An incredible end to the first Galfond Challenge saw Phil Galfond return from another losing position to conquer the challenge of VeniVidi at the death.

After 25,001 hands, a fantastic performance by Galfond saw VeniVidi’s amazing challenge beaten at the last. The session started with so little between the two men that a few hands either way would decide the encounter. Over the course of an incredible final session, VeniVidi initially improved on his lead, stretching it to the €20,000 mark.

‘It’s all over’, ‘Game over’ and ‘GG’ peppered the comments box as some fans wrote off Galfond’s chances. With the two tables running at pace and less than 200 hands remaining, VeniVidi’s advantage swung between €10,000 and €25,000 for some time. Galfond grabbed some back, however, and with 100 hands remaining, a short break took place for both players to gather their thoughts.

While there was just a few thousands euros between the two men, the sidebets were clearly what were on the line. A Galfond win would secure him €100,000 from VeniVidi. A win the other way, however, would see VeniVidi awarded €200,000 from Galfond, such was the size of the side bet put up by the Galfond.

Years of preparation to win an integrated resort license (IR), with potentially several more years left to plan and build a resort, aren’t about to be put on hold for a simple national emergency. Yokohama mayor Fumiko Hayashi has declared the city will push ahead with its bid with no delay.

“We will not review the schedule for the IR bid during the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak,” Hayashi said at a press briefing. These comments came shortly after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a national emergency in Japan.

Seeing as Abe hasn’t also declared a suspension to the application process, Hayashi said Yokohama would simply have to press on. “The government says it will not change the period of January to July of next year [for the applications],” he said. “As a city, we are now moving toward a decision, and we cannot move the schedule because we need to meet the country’s schedule. We cannot stop now.”

Yokohama is just in the process of ramping up for its bid. At the end of March, the city expanded their IR promotion office, hiring an additional 14 staff. Freezing their efforts now would make that ramp up a bit of a waste.

With just over a week until the NFL Draft takes place on television rather than live for the first time, teams who have high hopes of winning Superbowl 55 have vital choices over who is their main pick, and what their options are if others beat them to the punch.

This pre-season’s hotly-anticipated NFL Draft is sure to be an odd experience for fans, with the lack of atmosphere already palpable a week away from kick-off. The restricted nature of live sporting events during the COVID-19 crisis has seen many observers focus on the games themselves. When will the season kick-off? When will coverage resume and will matches need to be played behind closed doors?

The reality is that the NFL Draft, while not a game itself, has a huge bearing on the season as a whole and will be dramatically affected by events outside its control. A good example is how the NFL world views Tua Tagovailoa. Having experienced a season-ending hip injury five months ago, Tagovailoa hasn’t had the same chance to prove his fitness that others in the past has. While ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky’s look at how Tagovailoa is a near-perfect match for the Miami Dolphins is a great illustration of the talent on offer, all the language has focused around the fact that Tagovailoa is a “risk” in the 2020 NFL Draft.

That may be true, it may not, but as the deadline for decisions approaches, big money is going to be behind investments across American Football and those holding the purse-strings can get twitchy around such language. We’ve looked at five value picks and how much you should invest to make a profit come the night of the 2020 NFL Draft.

The final game of the 2006/07 season at Old Trafford saw two things – Manchester United crowned Premier League champions for the first time since May 2003 and West Ham United win 1-0 to survive.

The man who scored the winner for The Hammers, Carlos Tevez, would be pivotal in pre-season, with the Argentinian making the switch from Upton Park to Old Trafford. That changed how United lined up considerably, with Tevez and Rooney forming a devastating partnership upfront, complemented by cutting-in wingplay from an old master in Ryan Giggs on the left and young superstar Cristiano Ronaldo on the right.

With a formidable defensive base in Evra, Ferdinand, Vidic and Wes Brown, United employed two ‘quarter-back’ passers of such precision that other teams found it very hard to stop the flow of forward passes. As this video explains, United would let the opposition have the ball, but only in their own half.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zK57GHRd9k?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

A lucky horseracing gambling fan just got the win of a lifetime, and the track where the races took place got the best marketing it could have ever hoped for, and it didn’t cost the venue anything. Gulfstream Park in Florida held a series of races this weekend in front a track that would normally be spilling over with spectators. However, COVID-19 forced the races to be run without the presence of any fans. With remote gambling options in place, and perhaps a crystal ball in front of him, a gambler placed a bet of just $0.50 on a Pick 5 with some outrageous longshots. It worked, though, and he (or she) collected over $500,000. Not bad for probably about 15 minutes of work while sitting at home in pajamas and slippers.

Three of the five picks were ridiculously long. The first three had odds of 70/1, 36/1 and 26/1, and the gambler hit on all three. Freddy Soto took the first race, one designed for thoroughbreds three years old or older who have never won two races, Union Lane took the second race and He’s a Babe crossed the finish line first in the third race. These were three of the 13 total held at the racetrack this past Saturday.

Winning those three was worth $14,483.65, according to Casino.org, and nine Pick 5 tickets included these three races. However, the big winner of the day also chose correctly on two other races, allowing the winning ticket to score properly on all five picks. That pushed the total winnings to $524,966.60 at odds of 1,050,000/1.

This was the fifth-highest Pick 5 ever paid out in North American race history. Quoting Ed DeRosa of brisnet.com, Casino.org writes, “The record Pick 5 payoff was for $889,726.15 when someone hit the jackpot on August 9, 2013, at Louisiana Downs. The record non-jackpot Pick 5 payoff was $620,827.87 on 2018 @kentuckyderby day. Four people hit that.” However, what isn’t explained is whether or not those winnings came off a $0.50 bet, the minimum amount allowed at horseracing tracks in North America.

US-based casino operator Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment, known better as Mohegan Sun, began putting its plan in place for a large integrated resort (IR) in South Korea a few years ago. Inspire would be a massive, multibillion-dollar project that would attract more traffic for Incheon, and the initial phase was expected to open sometime next year. As with virtually all large construction projects, that goal had to be pushed back to 2022 as the complexity of the development proved to be enormous. However, if there were any concerns that the coronavirus pandemic could delay the IR’s timetable once again, Mohegan Sun is confident it will be able to open as planned.

The first phase of the project is expected to include a foreigners-only casino, a five-star hotel, an arena with seats for 15,000 attendees, conference centers and more. Mohegan Sun estimates it will cost around $1.29 billion, give or take a couple hundred thousand as construction progresses. In speaking with GGRAsia, the company still expects to meet its 2022 goal, and currently doesn’t foresee any additional schedule changes. According to comments made to the news outlet by the company’s CEO, Mario Kontomerkos, “Regarding Inspire, work continues and we are working toward our 2022 goal.”

That first phase will give gamblers around 700 slot machines and 160 table games to choose from, but more could come later. The entire project, which is expected to cost around $5 billion by the time it’s complete, will include a total of four phases and the last is currently scheduled to open sometime in 2031.

Kontomerkos has previously said of the bold IR plan, “Inspire will be unlike any other integrated resort in Asia and the reason for that in addition to the typical amenities that you will see in an integrated resort, we are also going to integrate seamlessly into this resort a 15,000-seat arena that will bring Western concert entertainment as well as Korean and other Asian concert entertainment. We will be bringing Digital Street, which will be a great showcase for local Korean food, retail and technological talent and finally we will have a theme park that will be unlike any other in Asia.”

Gambling of all types, including sports gambling, continues to gain more support around the world. Legalizing the activity helps ensure that governments can get a piece of the action, as opposed to all of it going to illegal operations, and can provide better support for gambling problem programs. Brazil is in the process of grappling with several gambling expansion bills and had already decided that sports gambling could be beneficial for the entire country. The activity was legalized in 2018, paving the way for officials to begin putting the necessary legal and operational frameworks in place. However, that process is now on hold, as priorities move from expansion to containment. Expansion of gambling is taking a back seat to containment of the coronavirus.

Brazil’s former president, Michel Temer, signed off on sports gambling in December 2018 when he approved a bill, PM 846, that had been supported by both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. With the go-ahead firmly in place, government officials were then given two years to put together the framework to roll out the activity. Progress has been made, but there have still been disagreements over how many sportsbooks should be allowed. This has already slowed down the approval process significantly.

COVID-19 has turned the tables on a lot of initiatives that were seeking legislation approval in governments around the world. As efforts have switched over to providing health and economic relief, lawmakers have little time to consider much of anything else. This has made crafting sports gambling regulations in Brazil a non-priority.

It’s a difficult situation for the country’s lawmakers to be in right now, as one of the main reasons for approving sports gambling was to attract more revenue for the country’s wallet. It now needs that income more than ever, but a decrease in available disposable cash on the part of citizens means that the amount of money the state draws wouldn’t be as great if lawmakers were to introduce the necessary frameworks now.

Hopes of expanding Virginia’s gambling activity have not waned because of the coronavirus. There have been legislative efforts in the works to offer casinos in strategic cities around the state and the process continues to move forward. A bill designed to tackle expanded gambling made it to Governor Ralph Northam’s desk, and he’s ready to pull the trigger. However, before he does, he wants state lawmakers to sign off on some changes he has prepared. If they don’t, finding approval for the bill might get even messier than it already is.

State lawmakers have been wrangling over a gambling expansion bill for more than a year (after decades of failure to make progress), and finally made some progress last month. They were able to reach a quasi-agreement over two separate bills – House Bill 4 (HB 4) and Senate Bill 36 (SB 36), but Northam didn’t like everything he read in the final drafts. He campaigned for governor on a platform that included more money for educational institutes, and has forced this issue to be included in the bills if lawmakers expect him to sign off on them.

Two-thirds of the casino tax revenue would go toward building new schools in the state. As the language is currently written in the draft legislation, the tax revenue is only destined to the state’s General Fund. However, Northam expects the bill’s casino tax language to reflect that the funding goes to “school construction, renovation, and repairs. The language is going to be relatively broad, given the revenue from the casinos won’t start coming in for at least a couple years, probably more,” according to an official in his administration, Carter Hutchinson.

Through both versions of the bill, five casinos would be allowed to be built in the state, one each in Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond. These cities were chosen as being more economically-challenged, but residents will ultimately be involved in the approval process for the new gambling properties. All five locations have suffered greater unemployment and poverty rates than other cities in Virginia, and the casinos are expected to provide much-needed revenue to give them greater stability.

After literally no speculation at all, comedian, Hollywood actor and Netflix special star Kevin Hart has joined the swelling ranks of Team partypoker.

As you may or may not remember, Hart has been roughly here before, ‘signing up’ to PokerStars back in 2017 with the promise of making poker fun again. Fast forward two years and here’s the reheated message that came out on social media over the Easter weekend.

Happy my good friend @KevinHart4real is now official @partypoker partner. Was talking about partypoker ethos at cash game with him, @Andrew_Robl @BrokeLivingJRB & Kevin promised to help us promote poker to new/amateur players, so made him do this video to commit his ass!KTF Rob pic.twitter.com/BHjckqbhRS

— Rob Yong (@rob_yong_) April 10, 2020

After some exciting action on the Run It Once Twitch stream, amateur player Bob Vance won the 32-player Charity Event which raised money in the fight against COVID-19.

Taking on popular poker professional Marle Cordeiro, it was Vance who claimed the win and the trophy – though that wasn’t the only prize he won or all the drama that happened as a fun event built to a crescendo.

The final rounds of the Run It Once Charity Event were as exciting as tonight’s Galfond Challenge finale against VeniVidi in the final session is guaranteed to be, with the latter just €8,000 ahead going into the last 600 hands.

With eight players left, the two professional players of Cordeiro and Daniel Dvoress met, with the former coming out on top. In the other half of the draw, those who made donations – from the eight largest to the eight random players picked for having made a donation for as little as $1 – prevailed from the off.

This week, the United Kingdom, Macau, the United States, and Australia. The only safe place among these for anything other than short term trading is Australia.

The United Kingdom Chooses Monetary Fentanyl

Let’s start this review with the U.K. and a really horrible pun.

The following headline should scare the craps out of all those who gamble with paper money: Bank of England to directly finance U.K.’s Covid-19 spending. Here’s the key paragraph (emphasis mine):