It wasn’t until quite recently that fans came to realise Cole Turner was more Character than CEO. The doubt must have crept in after a rather sensational adventure in particular portraying Cole in a river run through the jungles of Cambodia where he was taken hostage by some sexy Khmer Rouge operatives. Until this moment, Cole’s exploits had been somewhat believable, but as ridiculous as the hostage story was, people called customer service daily to learn the status of the CEO who scoffed at danger.

Nevertheless, here we are – celebrating the fiftieth episode of a parallel iGaming industry with social norms not quite like ours. And you know what? It gave us the excuse to ask you guys what you thought, and poll our readers with the question: “Cole Turner is… too crazy for me, not crazy enough or just the right amount of crazy?”

Interestingly – the results demonstrated a tie, with 38% of readers sayings Cole is just too crazy and another 38% saying he’s just not crazy enough. 24% of you said Cole is just the right amount of crazy. Does this mean these top two contrasting results cancel one another out, and suggest you all think he hit the crazy nail on the head? We think so – so we’ll keep up the good work. Here’s to the hundredth!

If you haven’t had chance to catch the Cole Tuner is an Asshole comic misadventure, then best start with the first episode.

Once you’ve thrown up from laughing after wading your way through every last episode, give our second poll a good seeing to: “When I play poker.I’d rather play with beautiful women, I want to play where the pros play or I don’t care where the pros play” to give us a further understanding of your stance on our poker pro: marketing suicide? piece.

Entertainment News

Sports News

Then there’s the not insignificant feat of upsetting no less than three Scottish Premier League clubs to set up a Scottish Communities League Cup semi-final against local arch-rivals Kilmarnock at Hampden Park on Jan. 28. It’s the first time these two clubs have squared off at this stage, and Calvin is determined that the opportunity not go to waste.

With an aim to strengthen manager Brian Reid’s hand, Calvin has dipped into his own pockets to provide Ayr United with the readies to make a proper run at both Cups. Quoth the man: “I’ve had so much support from the people of Ayr since I took the sponsorship and for the team to have got so far in both Cups is a very unexpected bonus. I would love to see The Honest Men reach the final and am prepared to invest a bit more in the club to see if we can do just that.”

Ayr United Commercial Director Hugh Cameron acknowledged Calvin’s gesture as “fantastic for the fans and the club in general. It’s been a rollercoaster of a season for us so far, but the buzz around the city when the Bodog brand signed up with the club and Calvin came to visit has been electric.” Speaking of electric, check out this little terrace-trembling ditty from Ayr United’s resident crooner, Somerset Boab… Take it away, Boabie…

Sports News

Black Friday was clearly (at least until the White Friday pre-Christmas DoJ Wire Act flip-flop) the year’s dominant story in the online gambling biz, so it’s no real surprise that our first big summation of Black Friday fallout drew a large audience. But that page only ranked #2 on the overall list. What on earth could have been more important, you ask? Why, naked pictures of Lindsay Lohan, dumbass. Yep, never mind the future of online poker in the US of A, give us some (formerly) ginger trollop’s ta-tas! Worse, the race between Black Friday’s bombshells and Freaky Friday’s boobies wasn’t even close, with Lilo’s endowments garnering 50% more page views than Preet Bharara’s indictments.

It would be one thing if the Lohan page was an anomaly, but #3 on our page-view chart was a list of the craziest places people choose to bump uglies and #4 was a 109-word World Cup update that just happened to feature a shot of Calvin Ayre in the back of a hummer with two German strippers. A story about sexy Russian spy Anna Chapman came in at #5, and another article on Ms. Chapman came in at #9. The first appearance of comely Croatian CalvinAyre.com contributor Tatjana Pasalic came in at #7, while an article musing about the difficulties in finding quality online porn videos came in at #10. The rest of the top-10 consisted of the announcement that the Bodog brand was exiting the US market (#6) and Calvin Ayre’s own analysis of Black Friday’s winners and losers (#8).

While Tatjana’s article was a perfectly respectable bit of reportage on the 2011 World Series of Poker, we’re sure the accompanying pictures of Ms. Pasalic hardly hurt her cause in the page-view rankings. Which makes a whopping 30% of the top-10 articles that didn’t contain pictures of hot girls. In other words, if we allowed readers into our editorial meetings, we’d have to take voice votes on every decision because said readers wouldn’t be able to stop wanking long enough to raise their hands and vote ‘aye’.

On the video chart, the clear favorite with viewers was coverage of the CalvinAyre.com Seven Deadly Sins party in Dublin, while the companion pirate-themed party for Calvin Ayre’s 50th birthday at the Bodog Compound in Costa Rica came in at #3. Other revelry-themed vids making the top-10 included the Bodog88 Live Dealer launch in the Philippines (#5) and the iGaming SuperShow party highlights compilation (#8). Highlights of the SuperShow’s Day 1 daytime doings came in at #9.

Tatjana Pasalic was equally popular on the video front, with her ‘welcome aboard’ video coming in at #2, her quizzing of Poker In The Park players as to whether they were motivated more by poker fame or poker money at #5, and her interview with another poker hottie, Xuan Liu, scoring the #6 position. The top video of actual hard industry news — an interview with Ongame’s Peter Bertilsson — scored no higher than #7, while former Ongame (and current Bodog UK) exec Patrik Selin’s thoughts on Full Tilt Poker’s woes just made the list at #10.

So, to sum up, hot girls and parties = eyeballs. Clearly, this site has more than delivered on its ‘gambling, drinking and carrying on’ mission statement. If you feel otherwise, don’t hesitate to let us know what you’d like to see more (or less) of in 2012. But please, before you send us your message, wait until (a) you’re sober, and (b) for the blood that’s temporarily diverted to other regions of your body to return to your brain. Which is our way of keeping our in-box uncluttered, because clearly you partying horndogs aren’t likely to accomplish either of those conditions anytime soon.

Lifestyle News

Anyway, buckle up and away we go…

1. AMERICA: Long before the US Department of Justice’s ‘White Friday’ admission that the Wire Act didn’t extend beyond sports betting, I was on record as predicting no positive momentum for online gambling legislation at the federal level in 2012. First of all, it’s a presidential election year, but even without that monumental distraction, there are just too many variables and competing interests to expect any nationwide resolution in the short-term. Anyway, the recent DoJ announcement just underscores my long-held belief that it’s the states that make the gambling decisions in the US.

That said, even with the ball now explicitly in the states’ court, progress will be slow. More states will consider, and some might even pass legislation, but I don’t expect many – if any – will have functional online poker systems up and running by next Christmas. (Nevada is furthest along this path, but their casino backers may continue to hope, dream and pray that someday their federal prince will come.)

I say it’s 50/50 that there will be one more state doing remote gambling in 2012, and even that one state may only offer online purchases of lottery tickets. But while progress will be slow, this state-by-state process that started in late 2010 with remote sports betting in Nevada will continue to spread over the coming decade. Under this scenario, the big winners – apart from those companies already holding US land-based licenses – will be the companies holding the best technology. But the US is no longer the world’s largest market, and those foreign companies who have hitched their future growth strategies solely to America’s wagon will be sorely disappointed with the results.

America, Shmamerica...The future lies in Asia!

2. EUROPE: I don’t expect much in the way of significant developments here. With faith in a common currency significantly shaken in 2011, the ongoing Balkanization of Europe’s gambling markets will only accelerate. Overall, this is a stale and mature market with an economy that will remain shaky for a long time to come. The smart companies (smart enough to have steered clear of public markets and shareholder meetings) will be shifting their focus toward…

3. ASIA: This market is still in its infancy, yet it’s already bigger than the rest of the world put together. I don’t care what your market share is in Spain, Italy or Belgium — or what price your shares are trading at — if you don’t yet have a toehold in Asia, you have no business calling yourself an industry player. I also think Asian authorities (China, in particular) will embark on a US-style vendetta against some of the major players serving their markets. It will be a serious cat and mouse battle, and only those companies with the right structures in place will be nimble enough to avoid becoming cat food. The Darwinian survivors of this super-aggressive environment will emerge as the big swinging dicks of the global online game. Those winners’ names have yet to be determined, but one thing is for sure: public companies will not be among them.

4. LATIN AMERICA: The southern half of the western hemisphere will never rival Asia in terms of scale, but in gambling terms, it’s largely virgin territory, and probably represents the second best market to target in 2012.

5. INDIA: A massive market that always seems to get overlooked for some unexplained reason. Someone will figure out how to crack this market one day, and when they do… cha-ching.

6. CONVERGENCE SWINGS BOTH WAYS: In 2011, the focus was on land-based casino companies getting their digital feet wet. Going forward, I can see at least one major online brand laying a brick and mortar foundation in 2012. Someone is going to crack the integration code, overcoming the challenges of combining online and land-based gambling into one symbiotic business model — and this someone won’t necessarily come from the over-regulated, innovation-challenged, debt-laden, publicly-owned, land-based casino crowd. It’s my opinion that the guys best positioned to do this integration are the online companies that control their own technology and are not burdened by massive amounts of debt. I advise anyone attempting this to spin a land-based initiative out into a separate vehicle so they can get public financing. Unlike online, land-based gaming is a natural fit for the public markets as you are subject to whatever regulations exist in the country in which you build, and you know you are never going to move a land-based casino.

7. MO’ MOBILE, MO’ OFTEN: If you want to gauge the exponential growth of mobile communications, look no further than the bar girls in the Philippines. Two years ago, they all carried old school dumb phones. Nowadays, they spend more and more time updating their Facebook statuses on their smartphones, to the chagrin of their (mostly) overweight, pasty-white ‘dates’. Nuff said — mobile is still on a massive growth curve.

8. LIVE DEALER CASINO: Already massively popular in Asia, live dealer’s appeal will spread to other markets and into other forms, such as bingo. The technology has matured, and bottom line, it’s just fun.

9. RNG CASINOS: Conversely, as live dealer casinos continue to excite, RNG casinos have grown stagnant due to a profound lack of innovation by the super-complacent companies that dominate this space. However, this stagnation means the road is wide open for some innovative company to make serious inroads.

10. SPORTS BETTING: The sector will continue to evolve slowly but vibrantly, with more betting types and increased integration with social media. Sports betting is the most complicated of all the channels and has the largest barriers to entry. This means that most of the innovation will come from existing industry players. Look for this to happen primarily in less regulated markets, though — as usual, player value is highest where the regulatory hurdles to experimentation and innovation are lowest.

11. BODOG RECREATIONAL POKER PLAYER MODEL (affectionately known as the BODOG MODEL in the industry today): Though released in late 2011, its impact on the global online poker industry will be THE big poker story of 2012. I recently had a chat with Patrik Selin and Jonas Ödman, the two brains (pictured at right) chiefly responsible for the rollout of the new ‘controversial’ Bodog Poker Model. These two have been developing this model for the past five or so years — starting when they were still running the Ongame Network, and continuing over the past couple years they’ve been with Bodog — and now that the majority of the model has been up and running for a few weeks, the preliminary data they’re crunching tells them their theories are correct. The remaining features of their model, complete with a number of player-suggested improvements, will roll out over the first quarter of 2012.

While most of the coverage this model has received in the poker media has initially focused on the vocal (and often extremely juvenile) reactions of the minority of players who hate how the anonymous tables have deprived them of their technological crutches, what’s gone unmentioned is that this new model will soon be a fully network-capable system (early Q3) and that it’s a world class platform technically. Meaning, once proof of concept is complete, Bodog will be able to offer white labels to other operators interested in a quick and easy way to plug the unnecessary drains on liquidity from their gaming ecosystems.

Major online sportsbooks are the most likely candidates to join up with the Bodog Poker network. In fact, the bigger the sportsbook, the more compelling they’ll find the notion of not sharing their net depositing poker players with a bunch of partner sites catering to net withdrawing players. I also believe at least one other poker network will eventually adopt this model as its own. Of course, other pure poker networks/rooms will stick with what they know, resulting in a fragmented but coexisting poker industry of more than one model operating in parallel.

Another major closure in poker is that this is the year everyone finally admits that the aspirational driven poker model is dead. Recreational poker players no longer believe they are going to become pro players; they just want to have fun. The days of sites spending big money on poker pros is over. Only the most dimwitted of the micro-site owners are still pursuing this game plan, and by this time next year, even they will understand that it’s time to fold (if they themselves have not been folded by their dead end strategy). Instead, the smart sites will focus on sending their recreational players to the big tournaments and let the pros pay their own way.

12. OTHER POKER MODELS: Subscription poker and free-play virtual chip models will continue to grow, but their ability to convert players into risking real money will remain a major question mark. Personally, I don’t think anyone will ever find a way to convert, as a real-money poker player would never play strictly for fun, so they are in fact different markets which can’t be crossed one way or the other.

13. HORSE RACING: The sport of kings is far from dead, but unless someone can find a way to attract a younger demographic to the track (in person or online), the knackers will continue sharpening their knives. Horseracing would benefit from some celebrity jockeys and an infusion of pop culture. The stuffy old top hat thing needs to be replaced with a hipper scene.

14. ANONYMOUS PAYMENT SYSTEMS: This will be the year a modified version of Bitcoin hits the net. Someone is going to figure out how to make this work and when they do, all the anti-gambling, over-regulating authoritarian governments will be exposed as emperors without clothes. It might not be obvious that this is even happening at first, since these systems are by definition stealthy affairs.

15. THIS SITE ROCKS AND YOU KNOW IT: CalvinAyre.com will be formally recognized as the largest and most comprehensive site covering the global online gaming market. It already holds that distinction just based on traffic, but 2012 will be the year that everyone in the industry uses it as a primary news and event management tool. I mean, where else can you go to get it all in one spot? I myself do not go to any other sites anymore — I get my news exclusively here on CalvinAyre.com! It’s also the only site I go to for so many other things related to managing my life in our industry. I designed it for myself, in fact. I imagined one easy-to-access site that has all the stuff I need and then I built it.

16. I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA: Right this second, there’s some guy toiling away in obscurity on some project that will prove mind-blowingly good but which absolutely no one could have predicted (yet, like all truly great ideas, will seem completely obvious given the benefit of hindsight). This guy will likely have to move to a low-regulated jurisdiction to get his innovation off the ground, if he is not already living in one. Nothing kills innovation like regulation (which is why big boring public companies love regulation – it stops them from having to innovate). However, apart from that guy, I think you’ll find that most of the above predictions will prove spot-on. I’ll leave you with one more prediction, and this one comes with a 100% money-back guarantee: there will never be a dull moment in this industry we all love!

Business News

Stopping short of filming her own series of The Bachelor, the 49-year-old enlisted the help of close friend Amanda de Cadenet to draw up a list of men. Judging by the list drawn up she’s no longer looking to have a man that will act like a teenage kid. She wants the real McCoy!

Now magazine is reporting this list contains actor Gerard Butler, Todd English and…Calvin Ayre! After one of Demi’s close friends revealed the “Demi needs a bit of fun and a distraction,” she obviously knew to come a-knocking for the chief purveyor of gamblin’ drinkin’ and carryin’ on.

The same friend added: “Demi’s keen on something short-term and they’re compiling a list of possibles, including a number of millionaire businessmen.”

It’s hardly surprising that Calvin’s name came into Cadenet’s little black book (or is it a pink one for females). If Demi’s looking for someone that can whisk her off her feet for a vacation in a far-flung beautiful corner of the world then this could be her match.

What other similarities are there between the two though? The most obvious is that they’re of a similar age bracket so there would be plenty to chat about. They’ve both gained much notoriety for covers of respective mainstream publications in the United States with the Forbes “Catch Me If You Can” cover giving the magazine more sales than they could ever have imagined. The same was the case when a naked and heavily pregnant Moore appeared on the front of Vanity Fair.

It’s not the first time Calvin’s been mentioned as an eligible bachelor alongside other dignitaries. People Magazine came calling back during the “bad boy billionaire” era of the mid 00s and given the looks, the good times and the chance to be whisked away it’s hardly a surprise that Demi has come callin’.

It’s just a pity you weren’t looking around this time last year. You’d have loved the 50^th party in Dublin and we could have seen just how much gamblin’ drinkin’ and carryin’ on you can cope with.

Lifestyle News

Do you recognize this man?

Chances are in the past couple of weeks, you’ve asked yourself ‘why does every person I look up on Wikipedia look like Jimmy Wales?’

Wales is the founder of the ubiquitous non-profit web encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. As of late, he has put himself and his pledge drive on every Wikipedia page. As a non-profit website, Wikipedia relies on these donations for its survival.

We are currently living through the worst global economic crisis since the great depression and as such, people have held their money tighter, foregoing donations and cutting their spending across the board, no matter how noble.

The boss, Calvin Ayre, told me he has donated to Wikipedia and suggested we all do the same. I have a few charities that I give my money to, namely Covenant House who specializes in helping homeless youth but after my chat with the boss, it made sense that someone in the iGaming industry find a few extra bucks to help ensure Wikipedia continues.

Wikipedia’s model is one we all should support. It is a free service that for better or worse gives you information on almost anything. It is crowd sourced; everyone who has information to add can add their two cents to make the site more complete.

Yes, I know there can be the odd situation where people with agendas try to abuse Wikipedia’s open concept to make fun of celebrities or hide their own misdeeds but with everyone on the internet able to act as a regulator, the bad actors are quickly exposed.

The key advantage of the open sourced Wikipedia is that it’s a living document, the teams of writers, editors and self-regulators are quick to update the site with the most recent information. This is where Wikipedia succeeded over the printed Encyclopaedia Britannica or the now defunct online Microsoft Encarta.

It reminds me of how our industry works when performing at its best. When the regulations aren’t overbearing and market conditions favour competition, the product or company that’s able to adapt and act quickly to provide the users with the best experience will succeed.

I’m following Calvin’s lead and donating to Wikipedia. Although I can’t match the size his donation, the sentiment will be the same.

Let’s all take a moment, make a donation to Wikipedia and help keep Jimmy Wales’ dream of an open sourced community where we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others alive.

Business News

I was extensively quoted in the article as the token advocate of the privately held company model. While eGR didn’t misquote me, I feel I need to respond so that people get an accurate representation of my stance on this subject, and also to rebut some of the misinformation I feel the article contains.

For instance, one of the alleged benefits of listed companies cited in the article is that they are considered more trustworthy in the consumer’s eyes, a theory supposedly underscored by the ongoing fallout from the Black Friday online poker indictments. Obviously, trust is important, but it’s not a zero sum game. The financial shortcomings of Full Tilt Poker and the Cereus network sites didn’t necessarily boost trust in listed companies, just as PokerStars’ ability to promptly square customers’ accounts didn’t automatically diminish trust in listed companies. In the end, companies are judged on their individual merits (or lack thereof). Let’s not forget that one of the largest player deposit balance scandals in our industry’s history was BetonSports.com — a UK-listed public company. eGR was a huge fan of this company for years, but now never mentions them nor the millions they stole from their player base.

I also invite readers to read the tale of that Russian customer who’s still waiting on the $3.5m Betfair wired to some dodgy third party processor, after which the publicly listed betting exchange claimed it had fulfilled its obligations to the customer and more or less washed its hands of the matter. (I imagine FTP could deduct tens of millions from its current liabilities if it chose to adopt that attitude.) Or ask the tens of thousands of Betfair customers who only just learned that hackers had obtained their banking data by outwitting Betfair’s online security over a year ago, a fact that Betfair chose not to make public.

COMPARING APPLES AND ORANGES
To be clear, it’s not my intent to single out Betfair as a ‘bad actor’. As eGR’s article states, “it is dangerous to focus on the experience of a few high profile companies.” Yet despite this caveat, the article repeatedly offers up Playtech as an example of a listed company “less governed by the potentially volatile reaction of investors than others” and the rare case of a listed company with a healthy foothold in Asian markets.

This is a deeply flawed argument, as Playtech is an online gaming supplier, not an operator. It’s not Playtech’s name that is marketed to the customer or shows up on that customer’s credit card statement, which makes Playtech less of a lightning rod for potential legal action by governments in unregulated markets, and it’s that degree of separation which makes its investors less skittish. It also gives Playtech more flexibility to go into markets like Asia. But lets be clear — they are still blocked from major markets like the US that their private competitors are not.

THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID
The article discusses the €50m Betclic Everest blew last year in a failed attempt to carve market share in the regulated French market, then eGR suggests I agree with their conclusion that Betclic’s experience proves private companies can’t compete with the listed ‘pan-European’ outfits. While I agreed that Betclic were foolish to spend that money, the mistake I saw them making was going toe-to-toe with the listed companies for market share in a market where the regulations don’t allow operators to make money. (Like standing on the deck of the Titanic and fighting with the other passengers, not over a spot in the lifeboats, but over who gets to hold the anchor.)

It would have been far better for Betclic to spend that money building up a presence in Asia: a market that is already miles bigger than Europe, a market that will only continue to grow in size and importance, and a market in which listed companies are precluded from entering. Basically, Betclic is guilty of a faulty business strategy — not the wrong corporate structure — so this example is entirely pointless in this analysis.

THE GAME OF RISK
eGR suggests that “the argument that private companies are able to pursue more risky strategies and are therefore more nimble in egaming’s regulatory landscape is also not clear cut.” To back up this assertion, they quote Numis analyst Ivor Jones’ simplistic, folksy observation: “You can be a risk-hungry public company, and you can be a risk-averse private company.” Frankly, this is nonsensical. You can’t be a risk-averse private company and survive. At least, not for very long in our industry, you can’t. Risk-averse companies fail to grow, and failure to grow is fatal when your competition isn’t as complacent.

While a listed company can be hungry, even gagging for risk, that doesn’t mean it will ever be allowed to take serious risks. The ultimate choice isn’t made in the boardroom, or even at shareholder meetings. It’s made by the securities regulators, stock exchange compliance rules and the company lawyers, auditors and compliance officers who are there precisely to make sure board members stay out of jail by not doing something stupid — like trying to open up a business in Asia or take pretty much any risk. It’s like the kid who gets pissed off at his parents and yells: “You’re not the boss of me.” Actually, they are, and if they say you’re not going on that fabulous Asian vacation, you need to start unpacking your suitcase.

Overall, I felt the magazine article reflected the favoritism eGR’s analysts routinely display toward the industry’s listed companies. As this bias appears ingrained, I doubt anything I say will ever budge them from their beliefs. Presumably, they would flip this argument on me, suggesting that my own bias for the privately held model was equally rigid. Perhaps. But between us, I am the only industry analyst in the world who has actual experience starting and running an international online gaming company, which gives me a far more detailed perspective on the pros and cons of each model. And my experience tells me that, taken as a whole, private beats public every time. eGR is run by reporters who are on the payroll of the public companies and none of them are qualified to have an opinion in this area as I see things. There are no gaming industry executives working on their content, so how can they understand this complex area?

Business News

Judging by the tone of the comments posted to the site following their announcement at the beginning of September, the subscription-model decision has been not been popular with eGR’s readers. But eGR has stuck to its guns, and we respect their decision. We also humbly suggest that those readers looking to fill their global gambling news void look no further than CalvinAyre.com. Unlike eGR, we are as accessible as a waterfront bar hooker, but unlike waterfront hookers, we will always give up our goodies free of charge.

In other eGR doings, the company is preparing to publish the latest version of their annual eGR Power 50. This past April, Calvin Ayre took issue with the methodology eGR employed in ranking the online gambling industry’s power players – in particular, the institutional bias displayed towards publicly traded companies. Calvin feels that these companies – whose shareholder agreements preclude them from offering services in the North American and Asian markets, which together account for 80% of the global business – are effectively squabbling amongst each other over crumbs in the comparatively miniscule European market. In Calvin’s view, the low rankings eGR gave the private companies that do have a presence in the more lucrative markets reflected a Power 50 based more on ideology than reality.

However, eGR seems to have taken some of Calvin’s constructive criticism to heart. For the first time, their submission form for inclusion on this year’s Power 50 explicitly lays out a formula by which the rankings will be identified – with 50% of the weighting allocated to a company’s financial performance, 30% given to “strategy, deliverability and geographic reach” and 20% stemming from “influence”. Of course, much of the rationale behind private companies choosing to stay private is to keep their financial info, er, private, so eGR’s list will by necessity rely on some educated guesswork. If we could make a suggestion, why doesn’t eGR do two separate lists – one public, one private? That way, readers could compare apples to apples, and diamonds to diamonds.

Regardless of how eGR’s 2012 list turns out, we’re sure Calvin will have something to say about it. Or perhaps he’ll go all the way and come up with his own PowAyre 50…

Business News

Of course, Hollywood has always recycled its product. They remade silent movies into talkies, shot in color instead of black and white, translated foreign films into English, etc. It’s always been thus and probably always will be. Making a movie is like opening a restaurant: the overwhelming majority of them fail to make money. All too aware of this casualty rate, the people who front the money to make movies prefer to hedge their bets by starting with a proven commodity.

Proven commodity or not, most remakes are dreck. Occasionally, they get it right. If Bryan De Palma hadn’t remade the 1932 Scarface – and fans of that equally classic version didn’t want him to – the world would have never got to experience Al Pacino’s iconic, scenery-chewing, OTT performance. It’s hard to overstate the impact the remake had on modern popular culture. If you traveled back in time and talked De Palma out of doing the movie, when you got back to the present day, half the hip hop videos ever made would have no storyline.

At present, there’s no new Scarface script and no actor attached. The producers (including Martin Bregman, who produced the 1983 version) intend to retain the core concept of an outsider from humble beginnings skillfully navigating his way through a dangerous environment and emerging on top, but the rest is a blank slate. Let’s see… We’ve had (Italian-born) Tony Camonte in Chicago, (Cuban-born) Tony Montana in Miami, and … (Canadian-born) Calvin Ayre in Costa Rica?

Hmm… Calvin does have a Scarface connection, having appeared as himself in a non-playing role in the Scarface video game. But we’re hoping the producers think a little further outside the box; maybe a Chinese-born Tony in Las Vegas. Would it work? Hard to say. After all, films are a gamble.

Entertainment News

Rev. Graham invites you to consult the Book of Alderney, Chapter 9, Verse 12...

Seated onstage alongside Graham and Flint, Bodog UK’s Patrik Selin listened to this ‘regulation cures cancer’ argument for a few minutes before remarking that FTP held valid gaming licenses in both Alderney and France – as does PKR. Does this mean auditors should be taking a closer look at PKR’s balance sheet?

For the record, I’m in no way suggesting that PKR is guilty of anything except a misguided faith in over-regulation. FTP’s problems were chiefly the result of stupidity and hubris – things that even the most draconian regulatory regime couldn’t constrain. Banking is one of the most strictly regulated industries, but as this week’s UBS headlines make all too clear, someone who decides to go ‘rogue’ can do billions in damages before their misdeeds come to light.

COLLATERAL DUMBAGE
Without a doubt, FTP’s fall from grace has damaged the industry as a whole – and that includes the publicly-traded companies, who appear to believe they stand to benefit from this scandal somehow. What they fail to realize is that, thanks to the DoJ’s use of the phrase “Ponzi scheme” and the mainstream media’s rush to judgment, millions of average citizens – many of whom didn’t know the online poker industry existed before this week – now see the entire sector as black-hatted bad guys. As such, when regulation does finally come to the US market, it will be needlessly strict, imposing onerous costs on operators that will ultimately be passed on to players. Lose-lose, fold.

For what it’s worth, the DoJ bears a certain amount of responsibility in FTP’s plight. As various lawyers have pointed out, FTP’s antics, while criminally inept, don’t fit the accepted definition of a Ponzi scheme. Unlike classic Ponzi schemes, FTP had a genuine revenue model. Moreover, most of FTP’s financial shortfall can be traced to the DoJ’s war on online poker eCom that has been going on for the past few years (which we have documented at great length on this site).

Commodore Teufelberger vows to sweep the seas clean of pirates.

SHOOTING STARS
Back at EiG, the CEOs weren’t satisfied with kicking FTP while it was down. In an apparent attempt to launch a ‘guilt by association’ meme, PKR’s Graham suggested that PokerStars – indicted on Black Friday along with FTP – should have its gaming licenses revoked in all the jurisdictions in which it operates. Pwin’s Teufelberger settled for calling US-facing poker companies ‘pirates’, but he has made remarks similar to Graham’s in previous interviews.

Despite the public company CEO’s hopes/wishes/fantasies, the fallout from the expected demise of FTP and PokerStars’ departure from the US market (or disappearing entirely) will not instantly propel public companies to the top of the online poker heap. Particularly in the US, most of the online poker momentum of the past five years was driven by Stars’ and FTP’s promotional efforts. In their absence, online poker’s profile will continue to wane, and even if US federal legislation were passed this year, it will be a long spell before regulations are finalized and systems are implemented.

When such a system is finally up and running, the grinders will return. But by then, a good chunk of the recreational player base – without whom the online poker ecosystem cannot thrive – will have found other ways of entertaining themselves. A few US land-based casino companies will eventually benefit from a heavily regulated US market, but the market as a whole will likely never return to its past glories.

Is Commodore Teufelberger gone?

European public company execs always maintained that the only thing keeping the private companies above them on the online poker charts was access to US liquidity. But the miniscule gains the European outfits picked up post-Black Friday disproved that argument, suggesting these execs might never wake up from their American dreams. They need to stop wasting all their energy attempting to paint US-facing poker companies as predatory threats to the American way of life (we hear Iraq’s former spot on the Axis of Evil is available) and spend more time attempting to formulate some (any!) kind of actionable growth strategy.

As we have suggested time and again, we believe the public company model is the wrong model for our industry. Be that as it may, these public company execs have a fiduciary duty to act in a manner that increases shareholder value – and the only proven, time-tested method of accomplishing that feat is to innovate. Apple’s staggering market capitalization is a perfect example. FTP is/was by far the most innovative company in the online poker sector. Now, with FTP fading from view, we’re betting that these public company execs will have even less incentive to innovate, which will give US poker players even less incentive to return to the game. Lose-lose, fold.

Business News

Getting on the Banca for the trip to the island for BBQ

Everyone in our industry knows I love and respect Asia. They also mostly know I have a lot of business interests in Asia these days, mostly centred in Manila. Manila is the largest city in the philippines and also the centre of the online gaming industry in Asia. Asia is the largest online gaming market in the world so this puts Manila in an interesting power position in the industry as the only place in Asia to get an online gaming license. The industry in Asia is entirely controlled by private companies that are not subsidiaries of any foreign entities, they are stand alone Asian optimised businesses like 188Bet, 12Bet, and bodog88 and many are shirt sponsors of premier league football clubs in the UK. However what not many know about the Philippines is how absolutely beautiful this archipelago of over 7000 islands is.

Hanna, her mother and the house she was born and raised in

Most of the expats working in Manila think getting out of the city is a trip to Boracay or Cebu. Now I love both those places and also have my own wake boarding Villa on Taal Lake just outside Manila, but one of the things I love to do is to get out and see how the locals live…in other words go native. So a week or so back while in Manila on one of my frequent business trips I asked my assistant here to set up a trip to someplace as far off the beaten path as we could. One of the junior domestic trainees working for my assistant is a young girl named Hannah Lopes. She comes from a small fishing village in the centre of the archipelago in the province of Iloilo.

Taking a piss in the beach toilet

Iloilo is one of the first places the Spanish subjugated nearly 500 years back and at this time already had established trade with China and Indonesia. The descendants of the Chinese merchants, some mixed with locals and the Spanish are the ruling class to this very day. They are referred to as Mestizos, even though they are predominantly Chinese today, and in some cases have been in the region for centuries. However what I wanted to see is how the real locals lived so Hannah arranged for us to go visit her family in a small fishing village on the far side of the island named San Vicente. Now saying San Vicente is remote is an understatement. The dirt and mud road literally stops at this village. It was a bumpy 4 hour trip from Iloilo City to our destination. There are about 30 families living a basically hand to mouth existence there. The homes mostly had dirt floors and no running water or toilets. They did have electricity however and each house would not be complete without an old TV and an electric fan. Air con was out of the question since most did not have doors or glass in the windows. I could imagine during a tropical storm things got pretty wet inside these homes.

Kids Kids and More Kids

However what these families lacked in our western concept of material things, as is always the case they made up for it in hospitality and happiness. The Philippines never ceases to amaze me in how happy everyone can be with literally nothing. Contrast this with all the rich miserable people we have in the west and there is something refreshingly innocent about this place. Having little material possession also seems to stimulate what seems like the main non fishing activity in the village…making babies. There was literally a swarm of kids everywhere.

Can it get better than this?

Our trip to visit them was treated like a national holiday for the village. All the kids stayed home from school to greet us and many of them came with us in a rented boat called a banca, over to a local island for a feast of BBQ seafood. I brought a cooler full of ice cold beer and soft drinks and a bottle of 15 year of local Rum so we ended up having a real fun afternoon. I was invited back but I somehow doubt I will ever get back to that magical place. There are just too many other places to see in the world. I will however never forget being treated like a king by a bunch of happy people with nothing, in the small fishing village of San Vicente, Iloilo Province Philippines.

Lifestyle News

As a race itself, the winner usually comes from one of the higher gates if the ground is soft and we will know more on who might be the best bet when the Bronze and Silver Cups have both been run today and tomorrow respectively.

Favorites this year include Pepper Lane and Mac’s Power. Those two will be looking to emulate the last two winners, both ridden by celebrity jockey Frankie Dettori. In addition to this, the town of Ayr and its racecourse have a firm place in the hearts of everyone related to the Bodog Brand.

Calvin returned to his roots earlier this summer when he visited the town to take in the surroundings including a day at the races, Ayr United v Manchester United and the obligatory bout of Scotch whisky. Bodog has sponsored a race at the course in the past and with their sponsorship of Ayr United’s strip still going strong, it shows their commitment to the Scottish town.

To see what Calvin got up to whilst up there last time, follow the link to this video and make sure to look out for the Honest Men’s result this weekend. If you didn’t have a second team, then you have now!

Sports News

Lifestyle News

Day two was a pool party at the industry infamous Bodog Compound in Santa Ana, Costa Rica and we did not allow cameras, but you can read up on the debauchery here. I hope the next 50 years is just as much fun! I hope you enjoy this.

Calvin Ayre

NOTE: Also check out this video which is the surprise one my sister did up for me from old family video of my early life.

Lifestyle News

I hope the next 50 years is just as much fun! I hope you enjoy this.

Calvin Ayre

NOTE: Also check out Calvin’s 50th Birth Day Party video here.

Lifestyle News

Checkout Part-1 and Part-2 of this video.

Lifestyle News

Checkout Part-1 and Part-3 of this video.

Lifestyle News

Checkout Part-2 and Part-3 of this video.

Lifestyle News

Sports News