Phil Hellmuth appears on Fox Sports Live as a pundit on the poker-playing prowess of the NBA’s finest, and hints on Twitter about a forthcoming reality TV show.

@phil_hellmuth Please help prevent an Internet #poker prohibition and #OpposeHR707 by contacting Congress http://t.co/Diu89iKu5f

— PokerPlayersAlliance (@ppapoker) March 24, 2015

It’s not difficult to figure out why the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) would seek assistance from Phil Hellmuth when it comes to fighting against Internet poker prohibition in the United States.

A flurry of pro-casino activity has erupted in several southern US states, although much of it is expected to fail, at least initially.

In Florida, the state House of Representatives Regulatory Affairs Committee began discussion of HB 1233, Majority Leader Dana Young’s sweeping gambling overhaul proposal. The bill, which would allow construction of two integrated resort casinos, was discussed for four hours on Thursday but committee members declined to put the bill to a vote.

Committee chairman Jose Felix Diaz said the group wouldn’t discuss the bill again for another two weeks, which will leave just two weeks left in the current legislative session. Young claimed not to be bothered, telling the Tampa Bay Times that gaming bills “never come up until the last couple days of session.” (Perhaps that’s why they never pass.)

Meanwhile, a state Senate committee continues to negotiate with the Seminole Tribe over a renewal of its tribal gaming compact, a portion of which expires this year. State economists have projected Florida could lose out on $822m over the next five years if it fails to renew the tribe’s monopoly on blackjack and other house-banked card games. The tribe has another 15 years left on its slots monopoly outside Miami-Dade and Broward counties, where the two proposed integrated resorts would be located.

Cambodia’s casino market is set to welcome three new additions in the southwest province of Takeo.

On Wednesday, Ministry of Economy and Finance official Ros Phearun confirmed that three new gaming joints would open in Takeo’s Kiri Vong district in Phong Den village. The Phnom Penh Post quoted Phearun saying two of the casinos had already completed construction and were awaiting licenses, while the third had yet to begin construction. Phearun declined to specify the identities of the casino operators, saying only that they were locally owned.

The two completed casinos are hoping to open their doors in April before the Khmer New Year celebrations kick off mid-month. The establishments will rely on a steady stream of gamblers from neighboring Vietnam, which already supplies most of the patrons to Takeo’s two existing casinos. Cambodian residents are legally prohibited from entering its country’s casinos although the government has publicly mused about relaxing this restriction.

The additions will bring Cambodia’s casino complement to 62, most of which are small-scale affairs situated in towns along the borders of Vietnam and Thailand. The only exception is NagaCorp’s NagaWorld, which is located in the heart of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh.

Austria has decided to implement IP-blocking of online gambling sites not holding an Austrian license.

At present, only the partially state-owned Casinos Austria is officially licensed to conduct online gambling within Austria via its Win2Day site. Austria’s Council of Ministers has now ordered internet service providers to block internationally licensed online gambling sites from crossing Austria’s digital borders.

Casinos Austria’s online monopoly hasn’t stopped the Austrian government from taxing online gambling revenue derived from Austrian punters at a rate of 40%, regardless of where a site is licensed. The European Commission (EC) has challenged the legality of Austria’s gambling regime but the state has insisted the Pfleger ruling applied purely to land-based gaming.

Geo-blocking is increasingly finding disfavor with the EC, which is trying to reduce trade barriers between member states, not reinforce them. On Wednesday, the EC agreed to proceed with its European Digital Single Market (EDSM) plan, with specific priorities to be unveiled on May 6.

A Netherlands court has ruled that online gambling operators have no responsibility to refund a gambler’s losses, even if the operator lacks a Dutch license.

Last week, the Amsterdam District Court rejected an attempt by a Dutch gambler to recover over €178k he’d lost gambling online with Malta-licensed Unibet between June 2010 and January 2012. The gambler had argued that since online gambling has yet to be legalized by the Dutch government, his wagers were illegal and thus should be returned to him post-haste.

The Court recognized that while Unibet lacked a Dutch online license, it had utilized Dutch language promotions, offered customer service in Dutch, operated a .nl website that redirected to Unibet.com and used Dutch banks to process payments.

Unibet countered that the Netherlands had never allowed international operators to apply for online gambling licenses. Further, Unibet had received an official communication from the Kansspelautoriteit (Dutch Gaming Authority) saying Unibet.com had met the criteria by which the regulator decides not to take enforcement action against online operators.

Paddy Power has taken over 5,000 individual bets on the 2016 U.S. presidential race and Hillary Clinton is the overwhelming favorite.

Despite the delay of Clinton’s planned presidential announcement due to some apparent cronyism scandal involving her brother Anthony Rodham and two of her political confidants, Paddy spokesman Rory Scott said that as of Sunday evening, Clinton had received about 33% of the individual bets made on the race.

Paddy’s odds have Clinton in the lead to win the US Presidential election at 6/5 followed by several Republicans such as former Florida Gov. Jed Bush at 4/1, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Florida Gov. Scott Walker at 10/1 and sports betting and online gambling supporter New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 12/1.

The bookmaker also takes bets for the winning party led by the Democrats at 4/6, Republicans at 6/5 and Independent at 50/1. The expected gender of the 2016 president has Male at 8/13 and Female at 6/5.

Take Our Poll

The NCAA mens’ basketball tournament will resume tomorrow with the Sweet 16, but before we dive back into March Madness, we polled our readers, “Who will win the NCAA Championshp?”

The 2015 Major League Baseball regular season hasn’t even started and yet, it’s already getting headlines for reasons that new Commissioner Rob Manfred probably doesn’t want to deal with this early in his tenure.

According to multiple reports, Miami Marlins starting pitcher Jarred Cosart is under investigation by the commissioner’s office over his alleged sports-related gambling ties.

MLB spokesman Pat Courtney confirmed to the Miami New Times that Manfred’s office is currently investigating the matter, which centers around multiple Twitter exchanges between the 24-year old Cosart and a person who is being described as a so-called “gambling expert.”

The tweets became public when said “gambling expert,” identified as @ghostfadekillah, posted screenshots of the DM exchange between him and Cosart, showing the latter sending DMs referencing that he had “bet LARGE” on something and “hammered” an under play.

Mobile and online casino LeoVegas has signed a deal to launch a wide array of HTML5 casino games developed by Odobo.

Under the agreement, Leo Vegas gains access to over 50 games, initially licensing 25 games, produced by the Odobo Developer Program and available through the Odobo Marketplace, initially licensing 25 games.

Odobo Founder and CEO Ashley Lang sees a great potential in the partnership, calling it an important milestone for Odobo.

“We are very proud and excited to welcome Leo Vegas to Odobo and to see our games content available to their massive player-base. We share a common vision to raise the bar in terms of quality, variety, and entertainment in mobile gaming,” Lang said. “Leo Vegas is selective about the content that they offer their players and being chosen to supply games to their award-winning casino is a testament to the quality of games coming into the Odobo Marketplace.”

We know Asia is a massive target for online gambling companies because of the potential revenue to be earned and we also know Bitcoin is a great fit for online gambling, so these two things together must be a winning combination.

Turns out the opportunities for Bitcoin in Asia are huge and the gambling operators are just now starting to learn exactly how accepting the currency at the casinos will benefit their business.

Jiten Melwani of Hong Kong based Bitgame Labs recently spoke at iGaming Asia Congress and is an expert on the opportunities for Bitcoin in Asia.  He is familiar with the challenges and benefits that come along with accepting the currency as a gambling operator and he was happy to share his deep knowledge in our interview below.

Becky Liggero: Jiten, thank you so much for joining me, its an honor to have an expert like yourself to talk on opportunities for Bitcoin and gaming in Asia.  To start, can you tell us what Asian countries are particularly Bitcoin-friendly how their regulators plan to deal with the currency?

90 Digital CEO Nick Garner talks about affiliate avoidance checkilist in this edition of CalvinAyre.com’s SEO Tip of the Week.

Short intro to Trust Optimization.

Along with on site optimization and link acquisition, there seems to be a third element to ranking well on Google, it’s called Trust Optimization. Trust Optimization is based on the information we have got from anecdotal evidence on click through rates and rankings along with explicit guidelines from Google stating what they are looking for in a trusted website.  On with the post…

In this series we’ve talked a lot about simple things to avoid like deceptive pages or whatever.

Images from Bluff.com

Frank Patti and George Wolfe take the Main Event titles at the Heartland Poker Tour in Ameristar, Kansas City, and World Poker Tour Deepstack event in Jacksonville.

Frank Patti has won the Heartland Poker Tour (HPT) Ameristar Main Event in Kansas City. He beat Matt Lawrence, in heads-up action, to take the $103,326 first prize.

It’s the second time, in consecutive years, that Patti has secured a six-figure score. The last one occurred during a 2014 World Series of Poker (WSOP) $1k side event. He picked up $138,160 for a third place finish. A score that continues to be his best to date despite his recent win.

Twitch may have been hacked, prompting the Twitch security team to reset all users passwords and stream keys. The poker community takes the hit; keeps on streaming.

Jason Somerville’s face is on the front of the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, it’s attached to bad news.

Twitch has been hacked.

For some people, namely sponsored pros who are being pestered by their lords and masters, to get online and start streaming for 7-8 hours a day, this is a good thing, but for the vast majority of the poker community, it’s a very, very bad thing.