888Poker are to be the lead sponsor at the 2015 World Series of Poker and World Series of Poker Europe events, and will be the primary source of online satellite qualifications outside selected territories.

The relationship between the World Series of Poker (WSOP), and 888 Holdings, has gone from a kiss and a cuddle to all out fornication, after the pair agreed a deal that will see the company, that has ‘never been so healthy,’ take the starring role as lead sponsor of the 2015 WSOP in Las Vegas, and likewise when the bandwagon pulls up in Berlin for the 2015 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE).

The deal means yours truly will now be spending more time playing on 888Poker as they become the only online poker outlet to run official online satellite qualifiers, for both events, outside of the United States, British Columbia, Quebec, Canada, Mexico, Italy, India and France.

I can smell my $10k package.

The anti-online Restoration of America’s Wire Act had its hearing on Wednesday with the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations.

The hearing began late and ended early as representatives had to press pause in order to return to the House floor for votes on other legislation.

The event really got going after Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VI) – a chief architect of the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) – attempted some legislative jujitsu by declaring that RAWA wasn’t an unwarranted trampling of states’ rights but a pro-states rights bill.

Goodlatte (pictured right) claimed RAWA supporters wanted to “protect the rights of states to prevent unwanted internet gambling from creeping across their borders and into their states.” This heretofore little discussed concept of online gambling ‘”bleeding over” state lines was to come up multiple times during Wednesday’s hearing.

Former journalist, Diamond Flush, who passed away this last year, will be honored at the iGaming North America awards as the recipient of the Operator of the Year award.

I never met Diamond Flush, but you learn a lot by the way a person writes. I know I would have liked her.

Tonight is the night that I will learn if I have won the European Poker Award (EPA) for Media Person of the Year. I won’t be there in person to collect it, should I win, so I pre-prepared a statement to be read in my absence should fortune favor the lad from the valleys.

The soul of that statement was about being different. If I win that award, it’s because the poker community celebrates unbiased opinion. That’s what sets me apart from everyone else. I’m not tied to a particular company. My thoughts and feelings are not held back. I wake up and write whatever I want.

The InterContinental Hotels Group has taken legal action against James Packer‘s casino group for using the name Crown Resorts.

According to the hotel group, Packer’s Crown Resorts is named similarly to Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts, which it counts as one of its hotel brands.

InterContinental wants Packer’s casino company to change its name in order to avoid confusion among customers of Crowne Plaza.

The UK-based hotel group is also throwing legal shade on Crown Resorts’ properties, including Crown Sydney, Crown Perth, Crown Hotels, Crown Spa, and Crown Poker.

The New York Gaming Commission has opened bidding to any operator looking to score a casino license in the Southern Tier.

Applications are due in July but so far only Tioga Downs, a harness racing track and electronic gambling facility based in Nichols, New York, has announced plans to bid for the license.

Tioga Downs lost out on the first three casino licenses given out by the commission but was undaunted by the rejection. According to owner Jee Gural, the company has worked hard trying to improve its application.

Binghamton Mayor Richard C. David told the Bellingham Herald that there’s some “interest” in pursuing a casino license in his town, although he’s unsure a second bidder will enter the fray.

This is a multi-part series of articles meant to be a resource for current and future writers in the gaming space. This is not all inclusive to poker writers, as there are plenty of workers out there grinding it out writing sports or casino copy. That said, my main experience and strengths of this type of entertainment writing come from a poker bias.

The top 20 gaming writers in the world, the crème de la crème, may laugh at these articles. But they shouldn’t. The topics jump around, but worth a chuckle. Gritty real talk.

I’m kicking it off with these three concepts below.

Part 1 – Psychology and Industry Pitfalls

Gibraltar-licensed online gambling firm Mansion Group will have a new CEO as of April 1.

Mansion issued a statement this week saying longtime CEO Guy Gussarsky will step down at the end of the month. Assuming the CEO’s reins will be Sagi Lahav, Mansion’s current chief operating officer. Both execs have been with Mansion for the past eight years.

Gussarsky isn’t completely going away, having decided to take a seat on Mansion’s board of directors. Shelly Hadad, a seven-year Mansion veteran and the company’s current biz-dev director, will assume the COO role.

Mansion said it’s “very happy with the changes as it provides continuity to the management of the business at such an important time for the company’s development plans for this year and for the future, and in managing the ongoing challenges facing the Industry as a whole.”

A long-stalled casino project in Vietnam has new life after Macau junket operator Suncity Group and Hong Kong property developer Chow Tai Fook Enterprises signed on as partners.

VinaCapital Group, Vietnam’s leading investment banking firm, had originally teamed with Malaysian conglomerate Genting on a proposed $4b resort casino project in Quang Nam province. Genting withdrew from the project in 2012 and it wasn’t until last October that VinaCapital began hinting that it had finally found a suitably deep-pocketed replacement in Chow Tai Fook.

This week, Vietnam Investment Review reported that VinaCapital’s new partners include not only Chow Tai Fook but also Suncity. The report claimed the Chu Lai Economic Zone Authority of Quang Nam would issue a revised investment certificate for the project reflecting the new makeup of the development team.

Earlier this month, Suncity expressed an interest in developing its own casino on Vietnam’s Phu Quoc island. It’s unclear whether this interest has waned as a result of the Quang Nam project.

Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) joins UK in suspending Metro Play Limited license, which covers both the Metroplay.com and 666bet.com sites.

On March 20, AGCC Executive Director André Wilsenach issued a hearing notice to Metro Play Limited and suspended its operations immediately.

Due to the suspension, Metro Play and its business associates can no longer register any new customers or accept deposits from existing customers and are required to process all customer withdrawals immediately on request.

“The grounds for the decision to call the licensee to a hearing of the Commission and to suspend its license relate largely to serious concerns about the existing control and management of Metro Play,” said Wilsenach. “It would not have been in the interest of customers, the eGambling industry or the reputation of Alderney to allow Metro Play to continue its operations.”

American history was made on Tuesday when the states of Delaware and Nevada officially began sharing online poker liquidity.

The interstate online poker – and only online poker – deal between the two states has been a long time coming but WSOP.com head of online poker Bill Rini confirmed the soft launch of the network on Tuesday night. Reports are emerging of players from the two states exchanging greetings like astronauts meeting cosmonauts through the hatch of the Mir space station.

Sadly, while the date itself is historic, the immediate impact of this launch will be muted. Nevada’s intrastate online poker market was on a sustained negative trajectory until it stopped reporting revenue in December (after falling to just two operators the month before). Meanwhile, Delaware’s already wafer thin online poker revenue fell 70% in January.

So in the short term, at least, this is more about huddling together for warmth than setting anything on fire. A low profile might not be such a bad thing, as any potentially embarrassing technical kinks can be tweaked by network operator 888 Holdings before America’s anti-online zealots get wise.

MGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren says he’s “bemused” by Connecticut’s plan to build small-scale casinos to head off the threat of MGM’s new Massachusetts resort.

Murren made the comments during Tuesday’s groundbreaking ceremony in Springfield, MA, where MGM’s $800m casino expects to open in 2017. This has the operators of Connecticut’s two tribal casinos – Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods – putting aside their differences to fend off a common enemy. The tribes have proposed building three new casinos, particularly a new small-scale facility along Interstate 91 on the state’s northern border, close to Springfield.

Murren told the Hartford Courant that he’d “love to go toe-to-toe with Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.” Murren said MGM’s “brand-new, luxury resort” on three city blocks in downtown Springfield was more than enough to compete with some “box of slots” on the highway.

Mohegan Tribal Council chairman Kevin ‘Red Eagle’ Brown has since hotly disputed this characterization, saying the tribes’ new casino would be a “first-rate gaming facility” and most definitely not a slot parlor. “That’s one of the myths we’re trying to take out.”

The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa will get their time in court with Phil Ivey after his legal team failed in their bid to persuade a District Judge that the case should not even make civil court.

Phil Ivey is not going to be eating meat paste sandwiches anytime soon, but he is facing some stiff financial challenges.

The most profitable online cash game player of all time, is currently the 2015 biggest loser with over $1.5m in losses; that’s nearly a million more than anyone else playing in the virtual world. And he has just received some bad news from his legal team in Atlantic City.

You may recall that The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa are suing Mr. Ivey, his female companion Cheng Yin Sun, and the card manufacturer Gemaco for their part in $9.5m in losses that were sustained during four sessions of baccarat sometime in 2012. I know. The mind boggles.

Gevork Kasabyan defeated Adam Weinraub, in heads-up action, to take the first prize of $205,720 in the World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event at the Bicycle Casino, California.

When you wake up on the final day of a World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) Main Event, knowing you have 25% of the chips in play, with 14-players remaining, you expect nothing more than the number one spot.

That’s how things were for Adam Weinraub. He knows a thing or two about poker. He has over $600,000 in live tournament earnings, won a World Poker Tour (WPT) Celebrity Invitational Event in Season 5 for $125,000, and also beat

[Image Credit: PokerNews]

Three impressive feats of poker proliferance to bring you up to speed on, including victories for Georgios Zisimopoulos and Keith Johnson in the Italian Poker Tour, whilst Dzmitry Urbanovich runs riot in the European Poker Tour.

The decision to move the European Poker Tour (EPT) to Malta has proven to be a smart one. The poker playing community has flocked to the tiny island in their droves.

The Global Poker Index took advantage of the deluge (GPI) by hosting the inaugural Global Poker Masters (GPM). Italy winning poker’s version of the World Cup, every single second of which was streamed live on Twitch.

That was for glory.

Cambodia‘s government earned over $25m in tax revenue from casino operations in 2014, a 12% gain over 2013.

Ros Phirun, director general of the finance ministry’s financial industry department, told the Cambodian Television Network that the country’s 59 casinos had not only contributed to the state’s budget “but also contributed to developing areas along the border.” Phirun said the state expects 2015’s casino tax take to rise a more modest 4% to $26m.

With the exception of NagaCorp’s NagaWorld casino in Phnom Penh, all Cambodia’s casinos are located in border areas with Thailand and Vietnam. Lately, the casinos bordering Vietnam have been subject to any number of lurid headlines, from the apparent suicide of a Hanoi man found hanging from a belt in a casino washroom in Svay Rieng Province to the kidnap and murder of an eight-year-old Vietnamese schoolgirl whose body was found near another casino in Svay Rieng.

Recently, Cambodian police are focusing their attention on an alleged protection racket that has been extorting money from Russian ex-pats in the Sihanoukville area in the country’s southwest. Vladimir Palancica, a local tour operator, said he was attacked at the Queenco Casino and Hotel last month by 10 men with guns and knives after Palancica refused to give his attackers money. Three tourists were reportedly injured in the melee.

Antigua’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne has hit back at US claims that he believes “unfairly and unjustly” harm his nation’s reputation.

On Tuesday, Browne made a statement to the Antiguan House of Representatives regarding the US State Department’s 2015 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), which labeled Antigua and six other Caribbean countries “jurisdictions of primary concern for money laundering.”

Browne said a diplomatic note had been transmitted to the US government stating that “the comments and assertions on Antigua and Barbuda in the INCSR 2015 lack any basis in fact and are not based on objective criteria.”

Browne said he was “especially amazed” by the report’s characterization of Antigua’s online gambling industry as “growing.” Browne said it was hardly a secret that Antigua’s online gambling industry “has been in decline directly as a result of the action by the United States government which has been found by the World Trade Organization to have damaged” Antigua’s economy.