entrants to secure the seat and $260,858 first prize.

Poker content creators Jaime Staples and Evan Jarvis watch helplessly on as YouTube takes down video after video citing contravention of ‘Community Guidelines’.

It’s been five-years since Victoria Coren-Mitchell left PokerStars as an ambassador after they decided to move into the online casino business. Writing on her blog at the time:

“This is no criticism of PokerStars itself: business is business, they are providing a new service that people want, and I know they intend to abide by some key principles of responsible gaming. It’s not anti-casino either; I spend a lot of time in casinos, and I have been known to indulge in live table gaming.

“But I cannot professionally and publicly endorse it, even passively by silence with my name still over the shop. Poker is the game I love, poker is what I signed up to promote. The question I’m probably asked most often in interviews is about the danger of addiction, going skint and so on. I’m always careful to explain the difference between the essentially fair nature of poker, where we all take each other on with the same basic chance, and those casino games at unfavourable odds which can be (especially online) so dangerous for the vulnerable or desperate. Although PokerStars assured me I would not have to actively promote the casino arm, I know in my heart that continuing in my current role could risk helping to send people to a place where they would encounter something I think is dangerous. That’s not the way I want to make a living.”

Casino operator Wynn Resorts insists that its brand new Massachusetts resort isn’t for sale, despite the company having been discussing a sale to rival MGM Resorts just two weeks ago.

This week saw the first orientation sessions for the thousands of staff who have been hired to work at Encore Boston Harbor, Wynn’s $2.6b resort casino in the suburb of Everett. The property is scheduled to open to the public on June 23, and some of its restaurants are already taking reservations, so the clock is ticking.

On Tuesday, the Boston Herald quoted Wynn spokesman Michael Weaver saying that CEO Matt Maddox had personally addressed each orientation session and that each crop of trainees had received the same message: “Encore is not for sale.”

Encore’s president Robert Desalvio echoed those comments, telling local media that the company was “done” with any thoughts of dealmaking and Wynn was “very much focused on opening the property.”

partypoker create $500k ‘Race to Alias’ promotion to coincide with their planned alias change and introduce Team Online Home Games.

Maybe you’ve learned that you can’t eat vegetables from the nightshade family, drank a little too much vodka and ended up in bed with your wife’s sister, or performed fellatio on a stripper on stage in the local pub (behind a towel, of course) only to find out that he posted it on YouPorn.

It’s time for a name change; a new identity, a fresh start, and partypoker has the same idea.

At 09:00 (BST) on June 17, players competing on partypoker will be disturbed by a pop-up prompting them to select a new alias. It’s the moment that Chris Moorman has been waiting decades for, the ability to choose ‘Moorman’ as his new name, minus the ‘1’ and with a big fat capital ‘M’. Although, he will have to be quick as the screen names change on a first come, first served basis.

Technology giant Apple has thrown up a major hurdle for anyone looking to offer real-money gambling to iOS users.

On Monday, Apple issued updates to its App Store review guidelines, including this doozey:

HTML5 games distributed in apps may not provide access to real money gaming, lotteries, or charitable donations, and may not support digital commerce. This functionality is only appropriate for code that’s embedded in the binary and can be reviewed by Apple. This guideline is now enforced for new apps. Existing apps must follow this guideline by September 3, 2019.

In case anyone didn’t notice, September 3 is only two days before the new NFL season kicks off. Lucy Van Pelt couldn’t have pulled a football away more abruptly.

Nordic online gambling operator Kindred Group has gussied up its flagship Unibet brand just as the company makes its US regulated market debut.

On Tuesday, Kindred formally announced the launch of its Unibet brand in New Jersey’s regulated online gambling market. The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement authorized five days of ‘soft-play’ testing of the Unibet online casino last week, and the results went well enough that the site was cleared for a proper launch.

Kindred has partnered with Hard Rock International’s Hard Rock Atlantic City casino for its New Jersey debut. Kindred expects to launch online sports betting in the state shortly through its partnership with betting tech providers Kambi (which was spun off from the Kindred mothership five years ago, back when the whole enchilada was named Unibet).

Kindred US VP Manuel Stan said the announcement of Kindred’s official arrival on US shores was “one in a line of hopefully many more.” Stan suggested that Kindred’s next US stop will likely be in Pennsylvania, where the company has teamed up with Mohegan Sun Pocono for online gambling operations.

UK-listed online gambling operator 888 Holdings says its sports betting and casino growth is offsetting a serious decline in its online poker product.

On Tuesday, 888 issued a trading update covering its performance in the current year through May 18, during which revenue was up 2%, albeit up 6% on a like-for-like basis (at constant currency, adjusted for the migration of Cashcade Bingo to its own proprietary platform and the recent acquisitions of Costa Bingo and the All American Poker Network).

Sticking with those constant currency figures, 888’s sports betting revenue was up 29% and casino improved 13%, while bingo was flat and poker endured a 28% decline. 888 recently boosted its sports betting independence via its acquisition of BetBright’s sports betting tech platform.

888 CEO Itai Pazner acknowledged that the poker vertical “remained challenging,” but the pace of negative growth was slower than the 37% decline experienced for 2018 as a whole, so things are looking up, apparently.

Paradise Co Ltd is continuing a strong year of revenue increases. The South Korean operator saw an increase of 19% in revenue year over year for the month of May, bringing in KRW61.43 billion ($52 million).

That increase also represents a 7.5% increase month over month. The increase came largely thanks to a 21.8% increase year over year for gaming tables with KRW57.76 billion ($49 million). Gaming machines saw a decline however, with KRW3.68 billion ($3 million) making for a 1.9% decline. With the overall increase at the tables though, the month was a win overall.

Table drop was also down month over month, but up 28.2% year over year, coming in at KRW609.09 billion ($51 million.) With less money being exchanged at the tables month over month, but still showing a month over month decline, hold must have been pretty healthy.

Paradise Co has had a string of revenue increases this year, with increases in every month but March, which suffered due to a fire in one of the operators hotels during that month. Despite the strong year of growth, they reported that for the first quarter of 2019, the company is actually operating at a net deficit thanks to a new accounting system.

The leadership of Osaka have had a dream: They want to win an integrated resort (IR) license and have one built by 2025. Analysts have looked at dream and scoffed, telling them they were being unreasonable, and to work on a more sensible plan. But what kind of monster would step on a Japanese city’s dreams? Godzilla? He’s not real!

Proving that Osaka’s leadership might have been the bold but practical leaders they always claimed to be, Jim Murren, CEO of MGM International, conceded that a 2025 opening for an Osaka IR is indeed possible, if all parties involved, private sector and local government, work with “almost surgical precision,” GGRAsia reports. He made the comments at the Strategic Decisions Conference hosted by brokerage firm Sanford C. Bernstein.

His concern is that Osaka might sabotage their own attempt at a speedy IR by being too bullish on the prospect. Considering Japan has been very conservative in the IR process so far, their push to build a casino as soon as possible could be off-putting and doomed.

All the same, Murren couldn’t be more excited about the prospect of an MGM resort in the Osaka area. “Osaka was the only city, the only prefecture that early on said ‘we absolutely want to host an IR bid’,” he said.

Declines in Macau’s casino industry are starting to show all across the city. According to the Director of the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), real exports of gaming services, their measure of the casino sector’s contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) is down 0.6% year over year.

As a result, the entire administrative district is feeling the pain. Real GDP is now 3.2% smaller year over year, marking the first time in four years that this measure has shrank.

Although tourism has frequently been reported to be up, causing the city to consider wild ideas like a tourist tax to help citizens cope with the increased stress on existing infrastructure, that tourism doesn’t seem to be helping GDP either. Tourism services, a measure of tourist impact with the casino sector’s numbers removed, showed a 0.3% drop in GDP as well.

As a result of all this decreased money in the city, investment is reported to be down 32.1% as well in the first quarter. “Total demand weakened due to feeble growth, leading to increased downward pressure on the economy,” the report read.