The latest Super MILLION$ final table on GGPoker saw the nine players return to action on Day 2 with Timothy Adams as a monster chip leader. It will come as no surprise to learn, then, that the Canadian won through in double-quick time, claiming the $315,158 top prize and his first Super MILLION$ win at the third time of reaching the final nine. How he did so, however, is a story well worth reading.  

Adams came into play with an overwhelming lead in the $10,000-entry weekly event, while others, such as Brazlian Fabrice Touil were nursing a micro-stack. It didn’t all go according to the betting odds, however, as Touil would survive some time.  

It took no time at all to lose the first player from the nine-handed table, however, with Russian Team partypoker Pro Anatoly Filatov going to the rail in the very first hand at the final table. Filatov three-bet all-in with pocket queens, but Seth Davies – the original bettor – held pocket aces and an easy call to reduce the field despite a sweat on the turn. 

Despite winning that hand, Filatov had been short-stacked so Davies didn’t improve his chances of victory that greatly. As the blinds went up, Davies was sent to the virtual rail too, his three-bet all-in with ace-king good enough to put his chips at risk with the best hand against Timothy Adams with ace-queen, but the dominated hand flopped a queen to bring the number of hopefuls down to seven.  

Gambling operator GVC Holdings has been cleared to rebrand as Entain, while laying out the global strategic vision for its new corporate identity.

On Wednesday, GVC shareholders overwhelmingly supported the company’s proposal to rebrand as Entain plc, with only 0.04% of votes cast opting to stick with the familiar. The extraordinary general meeting conducted its vote on a virtual basis due to the UK’s pandemic restrictions.  

On Thursday, Entain rewarded shareholders by sketching out its global expansion ambitions, including plans to apply for licensing in Canada, which presumably refers to that country’s largest province Ontario, the only region (so far) to announce plans to open up its online gambling market to private operators.  

A little further south, Entain says its BetMGM sports betting/iGaming joint venture with MGM Resorts is enjoying major success in its latest market Tennessee (despite getting smacked by a local wrestling legend). Entain says BetMGM’s Tennessee launch was the brand’s “most successful go-live yet,” with revenue already exceeding those of “more established states.”  

Google’s gambling policies are being tweaked to allow users greater opportunity to block gambling ads from invading their digital domain. 

On Thursday, Google announced that it will allow users to adjust their personal Ad Settings to limit being exposed to ads involving ‘sensitive categories’ such as gambling and alcohol. The opportunity will initially be offered to US users of Google’s YouTube video platform, with the changes hitting the wider Google product line and other countries in “early 2021.”   

Google VP Debbie Weinstein said the policy was the result of ‘feedback’ from users who “would prefer to limit ads in certain categories.” Some of this feedback resulted from users who clicked on Google feature controls such as ‘Stop seeing this ad’ and ‘About this ad.’ 

Users will have to proactively opt out of seeing gambling ads and Weinstein cautioned that Google users who tick that box will see “fewer” gambling promos rather than a complete blackout. Visiting certain sites and clicking on certain articles may still result in users being exposed to contextual ads for unwanted/forbidden fruit. 

Google Analytics is an incredibly useful, powerful way to analyze your site’s performance. A lot of it can seem daunting for a first-time user, and what you find valuable might depend on what type of site you run. A gambling operation may find some metrics more valuable, while an affiliate or a blog may value entirely different things.

Here’s a collection of some Google Analytic metrics that everyone should find useful and important, and how you can take advantage of them.

Acquisition: The source of your traffic

Where are your visitors coming from? Are they coming direct to your landing page, or did they find you through an organic search (they Googled you)? Is your social effort working and driving views to your page, or are you getting referral traffic from other sites?

The Covid-19 pandemic have pushed leaders to learn lessons about what their employees need, specially in times of crisis. At the World Gaming Executive Summit (WGES), our lead reporter Becky Liggero Fontana hosted a panel on “Assessing internal corporate communications under these unprecedented times,” and was joined by a panel of three talented women to see what they had to say about those lessons.

Yevgeniya Golovina, PR and Communications Officer JKR Investment Group, expressed how her company saw what was really valuable when times got tough. “When the pandemic happened, we understood that we have to communicate with our people, because as an investment company, people are our most important asset,” she said. “If you invest in people, you actually get a great return.”

The core lesson she has taken away from the pandemic is that people easily get lost when communication is cut off, and they fill the void with whatever information they can, even if it’s unreliable. JKR took measures to stop that from happening:

“What we did, is we set up an initiative called an Inspiration Breakfast, and we actually invited everybody to have breakfast together on Mondays. Just chatting together, catching up, and sharing their experiences through the week. We didn’t talk a lot about work related stuff, because by that point our CEO had a lot of trust with us, so nobody was really concerned about if we’re really doing our job. But what we wanted to do is actually support people and make sure that they feel good about themselves, that they’re positive about the situation, regardless of the negative outcomes, that they’re clear about the division of the company and that they have this assurance that everything is going to be fine and that we have their back.”

The robots are coming to Melco Resorts and Entertainment. Not in the traditional image of robots – there won’t be mechanical, automated machines walking around the casino floors. However, there will be a great deal of artificial intelligence (AI) in the casino and resort operator’s kitchens. Melco has announced that it is moving forward with a major partnership with Winnow Vision to bring AI solutions to its properties in order to cut down on food waste.

Winnow Vision is singularly focused on helping business reduce kitchen waste and cut down on kitchen-related expenses. It uses cameras combined with smart scales and machine learning – the same type of technology that today’s autonomous vehicles use – to analyze food waste in order to determine the losses they represent to the company in terms of both a financial and an environmental impact. That analysis is then presented to the company so that it can adjust its kitchen purchasing habits appropriately.

Melco began a pilot program with Winnow that saw the technology introduced at its City of Dreams Macau property. For six months, the AI monitored and recorded what was going on with the food service at the property’s self-operated buffet restaurants and presented its results to the casino operator when it was done. According to Melco, Winnow Vision helped the company save almost 4,000kg of food waste, which it equates to almost 17 tons of CO2 emissions. That was a 67% reduction in waste and enough for Melco to realize the vastly potential role Winnow Vision could play in its kitchens.

The AI will now be introduced to all of Melco’s self-operated buffet restaurants in Macau and Manila. If it is able to reduce waste by 67% at all of them, it should begin to see considerable – although probably not substantial – savings at a time it needs to find new ways to cut costs. The company reported losses of $331 million for the third quarter of the year, which led to the need to rewrite credit agreements with some of its lenders.

Imperial Pacific International (IPI) hasn’t been making many friends in Saipan or the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) lately. Its Imperial Palace casino was, at one point, to be the biggest driver of the economy in Saipan, but reality has proven to be substantially different. While IPI, along with CEO Donald Browne has now officially been held in contempt of court for not paying its debts, troubles only continue to mount for the embattled casino operator and even the Saipan Chamber of Commerce (SCC) is now calling it out.

The SCC sent a letter to the Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) this week, in which the chamber’s president, Velma M. Palacios, blasted IPI for what can only be described as egregious dereliction of duty. Palacios directed her letter to CCC chair Edward C. Deleon Guerrero, asserting, “No investor that touts a $7-billion casino investment should have any difficulty completing their first phase of development and paying their past due payroll, taxes, and fees timely—even in a pandemic.”

IPI has experienced significant embarrassment over the past couple of years as a result of allegations of nepotism, bribery, illegal trade deals and illegal hiring practices surfaced. This year hasn’t seen any improvement, as the Imperial Palace has been forced to close because of COVID-19. That has thrown IPI into financial turmoil on an epic scale that doesn’t offer the slightest glimpse of having a happy ending.

However, Browne and IPI still believe the company is doing great things for Saipan and the CNMI. In response to the SCC’s letter, Browne, who has reportedly not been paid in months, came to the defense of the company and asserted, “It’s easy to pick on businesses when they’re struggling. Rational thinkers know well that the CNMI has been insulated from the effects of the pandemic due to the federal government bailout. Once the Keynesian stimulus runs out at the end of this month, the CNMI will need businesses determined to weather the storm.”

If a former Israeli defense minister is to be believed, we may soon find out if Aliens are real, and many more secrets the U.S. government has been keeping from us. But with stories as fantastical as that, it’s worth betting on if they’re real or fabrications, so we’ve got some odds from Bodog to go with it.

According to Haim Eshed, former head of Israel’s Defense Ministry’s space directorate, extra-terrestrial UFOs are real, they’ve made contact with us, and the whole thing has been kept secret. “The Unidentified Flying Objects have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet,” he told Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper. The story went viral after the Jerusalem Post published an English version of the interview.

Eshed has a respected position as a professor and retired general, so he brings some credibility to his claims. But he’s also 87, so maybe he’s getting reality confused with a re-run of the X-Files.

The aliens allegedly are here to find a greater understanding of “the fabric of the universe.” He adds that America has been keeping secret an underground Mars base, where aliens and astronauts are working together. “There is an agreement between the U.S. government and the aliens. They signed a contract with us to do experiments here,” he said.

A year ago, Macau’s government had expected to see continued growth as the city entered 2020, but the reality has been quite different. COVID-19 came in and stayed like an unwelcome houseguest, and is still not willing to leave after being politely asked numerous times. As a result, Macau’s casinos have not been able to produce nearly as much revenue as they would have liked to have seen and gross gaming revenue (GGR) is down substantially from where it should have been. So much so that Macau’s government is expecting to see the final tax revenue for the year come in almost three-quarters lower than what they had forecast for 2020. 

According to an update published by the Macau government for the fiscal year 2020 budget, city leaders expect to end up with about $3.69 billion in taxes from its gaming properties this year. That includes $3.28 billion from GGR, a massive 71.1% drop from what the government was anticipating. It’s also 42.2% lower than what the government forecast when it updated its 2020 fiscal year budget the past April.

To help offset the losses, Macau is going to pull just over $1 billion (MOP8.1 billion) from its reserves to cover some expenses this month; however, that’s not a lot compared to the losses. Across the first ten months of the year, the city’s gaming industry paid around $3.04 billion in tax revenue, but this was 74.1% lower than what they paid for the same period last year. It’s also a major disruption to the positive economic flow Macau had been enjoying over the past couple of years.

In the latest update to the budget, Macau predicts it will receive around $26.2 million in taxes on commissions paid to casino junkets, 41.7% less than what it previously anticipated. In addition, the city won’t be able to count on as much casino-generated tax revenue for its special projects, such as urban development improvements and Macau’s social security system, as tax-led contributions from the gaming industry for this segment is going to be off by 71.2%. Macau only expects to be able to count on around $187.6 million to dedicate to special projects, as GGR through the end of November was cut by 80.5% compared to the same period last year, reaching only $6.58 billion.

In a not-too-distant future that finds iGaming commanding a larger piece of the gambling market, two locations are emerging as potential candidates to be a major hub for operators. The gaming industry is constantly evolving as the iGaming segment continues to grab more of the overall market, and that trend is not going to stop, despite the best efforts of some die-hard land-based casino operators. At least one industry insider believes that Malaysia and Dubai are now on iGaming operators’ radars for their base of operations as the companies look to move away from rising costs associated with operating out of the Philippines. 

Danny Too, the GM for Cherry Interactive, just wrapped up an Asia Gaming Brief webinar on the state of the gaming industry in the Philippines, Live After POGOs. In it, he asserted that both Malaysia and Dubai are starting to look more attractive for iGaming operators looking to reduce expenses and bureaucratic red tape, two obstacles that have grown larger in the Philippines lately. Too indicated that he had spoken with a handful of operators who had shown interest in relocating to one location or the other. 

Malaysia has apparently become a favorite, despite the country’s strict anti-online gambling laws. Too asserted, “You can set up finance, operations, and can even do online marketing out of the Malaysian office, but the key thing is that you get the permission of the federal government. You can get a place to work and a license from one of the states but you need to go through the central government to go ahead. From the government point of view, it’s just a BPO and as long as the games are not being offered in Malaysia, the government is happy to bring in these operators.” 

In the case of Dubai, which already has a substantial expat workforce and is a major hub of international activity, attracting iGaming operators would be another way for it to boost its tax revenue. Too indicated that a number of Chinese operators are already exploring a possible move to the area as they look to get out from under the control of China’s government, and Dubai offers a great environment for expansion. 

Harrah’s New Orleans is set to get a major uplift, and a new name. The Caesars Entertainment owned property will soon be known as Caesars New Orleans, and the operator will spend $325 million to redesign the resort and add a second hotel tower.

Caesars expects to finish the transformation by 2024, if the development is approved by the city of New Orleans and the Louisiana Gaming Control Board. In the announcement of the news, Chief Executive Officer Tom Reeg said:

“As the only land-based gaming operator in the city, we take great pride in our 20-year history in New Orleans, and this reinvestment is a testament to our continued commitment.”

“We will continue to move this city forward and fuel our economic recovery, moving important projects that put people to work and entertain residents and visitors alike,” added LaToya Cantrell, Mayor of New Orleans. “We are excited that this expansion will mean hundreds of construction jobs during the project and hundreds more in sustainable and new jobs post-construction. The addition of Caesars New Orleans will strengthen our city’s position as the top cultural and entertainment destination city in the nation.”

In the fast-moving world of gambling, sometimes you might miss news that could be important to you. To make sure you’re all caught up on gaming industry news, be it online or brick and mortar, we’re rounding up the some of the announcements and partnerships from the last week that you might have missed.

Don’t miss out on all of the latest announcements. Our Press Release section is updated constantly.

Luckbox Partners with Paysafe’s Income Access for Upcoming Affiliate Programme

Esports brand to leverage Income Access affiliate marketing software and affiliate network

Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending iSoftBet’s Virtual Tea Party, a celebration of their Queen of Wonderland Megaways slot launch and a lovely excuse to mix and mingle with fellow media professionals and iGaming operators. 

Prior to the event, iSoftBet sent goodie bags to the homes of all of those participating, including a branded mask, Alice and Wonderland mug, tea bags and cookies, all to be used during the Tea Party. The goodie bags even came along with personalized, hand-written name tags and other small touches that truly made each and every participant feel special. 

During the event itself, we learned about the slot, its unique features and Josh Green of FruitySlots, the largest slots streaming community in the U.K., led an engaging slots tournament for the group, complete with an impressive grand prize for the winner (who was not me, sadly!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9edT3VHqJ7EVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Becky’s Affiliated- iSoftBet’s “Virtual Tea Party” takes digital events to a new level (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9edT3VHqJ7E)

Casino junket operator, cryptocurrency investor and reputed triad bigwig Wan ‘Broken Tooth’ Kuok-koi has been targeted for sanctions by the US federal government. 

On Wednesday, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against a series of “corrupt actors and their networks across several countries in Africa and Asia.” The OFAC claimed the move was to mark International Anti-Corruption Day, which was established by the United Nations in 2003. 

Any US-based assets or entities even partially controlled by any of the sanctioned figures “are blocked and must be reported to OFAC.” The sanctions prohibit all transactions “by US persons or within (or transiting) the United States” that might involve said assets. Contributing or receiving any type of asset involving the sanctioned individuals is equally out of bounds. 

Among the individuals singled out for sanctions is ‘Broken Tooth’ Koi, described in the OFAC’s release as “a member of the Communist Party (CCP) of China’s Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference” as well as “a leader of the 14K Triad.” 

US casino operators had reason for optimism in October, the sixth straight month of sequential gaming revenue growth, but early indications are that November will put an end to this winning streak. 

The latest Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker figures released Tuesday by the American Gaming Association (AGA) lobby group shows US operators generated combined revenue of $3.38b in October, a 7% decline from the same month last year but up 6.3% from September 2020. 

Slots ($2.1b, -10.6% year-on-year) and table games ($543m, -17%) continue to suffer from the casinos’ pandemic capacity restrictions, but sports betting revenue jumped 53.5% to $237.5m while online casino revenue more than tripled year-on-year to $156m.  

For the year-to-date, total gaming revenue is down just over one-third to $24.1b, with slots (-35.5%) and tables (-40.2%) dragging down the total. By comparison, sports betting gained one-third to $915.4m and online casinos soared 206.2% to a downright impressive $1.23b. 

It’s already been an incredible season by the English Premier League’s very high standards. Despite the absence of almost all fans, the Fantasy Premier League has been one of the biggest thrills for fans and sportsbettors across the country.

Who should make the EPL Fantasy Premier League First XI? With so many players to choose from, we’ve put together the best squad we can… just imagine being able to pick from it without using your Wildcard, which if you haven’t used yet, you really should very soon.

Looking at the official Fantasy Premier League statistics, here is our world-beating squad of points winners.

Goalkeepers

Live poker faces an uncertain return to full capacity as poker will be one of the industries who have to take it slowly to come back as it once was in society.

As the world adjusts to the news that a COVID vaccine may not be far off being available worldwide, poker rooms are opening up again with plexiglass barriers between seats, anti-bacterial cleaning smells commonplace around Las Vegas and facemasks compulsory. But who is winning at The Wynn?

The Wynn Casino reopened at the end of September as we reported at the time, but it’s taken until now to really get some really big tournaments high rolling. Over the past few days, four events each costing $10,500 to enter ran at The Wynn between December 3rd – 6th, with varying degrees of success, as was reported by Card Player upon completion.

First up, December 3rd saw 49 players battle for the victory, with the eventual $490,000 prizepool being shared between just seven players. It was Martin Zamani who claimed the win, bagging $140,107 for the victory just weeks after banking another six-figure score in the MSPT Main Event at the Venetian.

The latest Super MILLION$ final table has been reached and it this year’s most successful live player, Timothy Adams, who holds a huge lead over the field.

As reported by PokerNews, Adams will go into the final table of nine with a massive 6.1 million chips, far and away clear of almost every rival he has in the GGPoker event.

Adams has reached the final table twice before and failed to win this event, albeit never with quite such an overwhelming lead, but the Canadian will be taking nothing for granted. This time there is $315,158 up for grabs to the winner.

Adams’ closest challenger is a Romanian player who is known as the master of chaos at the felt, Alex Papazian. He has 3,629,851 chips and is the only player whose chipstack isn’t doubled by the chip leader.