South African race and sports betting operator Phumelela Gaming & Leisure has filed for a form of bankruptcy protection as the pandemic pushed the already teetering company over a financial cliff.

Last Friday, Phumelela’s board of directors alerted investors that it had suspended trading in its shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and viewed “the best option to ensure the long-term survival of the company and the sport of horseracing is to implement a business rescue plan.”

Business rescue allows struggling firms temporary relief from their creditors in order to give a company time to restructure its operations. Phumelela said it has appointed a Mr. John Evans as its “business rescue practitioner.”

Phumelela is coming off the “worst year” in its 22-year history following regulatory changes in Gauteng province that eliminated the company’s share of the mandatory 6% levy imposed on racing bettors’ winnings. This was compounded by the recent suspension of all South African racing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which led Phumelela to warn last month that it couldn’t carry on much longer under current conditions.

GG Poker have embraced the responsibility of hosting the WSOP Super Circuit Series with some style, and so far, the numbers have been fantastic. It all started with a superb opening event, the $1,111-entry COVID Charity Event, which had a $1 million guarantee and welcome a massive field of 1,595 entries in total.

The huge prize-pool and fact that of each entry fee, $111 would be donated to the Nevada Community Foundation’s Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund saw the event fill up very quickly, meaning that by the time the final table approached, the top prize on offer was over a quarter of a million dollars. At the end of the event, it was confirmed that over $175,000 was raised for the fund which will help health professionals and first responders deal with the Coronavirus crisis in Las Vegas among other cities. The initial prizepool of a million dollars eventually went all the way up to over $1.7 million, with the top prize a whopping $269,267.

New GG Poker ambassador Boris Becker was among the players looking to spin up some profit and the three-time Wimbledon champion did just that, cashing in 153rd place for $2,470.

By the time the final table had arrived, there was a double-elimination that decided an important pay-jump for the players involved. ‘M0nkey D Luffy’ was the unfortunate player who busted in 10th place, cashing for $13,829 as opposed to the $19,233 that ‘Ben Carson’ banked for exiting in 9th place.

This November, voters in Maryland will have a very important decision to make. After lawmakers created an initiative to put sports gambling on the ballot, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan signed off on the measure last Thursday. As a result, it is now up to state residents to determine whether or not sports gambling should be allowed and, with Maryland coming up way short on its revenue projections, sports gambling could be a lucrative solution to replenish the coffers.

The sports gambling measure was approved by lawmakers this past March, about the same time legislators were attempting to wrap up their session early because of COVID-19. They were able to get it through the legislative slalom course in time, though, before handing it over to Hogan. The governor mulled it over, along with a handful of other bills, before ultimately agreeing to let it more to this November’s ballot. Along with it, he approved a separate bill that will allow the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, where the Preakness is held, to undergo redevelopment.

Anytime voters are asked to decide on a measure, the language used in the ballot entry is a highly contentious matter. Opponents of a measure will always try to get crafty, creating phrases that would make the measure seem paramount to letting the Devil loose. However, Maryland avoided most of that issue this time, settling on straightforward language that reads, “Do you favor the expansion of commercial gaming in the State of Maryland to authorize sports and event betting for the primary purpose of raising revenue for education?”

In previous surveys, it has been revealed that Marylanders aren’t totally behind the idea of legalized sports gambling, even though the state has been in the gambling business for years. A poll conducted last year found that 43% of those asked were against online sports gambling and 49% were against sportsbooks at casinos and racetracks; however, it should be pointed out that the poll was not taken across the state – only in Baltimore.

Vietnam is showing the world how to handle a pandemic, and their local casino industry is reaping the benefits. The aptly named Corona Resort and Casino, located on Phu Quoc island, has announced their grand reopening on their official website, welcoming customers back on May 8 after a month of clsure.

A Vietnamese language announcement, prominently noting that the Corona casino welcomes locals, hailed the relaunch of the location. Not even two years old, the casino is being reborn from this pandemic with new incentive programs to bring back visitors, including discounts on breakfast and transportation at its hotel and restaurants, and 40% off for their Safari.

Although the announcement makes no mention of what safety precautions will be taken, the Vietnamese government has laid out guidelines to keep visitors safe.

Vietnam has been a role model for keeping the spread of infections low, although it has used fairly authoritarian means to accomplish that goal. In total, the country has seen 288 infections, although 241 of those have recovered, accounting for a total of 47 current infections.

When you hear about Bitcoin and gambling, the first thing you probably think of is using it as a payment option. Blockchain technology, on the other hand, might give you thoughts of tracing data on the blockchain, and concepts of provable fairness. Well with Bitcoin SV (BSV), you can have it all, and an upcoming webinar from the Bitcoin Association is going to explain it all.

On May 12, presenter Chloe Tartan will host the Bitcoin Association webinar “Provably-fair gaming using the Bitcoin SV blockchain.” The 60 minute presentation, beginning at 5:00 pm BST (12:00 pm ET), will provide “a conceptual overview of provably fair gaming, and how it can be achieved using various techniques that leverage the Bitcoin SV blockchain.”

But what is provably-fair gaming? The concept is that, if an operator or game supplier uses blockchain technology to record and trace how a game runs, from start to end, they can allow regulators and customers to peek in at the seed used for every random-number generator result, and prove the fairness of the game for themselves.

Bitcoin SV (BSV), as the only blockchain that combines unlimited scalability with a stable protocol, has the unique ability to provide provably-fair gaming to a gambling operator, while also being the digital currency to pay out customers, affiliates, and any other vendors involved in the operation. Or, if they prefer, it can be used to pay in tokens, such as U.S. dollar stable coins, to keep the BSV entirely on the backside.

After a big weekend of online poker action, there were two quarter-million scores and a double title winner in the latest SCOOP events played by the best of the best.

Kanit is king as Genoese wins third SCOOP

Back in 2015, Italian poker sensation Mustapha Kanit, known by his amusing online pseudonym ‘lasagnaaammm’, won the SCOOP Main Event for $1.3 million. It was a year earlier that Kanit, who hails from Alessandria near Genoa in Italy, had claimed his first SCOOP title, when he won the $2,100 NL Hold’em Turbo Re-Entry event for $376,920. Kanit took home his third SCOOP title in the 2020 version of the Spring Championship of Online Poker Event #26 just the other day, which cost $10,300 to enter and brought up a trio of impressive online victories.

With just 15 players coming back to the final day, Kanit was not the front runner, sitting mid-way through the chipcounts. By the time the final table came round, Kanit was short-stacked, but ground his way up the leaderboard throughout the final table and proved he has the chops to deal with the pressure at any level.

2020 was supposed to be a banner year for Macau. The city would improve its gaming revenue while, at the same time, diligently working on a diversification plan that would help it become more of a global tourism hub for all types of visitors, not just gamblers. Chief executive Ho Iat Seng, who only just started to get used to his new surroundings after taking over in December, would help spearhead the transition that would ultimately take Macau into an entirely different direction. COVID-19 had different plans, though, and the city has had to spend most of its time conducting damage control to keep the ship from sinking. It’s already clear that 2020 is not going to be the year anyone expected, and Macau can only do what it can to stay afloat, hoping that 2021 is different. With the city anticipating a 50% drop in gross gaming revenue (GGR) through the end of the year, the road to recovery is going to be long, and that decrease is going to cause a huge deficit in the amount of taxes collected.

With casinos only seeing half of the revenue they anticipated, the amount of tax revenue they deliver would be reduced by an equal amount. Macau’s government has acknowledged the mathematical certainty, updating its budget for fiscal year 2020 to reflect that the gaming industry will only be able to supply around $6.26 billion, of which around $5.7 billion will come directly from the industry’s GGR.

Junket operators are only forecast to be able to provide around $26.2 million on the taxes they pay on commissions earned. This is about 41.7% lower than the original forecast, but not as bad as the hit the city will take to its urban development projects. That amount went from $649 million to $324.7 million for a decrease of right at 50%.

The economic impact caused by COVID-19 on the city is already being felt. Tax revenue for the city was a little more than $2.3 billion in the first quarter of this year, which was 37.6% lower than the same period in 2019. The second quarter isn’t expected to be any better, since the GGR and tax revenue reports customarily follow well after the tax has been collected. This means that the figures most likely don’t represent any of the lack of activity from March, when casinos were just starting to try to regain their footing.

A big night of charity action raised a million dollars to help victims of the Coronavirus as well as other charities. Featuring players such as Don Cheadle, Ed Norton and Hank Azaria, the action  was hot from the get-go, as some of Hollywood’s finest played power poker and discussed some of their movies in the process.

Azaria made an impassioned plea for players and fans to join in the fundraising as the hour approached:

This is the highlight of my quarantine – if there is such a thing. So excited to team up with @PokerStars for an epic event to raise much-needed funds for COVID relief. #StarsRaising https://t.co/eI7L7IsV2Z pic.twitter.com/B452DETfSK

— Hank Azaria (@HankAzaria) May 7, 2020