Online sports betting outshone its casino rival in Portugal’s regulated market during the third quarter of 2020, with wagering revenue more than doubling from Q2. 

Figures released Monday by the Serviço Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos do Turismo de Portugal (SRIJ) regulatory body show that locally licensed online gambling operators generated revenue of €84.2m in the three months ending September 30, up 55.7% from the same period last year and 21.6% better than the market reported in Q2 2020. 

The Q3 figure represents a new high-water mark for Portugal’s regulated online market, easily surpassing the €70.2m reported in the first quarter of this year. The number of newly registered customers improved 5.2% year-on-year to 156,800, while quarterly active customers gained more than one-third to 473,200. 

Sports betting led the Q3 charge, driven by the resumption of major league activity following spring’s pandemic halt. Pent-up demand pushed betting revenue to a record €42.5m, more than double the Q2 total and nearly two-thirds higher year-on-year. Betting turnover was also in a record-setting mood, nearly doubling year-on-year to €222.8m. 

Spain’s online gambling market took a step backward in the third quarter, as sports betting was the only vertical to post a sequential gain.

Figures released Wednesday by Spain’s Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ) regulatory body show locally licensed online gambling operators generated revenue of €191.2m in the three months ending September 30, a modest 2.8% rise from the same period last year but down 5.6% from Q2 2020.

Sports betting reclaimed the revenue crown with €85.2m, down 15.4% year-on-year but up by one-quarter from Q2 2020. Pre-match betting took the biggest year-on-year hit, with revenue falling 21.4% to €31.5m while live betting was down 9% to €52.6m. Both segments posted sequential gains of nearly one-third apiece. 

Betting’s sequential surge came despite horserace betting actually producing negative revenue of €1.3m, despite racing turnover more than doubling year-on-year and nearly tripling sequentially. 

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

While it seems anticlimactic to have any bowl games following the College Football Playoff semifinals, which are Friday, there are four games Saturday to wrap up the bowl season – the national championship game technically isn’t a bowl.

The first game Saturday at noon ET is the Gator Bowl from Jacksonville featuring No. 23 NC State of the ACC and Kentucky of the SEC. The Wolfpack were pleasant surprises this season after a 4-8 mark in 2019 and have one of the country’s top linebackers in first-team All-ACC Payton Wilson. The sophomore led the ACC in tackles with 10.8 per game and had 11.5 tackles for loss.

Meanwhile, UK is in a bowl despite a 4-6 record as there are no eligibility requirements this season. Mark Stoops is the first coach to take Kentucky to five consecutive bowl appearances. The Wildcats are 2.5-point favorites, and NC State is just 4-10 ATS in its past 14 as a dog.

2020 was already shaping up as a transitional year for Europe’s gambling sector before the pandemic hit, with major operators distracted by the need to plant flags in the exploding US sports betting market. 

But the year was primarily notable for the tightening screws in European markets either regulated or in the process of regulating, with ‘consumer protection’ the new go-to phrase, although operators ultimately concluded it was they who needed protection from a combination of governments, regulators and the usual media suspects. 

The UK market closed out 2020 with news that the government’s long-promised review of the Gambling Act 2005 was finally underway. That followed numerous consultations between the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) and its ‘working groups’ on issues such as game design, advertising, bonus offers and VIP programs. 

That latter subject featured one of the year’s most unfortunate episodes, as two Playtech B2C brands were found to have plied a 25-year-old high-roller with free-play offers right up until – and for a few hours shortly after – his suicide in 2017. 

There has been a lot of talk over the past couple of decades about the use of RFID (radio frequency ID) chips in humans. The chips have already found a lot of support in the use of tracking our four-legged pets – dogs and cats are regularly injected with a chip about the size of a grain of rice so they can be easily reunited with their families if lost. However, whether they should be implanted in humans raises a myriad of questions and, like any topic, has caused a great divide on their merits, as well as more than a few conspiracy theories. Still, there are pros and cons to the use of the chips, depending on how you view them.

The first human to receive an RFID chip “for fun” was Kevin Warwick, a British scientist who volunteered to have one of the micro devices implanted under his skin 22 years ago. As a result, he was able to control doors, computers and more at the University of Reading’s Department of Cybernetics without having to induce manual labor, with the devices responding to the signal emanating from the chip. Not much more activity was seen for years following his initial experiment, but the chips can now be found everywhere. Sweden has become a hotspot for their use, with over 4,000 Swedes now able to control doors with nothing more than a swipe of the hand through the air.

Being able to mimic Neo from The Matrix seemingly controlling objects with the mind isn’t the only benefit of RFID chips. They can be configured to perform a number of different functions, including serving as a wallet. RFID technology is already used in most credit and debit cards today, but having an RFID implant is more secure and makes a wallet virtually impossible to steal.

Everyone has to carry around a physical ID on them almost everywhere they go. An RFID chip could, in theory, eliminate that obligation. A scan of the chip’s memory, configured with the right personal data, would save time and hassle. In addition, medical histories (provided storage capacities are increased) could be stored in the chip, as well, and linked to your ID, making it possible to receive proper care in any medical emergency. While Warwick was the first to explore the use of an embedded RFID chip to control devices, William Koretsky, in 2006, was the first to have been saved following a car accident when doctors were able to read his embedded chip and access his identity and medical history.

Easy Odds CEO David da Silva, like the rest of the world, was elated with the return of live sport. Easy Odds were able to adapt to the conditions brought on by COVID by focusing on developing the company’s efforts on the horse racing market. Silva sat down with Calvinayre.com Lead Reporter Becky Liggero Fontana to talk about the company’s success during COVID, leading to Easy Odds shortlist status for the SBC Affiliates award.

“Every sport pretty much stopped overnight and we’re in an odds comparison site for sports betting. People come to our site because they want to bet on sports and when there’s no sports it really made it tough for us, so traffic really much dried up instantly,” he said. 

“We were working on how we plug the gap, so the first thing we did was we realized there were still some sports going on in different parts of the world that probably would never have been of any interest to anyone. The other thing we did we just teamed up with Vinnie Jones. That kind of started to keep us going get traffic back on the site, it wasn’t obviously the same, but it definitely worked,” he added.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15tp6_Bcl2cVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: David da Silva is grateful for the return of live sport (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15tp6_Bcl2c)

Just 10 days remain to wait until we will know who the 2020 Poker Hall of Fame entry or entries are. With just one inductee this year, the final ten nominations have been revealed by the World Series’ official website, but there’s a curveball in there with the dual nomination of Lon McEachern and Norman Chad – the legendary commentary team behind the World Series of Poker.

The Poker Hall of Fame has been in place since the late 1970’s kicking off in 1979 with a flurry of inaugurations. Since then, it’s been either one or two inductees making the cut each year, with some of the best listed below:

Johnny Moss (1979)

Doyle Brunson (1988)

It was the challenge of the year. While Phil Galfond would later enter a battle against Chance Kornuth that is still rumbling into the New Year and a 2021 conclusion, his first Galfond Challenge will enter the history books as one of the most unforgettable poker showdown of recent years.

Taking on the legendary online player ‘Venividi’, Phil Galfond was up against it from the off. Starting slowly in No Limit Hold’em is one thing, but in Pot Limit Omaha, it can be disastrous – and it was.

In no time at all, Galfond was close to a million dollars down. Even for someone as talented as he undoubtedly is at the game, serious thought had to be put into whether he could continue to put up a good fight. Was it better to quit when behind but not bankrupt?

In the end, Galfond, who explained many of his high-level thought processes in social media posts, posted a link to a blog about his decision, which took fans to a page on Run It Once which said simply:

Christmas is a great time to play card games with your family and during the current CVOID-19 restrictions, there’s never been a better time to break out the playing cards and learn some more games, one that bring people together and don’t rely on you winning or losing money to have a good time. But which games?

Fortunately for you, we’ve got five classics that are easy to get playing quickly and a whole lot of fun. It’s up to you and your family or friends to decide if there are prizes to be won.

1. Cribbage

One of the most enjoyable ways to play card games with your family is the game of Cribbage, or ‘crib’. Playing two-handed crib with just one opponent is great, but do try four-player crib, which adds in a lot more layers of play and, of course, banter as you’ll have to team up with Uncle George when he doesn’t know a knight from a knave.