The PGA Tour isn’t scheduled to return until June 11 with the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Golf Course in Fort Worth, Texas, but there is golf to wager on this week with Sunday’s TaylorMade Driving Relief event from Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida. It’s a televised fundraiser to benefit COVID-19 relief initiatives that will feature Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson taking on Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff in a team best-ball skins game.

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

UnitedHealth Group pledged $3 million in charity skins. Farmers Insurance pledged an additional $1 million for a birdies and eagles pool. The event begins at 2 p.m. ET.

McIlroy and Johnson will play for the American Nurses Foundation while Fowler and Wolff will play for the CDC Foundation. McIlroy is the No. 1-ranked player in the world, while Johnson previously was. They are -225 favorites with Fowler/Wolff at +170. Fowler has won five PGA Tour events in his career, although he might be best known now as the best player to never win a major.

Online gambling operators hoping to secure licenses in the Netherlands’ regulated market will have to purge their customer databases acquired prior to the market’s liberalization.

Last week, Minister for Justice and Security Sander Dekker published responses to legislators’ questions regarding the final draft of the country’s online gambling regulations. (Full text of the responses can be found here, in Dutch.)

Among the revelations, Dekker says the government believes the COVID-19 pandemic shouldn’t delay the Remote Gaming Act from formally taking effect as planned on January 1, 2021, with all new online licensees launching simultaneously on July 1, 2021. But Dekker acknowledged that “the possibility of some delay … cannot be entirely ruled out.”

Some of the less positive answers addressed the sizable Dutch customer databases that internationally licensed operators have built up over years of serving the market without local permission. Dekker says this gives these operators a clear advantage over operators who evidently lacked the foresight to build their own databases.

Louisiana’s casinos will have to wait a few more days to reopen to the public, even as casinos in other states continue to push the pandemic envelope.

On Monday, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that his state’s casinos – which have been shut since March 17 to minimize COVID-19 transmission – would be allowed to open their doors this Friday (15). However, Tuesday saw state gambling regulators and law enforcement insist nothing will reopen until next Monday (18) at the earliest.

Louisiana Gaming Control Board chair Ronnie Jones told local media that each of the state’s casinos and video poker venues will need to apply to reopen and provide details on how their gaming floors will be amended to accommodate the new social distancing requirements.

The first phase of the gaming restart will restrict operators to 25% of their venue’s capacity, which will be raised to 50% in Phase 2 of the state’s post-pandemic economic jumpstart. Phase 2 won’t begin until June 5 at the earliest, and some smaller Louisiana gaming operators are questioning the wisdom of reopening with just 25% of gaming capacity.

UK-licensed online gambling operators have been given new marching orders from their regulator regarding how they operate in our current pandemic purgatory.

On Tuesday, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) issued new guidance for its online gambling licensees, featuring “tighter measures to protect consumers during lockdown.” The UKGC also published data that purports to show “the impact that COVID-19 is having on consumers and the industry so far.”

The UKGC clearly wants to have it both ways, as they claim that, while “there is no evidence to suggest an increase in problem gambling,” the closure of land-based gambling venues and the cancellation of major sports has increased consumers’ use of online casino, poker and virtual sports products, which could leave some gamblers “at greater risk of harm during lockdown.”

As such, the UKGC says operators must now prevent reverse withdrawal options – in which an operator grants a customer’s request to reverse an in-process withdrawal, which the UKGC calls “a flag for potential gambling harms” – until further notice.

South Korea’s casino operators are counting the cost of their lengthy COVID-19 shutdowns even as the country braces for a new wave of infections.

On Tuesday, Kangwon Land, the country’s largest casino operator and the only gaming venue that is allowed to welcome local residents, reported that its revenue over the first three months of 2020 had totaled KRW236b (US$193m), a 36.7% decline from the same period last year.

Casino sales were down 39.2% to KRW200b. The company booked an operating loss of KRW186.8m versus an operating profit of KRW125.1m in Q1 2019, while after-tax losses were KRW156.1m versus a KRW102.4m profit last year.

The losses were in part blamed on increased payments to the casino’s host community, which is home to a shuttered coal mine and which has come to depend on the resort to offset the lack of mining income.

Cyprus-licensed online sports betting operators appear to be dodging their tax obligations, according to the country’s national auditor.

On Tuesday, the Audit Office of the Republic of Cyprus issued a report that identified numerous question marks involving the country’s National Betting Authority (NBA) and its six retail betting and nine online betting licensees.

Among the issues flagged by the auditor were the NBA issuing and renewing licenses without the recipient having provided the necessary documentation. The NBA also failed to require certain licensees to increase their bank guarantees to the stipulated 10% of annual turnover to keep pace with increases in the licensees’ turnover.

More alarming, the auditor claimed that two ‘foreign’ betting operators with total betting income of €75m in 2017 had registered operations in Cyprus but hadn’t registered with the local tax office and thus weren’t submitting annual tax returns.

Some poker books feature elite strategy designed to transform your game from a losing one to one where you’re a paragon of profit. Other poker books are stories, narrative-led tales of derring-do where the main protagonist is shooting for the proverbial poker moon.

This week’s book, the amusingly-entitled Vegas or Bust could be said to offer both a strategic and life lesson in the same story, all wrapped up in the kind of plot that Hollywood movies might be knocking on the door to replicate.

The story, while expansive and thrilling, is also very simple. Johnny Kampis is the man who played in the Main Event in 2006 and busted with pocket kings against pocket aces. That is, in isolation, no strange thing. There must be thousands of people who have that self-same story of how their luck ran out in Las Vegas in the biggest poker event each year.

Three years after Moneymaker won the Main Event, it was Jamie Gold who won the biggest first prize the Main ever offered – an eye-watering $12 million. But while the confetti fell around Gold’s ears, Kampis was walking away from the World Series and Las Vegas.

After initially telling poker fans that the popular casino and biggest cardroom in Europe would be likely to be closed until September, King’s Casino re-opened on May 11th.

In a post on Facebook, the King’s Resort Rozvadov, King’s Casino Prague and the Admiral Casino Rozvadov announced that they were throwing open the doors to the general public in the following statement:

“King’s Resort Rozvadov, King’s Casino Prague and the Admiral Casino Rozvadov will open again on May 11th at 15:00! Poker Cash Games, live games like Roulette and Blackjack and Slots will be available. Tournaments won’t take place for now, but we hope we can start with them soon as well! Highest hygiene standards will be implemented, such as hand sanitizers for the guests and frequent disinfection of all areas. King’s is looking forward to see you soon!”

Having been closed since 13th March, the return of poker action at King’s marks the closure at less than two months. But while that might be something to be proud of if everyone is healthy, the world sits on the precipice of a second disastrous impact of the virus. Now might very well not be the time to re-open the biggest poker cardroom in Europe.