Casinos are playing a dangerous game with customer data. As the operators find new ways to gather information on their customers, one analyst thinks there could be blowback against the industry if they don’t handle that information well.

Stacy Norris wrote in the latest volume of the UNLV Gaming Law Journal the piece “’ “…And the Eye in the Sky is Watching Us All’ – The Privacy Concerns of Emerging Technological Advances in Casino Player Tracking.” In it, she speculated that for an industry that depends on a consumer’s trust, in their games and ability to pay out, any case of mishandling player data could ruin that relationship for a very long time.

The article refers extensively to the U.S. constitution, laws and jurisprudence to determine the fine lines of what can and can’t be considered constitutional in tracking players. On the one hand, players have a right to privacy and a right to due process. While that would suggest that data collected by casinos could not be used against customers, the courts have cut out specific exceptions that might add up against a defendant, should the casino hand them over their data to prosecutors.

The bigger question is if customers will be ok with ever increasingly sophisticated ways of being tracked. The evidence suggests that they couldn’t care less. Facebook has been collecting oceans worth of data on 2 billion users worldwide, with more signing up every day.

A new agency has been added to the mix in Japan’s process of choosing eventual winners of its casino integrated resorts (IR). The Japan Tourism Agency is being reshuffled to form the new International Tourism Department, Asia Gaming Brief (AGB) reports.

The Agency, which reports to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, will start with 73 people working under Hiroshi Tabata, its inaugural director. Two counsellors will be charged with splitting the very important responsibilities of organizing the IR industry, and providing outreach and cooperation to international organizations.

AGB speculated that the announcement of this slightly new agency was a bit of political theater. It was necessary to announce a new agency to take charge of this process, but experts expected the announcement of the Casino Management Board. Speculation is that the Shinzo Abe government, who have elections coming up very soon, did not want to announce anything with the word “casino” in it before those all-important elections.

Whatever their ultimately role will be, the new International Tourism Department will have its work cut out for it. The country has previously announced that in the first round of bidding, only three IR licenses will be handed out. That means that several cities, and dozens of operators, will be spending a lot of time and resources just to lose out.

Tech giant Apple says gambling apps featured prominently in government requests for removal from local app stores last year.

On Tuesday, Apple released its latest transparency report covering the second half of 2018, which for the first time included details on various governments requesting that the company purge certain apps from local app stores.

According to the report, Apple received 80 requests for removal of certain apps based on governments’ claims that the apps violated local laws. Of these requests, 75 resulted in the takedown of the offending apps. The total number of apps specified in these requests was 770, and 634 apps were eventually removed by Apple.

Mainland China accounted for 56 of the takedown requests and 626 of the allegedly offending apps, the “vast majority” of which Apple said related to “illegal gambling or pornography.” Only two of the takedown requests were challenged in part or rejected in full by Apple, and 55 of China’s requests resulted in the offending apps being removed.

Australian retail giant Woolworths is spinning off its ‘sin’ divisions, including its lucrative video poker (pokies) machine operations.

On Wednesday, Woolworths announced plans to combine its liquor (Endeavour Drinks) and hospitality (Australian Leisure & Hospitality Group) divisions into a new entity known as Endeavour Group. This enlarged entity will then be separated from the Woolworths mother ship via a demerger or possibly an outright sale before the end of June 2020.

The ALH Group operates around 330 pubs and clubs which host around 12k pokies, making Woolworths the country’s single largest pokies operator. In March, rival supermarket chain Coles announced plans to sell its 87 hospitality venues – which included around 3k pokies – to a private equity firm for AU$200m.

The Coles deal increased media pressure on Woolworths to similarly divest itself of its pokies operations but Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci insisted that the Endeavour Group plans were “not about gaming, it’s about helping both businesses unlock their full potential.”

Portugal’s regulated online gambling market started 2019 off with its best quarterly performance to date, thanks to players having a greater number of online options.

Figures released Wednesday by the Serviço Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos do Turismo de Portugal (SRIJ) regulatory body show that its online gambling licensees generated revenue of €47.3m in the three months ending March 31.

The sum is a hefty 43.8% improvement over the same period last year, €4.3m higher than the market reported in Q4 2018 and a new record high since the regulated market launched in May 2016.

The gains were at least partially attributable to Portuguese punters having an increased number of locally licensed options. As of March 31, the SRIJ had issued licenses to 10 different companies, three more than at the end of Q1 2018. These companies held a total of 16 licenses (seven for sports betting, nine for online casino/poker).

David ‘ODB” Baker wins bracelet #2, seven-years after winning his first, and thieves hold Joe Sal at gunpoint as they rob him in the Rio car park.

There are times when all the planets of the solar system align, and the Poker Gods pull you towards the gold bracelet like the Death Star’s tractor beam on the Millenium Falcon, only this isn’t a Death Star, it’s a really, really, nice star.

David “ODB” Baker took the chip lead on Day 2 of the 541-entrant, $1,500 Limit Hold’em event, and the times he abandoned it were as rare as drone strikes in Huddersfield.

It’s Baker’s eighth live tournament win, and it puts him on the cusp of the coveted Triple Crown after also winning the 546-entrant, $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em World Poker Tour (WPT) Championship Event at the Los Angeles Poker Classic (LAPC) earlier this year.

The Poker Tournament Director’s Association Summit IX concluded at the Aria with changes to the Big Blind Ante and counting of ‘bets’ and ‘raises’ at the forefront of the discussions.

At the end of July, a selection of the world’s best poker players, and successful business people who love poker more than their pet goldfish will each pay £1m to compete in a tournament.

Triton Million: a Helping Hand for Charity, takes place in London, and one of the innovative moves created by the organisers to establish a friendlier and more relaxed atmosphere for the business people is the banishment of clothing and apparel that significantly hides the neck and the face. It’s a move that’s soon to catch on.

June 28-29, the Aria played host to the Poker Tournament Director’s Association (TDA) Summit IX. Ran in partnership with Genesis Gaming (the creators of the Bravo Poker Room Management System), and with the full support of The World Poker Tour, Faded Spade Playing Cards, and the Seminole Hard Rock and Game-On CHIPCO – the TDA Summit is the place where the world’s tournament organisers meet to discuss best practice.

PokerStars announce their withdrawal from the Swiss online gambling market to avoid upsetting lawmakers but plan to return with potential Casino Davos partnership. 

PokerStars’ Swiss team is currently vaulting, cartwheeling and split leaping like an Olympic gymnast after failing to bed a casino partner in time for the implementation of the country’s new online gambling laws.

In June 2018, a proposed bill to impose stricter rules on foreign involvement in the Swiss gambling industry passed through the hallowed halls of the Eidgenössische Spielbankenkommission (ESBK) by a whopping 72.9% vote.

Those rules meant international online gambling operators needed to have a relationship with a land-based operation that had the rights to apply for an online gambling license.

888Poker receives approval for shared liquidity between Portugal and Spain, Dominik Nitsche and Chris Moorman make it into the ’50 Greatest Players’ list, and Ana Marquez and Vivian Saliba secure big six-figure scores.

It’s a strange world.

Portugal decriminalised drugs in 2001. Want to shoot up, no problem, but please, over my red right hand, and decaying corpse, do not attempt to play online poker.

The country is slowly waking up.