New Hampshire’s sports bettors will be able to legally wager on next year’s Super Bowl after the state formally okayed a contract between the state lottery and betting operator DraftKings.

On Monday, the New Hampshire Executive Council, which advises Gov. Chris Sununu, voted 3-1 in favor of a contract in which DraftKings will provide a land-based and mobile betting product for the New Hampshire Lottery. The announcement is something of a formality, having been leaked to the public last week.

The six-year deal, which includes the possibility of two two-year extensions, involves both digital and retail wagering. The state expects mobile wagering will be up and running by January 2020, while the maximum 10 retail sportsbooks are expected to start opening come the spring.

Gov. Sununu said the state had “moved fast to get this done and the deal is a win for New Hampshire.” No kidding. The deal calls for DraftKings to ante up 51% of mobile betting revenue and 50% of retail revenue to the state, a stiff price that ensured DraftKings beat out the rival companies vying for this (for the moment) near-monopoly in the state.

An online gambler in Singapore has been spared a jail sentence for daring to wager with a site not licensed to operate by the city-state.

On Monday, local media reported that Singapore’s High Court had handed down a ruling last month lifting the two-week jail term imposed on Lau Jian Bang, who was convicted in January on two counts of gambling with an internationally licensed online gambling site.

Playing with unauthorized sites was outlawed in 2015 following passage of the Remote Gaming Act (RGA). The following year, the state-run Singapore Pools and the Singapore Turf Club were officially granted exemptions from the RGA and the two sites launched in October and November 2016, respectively. (Pools has since taken over running the Turf Club site.)

Lau placed a total of 13 bets worth SG$39k (US$28,600) with an unspecified gambling site over two days in October 2016. Lau subsequently placed more bets that brought his total outlay to SG$50k. He was found guilty and ordered to serve a two-week jail sentence for each conviction, with the sentences to run concurrently.

Macau’s VIP gambling revenue may be in the dumps but casino-related crime is on the rise, according to the special administrative region’s security chief.

On Monday, Macau Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak announced that the overall number of local crimes had remained relatively stable over the first nine months of 2019, rising only 0.4% from the same period last year.

However, gaming-related crimes were up 19.5% to 1,599, with so-called ‘scams’ up by two-thirds to 291. Wong clarified that gaming-related scams primarily involved illicit money exchanges that either never delivered on their promises or paid customers in counterfeit currency.

But casino operators weren’t spared, as numerous scammers tried to pass fake casino chips or colluded with table dealers to ensure they were paid out higher winnings than they were actually owned.

The introduction of time clocks a few months ago was supposed to speed the game of poker up. It was designed to save time, putting players to decisions quicker and stopping the act of ‘tanking’, which had pervaded poker to such a degree in recent years. Poker was supposed to be improved by the inclusion of regulated time extensions.

[Image credit: WPT flickr]

Sure, and VAR was supposed to be the correctional future of soccer.

Just like in soccer, poker find itself looking at the lines and wonder if it was worth them being drawn in the first place.

While much of the attention has been on the MILLIONS World Main Event in The Bahamas this weekend, other big results rounded out the action, with high roller victories giving us two more winners as the $10,000 and $25,000 buy-in events saw Norbert Szecsi and Wai Leong Chan both lift trophies.

With the MILLIONS Main Event crowning Spanish poker legend Adrian Mateos its winner on Sunday, the $25,000 Super High Roller event saw Wai Leong Chan take the title, improving on his earlier result in the Caribbean Poker Party schedule.

Just a few days earlier, Chan had been runner-up to Daniel Dvoress in the $250,000-entry Super High Roller Bowl at the Baha Mar Resort. But having got so close, Chan finally bagged the victory, and did so in style.

Only seven players of the nine who took their seats would finish in the money, and it would be one of the most famous faces in poker who left without getting paid. Phil Ivey and Fabrizio Gonzalez were the players who missed the money, but as soon as the bubble burst, Kristen Bicknell, Rob Hollink and Jason Koon busted in fairly sharp succession.

The former StyleHaul Vice President of Accounting and Finance, Dennis Blieden, today pleaded guilty to embezzling the company for $22 million.

Blieden, who won the 2018 L.A. Poker Classic for a cool $1 million, triumphing over British poker pro Toby Lewis heads-up, has admitted embezzling StyleHaul, a former Hollywood digital marketer who moved their offices to London earlier in 2019.

[Image credit: Poker Central]

In a case that will cause reverberations around poker, Blieden admitted using $22 million of the company’s money, which is generated from representing Instagram influencers and YouTube streamers and video bloggers, on his own personal expenses and cryptocurrency. It is not clear how much of the money, if any, was used for entry into poker tournaments.

Another WPTDeepStacks winner took their title as the oldest poker tour visited another exciting territory in a far-flung corner of the globe and saw Brian Tougias lift the trophy.

With the WPTDeepStacks $1,100-entry Main Event attracting 750 players, the World Poker Tour were rightly delighted with both the turnout and positive atmosphere generated in the beautiful part of the world.

Congratulations to Brian Tougias for winning the first-ever #WPTCambodia Main Event for $131,430 at @NagaWorld! 750 entries created a prize pool of $727,500, almost triple the $250,000 guarantee.

https://t.co/Zk9rJwNvLA pic.twitter.com/obQtsjGB8b