THE AMERICAS
PokerStars’ New Jersey aspirations came to a screeching halt while the Golden Nugget’s online casino finally got the ‘good to go’ sign and state Sen. Ray Lesniak talked up his plans to turn the Garden State into an iGaming Mecca; Skrill announced it would cease processing online gambling transactions in Canada; Las Vegas Sands laid an egg at the latest US House of Representatives online gambling hearing; ‘poker princess’ Molly Bloom admitted hosting illegal poker games at New York’s Plaza hotel; Caesars Entertainment sued Massachusetts’ top gaming regulator but at least one of its allegations has already been exposed as bogus; Atlantic City had another hurricane-assisted positive revenue month; DoubleDown Casino released its first US Social Casino Player Index and Jason Kirk offered up his poker Christmas wish list.
EUROPE and MIDDLE EAST
Las Vegas Sands pulled the plug on its Spanish Eurovegas project; Holland Casino picked Playtech to take its action online; Betfred owner Fred Done caught flak for his Ebenezer approach to employee wages; Italian sports betting operators protested their death by taxation; Bet365 announced a serious home office reno project; Betsson closed its iconic betting shop in Stockholm; Win set out to conquer the social sports betting sector; those suspicions of Trojans being installed on laptops at EPT Barcelona were confirmed; William Hill and Ladbrokes boosted their mobile offerings; Russia’s bookies worried the axe might fall; Tony G launched a dedicated Open Face Chinese Poker site while tennis great Rafael Nadal won his first live poker tourney; Israel held discussions with Nevada regulators about a casino in the Negev desert; Mike O’Donnell wondered if it was still possible to create a betting brand from scratch; Gemma Boore pondered the ramifications of the UK point of consumption tax; Lee Davy counted down the UK’s top gambling stories of 2013, Rebecca Liggero noted the year’s best industry parties and a bunch of iGaming affiliates made utter prats out of themselves to benefit Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts.
ASIA
Singapore Pools looked to become the city-state’s sole authorized online gambling site; David Walsh offered insights into how the wisdom of crowds factored into the Punters Club’s statistical betting models; South Australia’s ‘won’t someone think of the children’ PSA had social gamers up in arms; South Korea’s sports betting celebrities had their day in court; North Korea purged (then executed) Kim Jong Un’s uncle over alleged gambling issues; SJM Holdings director Angela Leong On Kei told US politicians to butt out of Macau’s junket business; ZipZap’s Eric Benz discussed methods for funding online accounts in developing countries; Clarion Events announced plans for the first Japan Gaming Congress and the Calvin Ayre Foundation turned the focus of its ongoing Super Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts to the island of Malapascua.
