Lee Davy provides a weekly round up of poker news including the headlines from the Spring Championships of Online Poker, a bidding war for Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment, and much more.

The biggest story of the week has to be the fight for the right to own the assets of Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment. The world’s largest publicly traded online gambling outfit, is soon to lose that title, with the sharks of the gaming world looking to rip it apart like chum.

The first company to express official interest was GVC Holdings. Given that the UK-listed gambling outfit is valued at circa £277 million, and bwin circa $787 million, the proposal was a reverse takeover.

A day later and it was the turn of 888 Holdings to throw their hat into the ring. Once again, due to the size of both companies, the proposal would have been another reverse takeover, and mouths started watering over a potential competitor worthy of challenging the PokerStars monopoly.