Josh Andrews

Zero Edge Is Set to Solve the ‘House Always Wins’ Problem

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With hundreds of online casinos springing up on the web each and every day, online gambling is as popular as ever and it is surging forwards rapidly as well. While their seemingly inexhaustible popularity cannot be disputed, online gambling has one major flaw that is tied directly to how many of the online casinos are operated.

If you are familiar with gambling, then the saying “The house always wins” must have flown by you a few times since it even dates back to the very first land-based casinos in Asia and Europe. This is a popular statement essentially because it is very true.

Zerocoin to the Rescue

“All casino games, whether they are found in traditional brick and mortar establishments or online, have one thing in common – the odds are always stacked against the player. Players might be winning for a short period of time and think that they cracked the code, but in reality, they are just “running hot” and sooner or later the variance will do its job to favour the house” explained ZeroEdge.Bet CEO, Adrian Casey. “Most of the players are unaware of the mathematical principles that make beating the casino virtually impossible. Therefore, our goal at ZeroEdge.Bet will be to educate players about gambling and prevent them from falling victims to its traps.”

Zero Edge Casino uses its own Zerocoin, its own in-house cryptocurrency in a bid to solve the age-old problem of the house always winning. This is going to be achieved by completely getting rid of the “house edge” altogether which essentially means that for the very first time in history, players will have a true and fair shot at winning the online games they play at Zero Edge Casino.

Zero Edge’s concept has already penetrated the European and the Middle East gambling markets and is now on the verge of completely taking the Asian online gambling market by storm. The online casino operator is essentially turning the casino industry on its head through the introduction of this revolutionary new and different way for online casinos to make profits without having to exploit their customers. The model instead focuses on profiting by increasing the value of the operator’s digital assets through wider adoption and utility.

To play at Zero Edge Casino, players must first buy Zerocoins but this is a fairly small price to pay considering the goodness of playing with the zero percent house edge that the online casino offers. As more players learn about this incredible offer, they will certainly buy into it which will increase the demand for Zerocoins and, in turn, exponentially increase the cryptocurrency’s value. Things are indeed looking up for the company, and for the rest of the online gambling community as well.

German FA President Opposes Induction of Esports As Sports

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According to Reinhard Grindel, the President of Germany’s Football Association (DFB), Esports is not a sports activity thus the induction of competitive gaming into the Olympics is bizarrely absurd. This was on Sunday 4^th March 2018 when the members of Germany’s social democratic party opened the way for joining the country’s government as a junior partner in a grand coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel. This new development came with more certainty that Esports could soon be recognized as sports in accordance with guidelines set out by the coalition governments.

As it stands, Esports has amassed over 250 million players from all around the globe which makes for a steadily growing market that currently rakes in more than a billion dollars every year. This is more than what a decent number of traditional Olympic sports federation can manage, even when combined. However, despite the heavy lobbying that was required to have Esports acknowledged as real sports as well as increasing amount of support that it has been amassing, there are many critical opposing voices that are still not convinced. Thus, apparently, the debate about whether Esports should be considered as “real sports” is not even close to coming to an end.

“The biggest competition to kids coming to our sports club is not handball or basketball, but the use of digital equipment. That is absolute impoverishment,” Grindel said, as reported by Reuters. “Sport plays a social function and this happens in the community. With sport, you have direct contact with those you play. Soccer is home to the green turf and has nothing to do with other, computer generated things. For me, Esports is not sports.”

Furthermore, the Grindel pointed out that he his opinion on the increasing amount that children and young adults spent on mobile devices to be “eine absolute Verarmung,” which can roughly be translated to “a total degeneration.”

There are, obviously, underlying interests on both sides of these debates and this makes it more complex than what people think is happening on the surface. Esports is inherently a for-profit industry and this is especially true for the industry players that have been backing it. The people on the opposing side, like Grendel, are also fighting to protect their market shares. Unfortunately, Esports is catching up quite quickly.

In November 2017, the International Olympic Committee would only consider having Esports as a component of the Olympics if Esports did not “infringe on the Olympic values.” This means that Esports games that feature explosions, violence and killing had to be ruled out.

Leagues Push for a Cut of Sportsbetting Revenue May Deter It

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While sports betting in all other parts of the United States outside the state of Nevada is on the verge of being legalized, there are a couple of new developments that are likely to affect the process in a rather negative way.

According to Twitter’s vice president of Analytics, Jeff Ma, even as the major sports leagues like the National Football League and the National Basketball Association become aware of the multibillion-dollar opportunity that sports betting offers, their approach towards getting a piece of the will end up impeding the ability to lead gamblers away from illegal betting and offshore operators. Ma also said that the NBA, in particular, has proven to be “short-sighted” by requesting a 1 percent cut on all the bets placed on its games.

If you are unfamiliar with Jeff Ma you might be wondering what a Twitter VP has to do with online sports betting. Well, Ma was once one of the leaders of the infamous MIT blackjack team which inspired the movie 21 and a book titled Bringing Down the House. He is a renowned expert in the gambling industry and has an incredible understanding of how the professional sports leagues work or operate – he even once served as a consultant for the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers and the NFL’s Francisco 49ers.

“Traditionally, a lot of the leagues are run by lawyers so they think about how do we protect our assets, they don’t think about how do we monetize our assets,” Ma said in an interview with CNBC during the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “In this case, they are thinking protect and charge people money instead of focusing on the bigger opportunity down the road.”

In Ma’s opinion, a partnership between the professional sports leagues and the sports betting operators will definitely be a better alternative especially at the earlier stages of the industry’s growth after the ban on sports betting is lifted. He also pointed out that while the flat fee off the top that the leagues are advocating for could certainly be feasible in the long run, the market will need to grow significantly before that.

Operators in the Crosshairs as New Austrian Regulations Loom

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The Ministry of Finance in Austria is in the process of scrutinizing the Gambling Act in the country in a bid to introduce some new amendments that will certainly have a huge impact on the country’s local online gambling market. To be more specific, the revised Gambling Act would potentially ban all the foreign gambling operators and even go as far as requesting that the operators to refund the players for all the losses they have accrued at the said casinos for the past 30 or so years.

This Ban Is Not the Solution

Perhaps one of the most notable aspects of the revised Gambling Act is the proposition that the all the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country should ban the IP addresses belonging to all the gambling operators that are currently operating different online gambling business to Austrian gamblers. Just like in Germany, all of these online gambling sites are not sanctioned by the state and it is, therefore, safe to say that they are operating in a grey area. As such, all those that have stopped or are planning to stop marketing their services and products in Austria are to be blocked.

This does not sit well with quite a number of people. Without reading too much into the situation, it is quite clear that the ban will effectively create a monopoly which will favour Casino Austria, which, as it turns out, is the only site that is licensed in Austria – Casino Austria is also partially owned by the Austrian government. Experts and avid followers of the casino industry believe that the move to ban other reputable operators will have negative effects on the industry and ultimately drive the gamblers to unregulated and unlicensed sites.

Even though it is rather obvious that the IP ban will go against the spirit of freedom for service provision in the European Union, the Austrian ministry of finance is hell-bent on seeing it through. This resulted in an idea that the ministry hoped would keep unlicensed foreign operators away and prevent them from trying to find a workaround to bypass the ban.

To be more precise, the ministry proposed that all contracts between players from Austria and unlicensed operators over the past three decades should be considered to be null and void. The operators would, therefore, have to return all player loses since the period stipulated by the proposed plan. Still, the legality and enforceability of this law are still highly questionable, the Austrian Ministry of Finance hopes that the threat alone will serve to keep foreign and unlicensed operators at bay.

There are a number of companies that are already getting ready to fight for their rights using all the legal resources they have. All of these operators have no issue paying their dues but they are not willing to allow the country’s authority take advantage of their power in order to create a monopoly something that even the European Union itself will not accept as well.

Bitcoin Nears Regulatory Crackdown, Says Bank of England

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The Bank of England has issued a warning stating that bitcoin is headed towards a regulatory crackdown – it also pointed out that “inherently risky” cryptocurrencies are failing to fulfil their most basic function as a store of value. The banks’ governor, Governor Mark Carney, in a speech and interview that were held on Friday, tore into bitcoin. In his words, the world’s most popular decentralized digital currency is on the verge of a “pretty brutal reckoning.”

His remarks extended beyond bitcoin as an individual asset and included cryptocurrencies as a whole, which he also thinks have “all the hallmarks of a bubble. And normally they end with a pretty brutal reckoning.” Carney’s most significant concern was however portrayed by his call to have the “anarchy” of cryptocurrencies being utilized as a medium of exchange for criminal activities brought to an end. He said that it was about time that relevant authorities worked towards a framework to “regulate elements of the crypto-asset ecosystem to combat illicit activities”.

There are already a number of efforts around the world that are geared towards bringing bitcoin under the control of governments and central banks especially due to the prevailing fears that bitcoin users are likely to lose their money due to market manipulation. On the same note, there have been even more efforts directed towards curbing the use of cryptocurrencies for criminal activities such as drug dealing, money laundering and even financing terrorism.

In the run to Christmas in 2017, bitcoin soared very close to the $20,000 mark before plunging back by more than half at the beginning of the year. It has however recovered to $11,000 but there is still a ton of uncertainty plaguing the digital currency.

“Authorities are rightly concerned that given their inefficiency and anonymity, one of the main reasons for their use is to shield illicit activities. This cannot be condoned. Anarchy may reign on the dark web, but in the UK it’s just a song that your parents used to listen to,” Carney said in the speech.

Will Everything Be Put Under Scrutiny?

Staunch believers in the bitcoin dream have maintained that the underlying technology of most, if not all, cryptocurrencies will certainly revolutionize the existing financial systems and in the process make everyday payments not only cheaper but also easier than they seem to be at the moment.

Carney clarified on this particular issue saying that the bank would still study, explicitly, the use of the distributed ledger technology that powers cryptocurrencies. He concluded that, as much as cryptocurrencies “do not appear to pose material risks to financial stability,” the situation is bound to shift as more people become aware of them.

Stars Group Expands Sports Betting Business with CrownBet

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The Stars Group, PokerStars’ parent company is expanding their sports betting business with the recent purchase of 62 percent of the CrownBet Holdings Pty Limited for about $117.7 million. As per the terms of the sale, CrownBet founder and CEO, Rowen Bruce Craigie, now owns 38 percent of the company and will continue to operate the business. Currently, CrownBet is one of the most popular online sports betting operators in Australia.

CrownBet’s revenues rose from AUS$76.5 million in 2015 to AUS$2014 million (which is approximately $158.9 million) in 2017. Furthermore, unaudited EBITDA for last year came in at approximately AUS$7.9 million which is equivalent to $6.15 million.

“We are excited to enter the regulated Australian sportsbook market with CrownBet. CrownBet has become one of the fastest growing online sportsbooks in Australia through its strong management team, proprietary technology, mobile app, unique partnerships and market-leading loyalty program,” said Stars Group CEO, Rafi Ashkenazi.

CrownBet still owns the Betfair branded betting exchange business which means that it has not yet exited this particular facet of the market. CrownBet’s primary business revolves around the Crown Casinos that are based in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. The revenues from their online effort are still relatively smaller than what the casinos rake in but this should improve with under the new part-ownership with the Stars Group.

More to Come from Stars

At the moment, the Stars Group has already moved to recruit new sports bettors from its significantly huge online poker face. The company has been making use of cross-selling in order to maximize the amounts it rakes in from each and every one of its constituent businesses.

For instance, it is currently running a “Big Race” promotion that combines action with a race-themed poker tournament which is scheduled for March 4, followed by a Cheltenham Gold Cup horse race promotion set for March 16^th.

Since CrownBet will be joining the Stars Group family of brands, a number of similar marketing efforts will be directed towards it so as to increase the range of services that the Australian market will receive from CrownBet.

Spain’s La Liga and Barcelona Venture into Esports

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Recently, there have been a couple of huge announcements affecting or involving the Spanish football; scene and they all revolve around Esports.

First, Barcelona announced its first Esports team that will compete against other European soccer giants in Pro Evolution Soccer 2018. Barcelona is now the first Catalan club to compete in the Esports game after it reached an agreement with Konami and eFootball.Pro. The team members are also quite excited about the Barcelona’s entry into the world of Esports. Gerard Pique, FC Barcelona’s center-back pointed out that the team would be able to contribute their values to the competition on top of being a formidable foe to the other teams.

“Barça is attentive to what happens in this global and technological world, and in view of the important growth of eSports, it is opening the way to also being a leader in this field,” said the Vice President of Marketing and Communication for FC Barcelona, Manel Arroyo. “FC Barcelona, in keeping with its innovative spirit, has decided to participate in a pioneering competition in the world of eSports, by the best partners, Konami, and eFootball.Pro. We are confident that this competition will continue to make members and culers from all over the world, as well as followers of eSports, proud.”

La Liga Sees Bright Future for Esports

La Liga, the Spanish football league has also revealed that the league will be expanding by venturing into Esports with a number of Esports projects they plan to effect in the very near future with soccer, or football, being at the center stage.

The league’s projects are intended to bridge the gap between the league and millennial generations as well as increasing engagement with the already established audiences. They also intend to grow the brand further in a way that will certainly appeal to new audiences.

To kick off its venture, La Liga has launched La Liga Esports, which, as stated by them, will include “ambitious projects, the details of which will be revealed in the coming months, which aim to bring together a passion for football and the exciting world of esports. Hard work, competitiveness and teamwork are some of the values that are common to both football and esports and these are the characteristics that football-loving gamers or those who, over time, may acquire such a profile will get the chance to showcase through these projects.”

Some of La Liga’s sponsors are clearly impressed by what the Esports scene has to offer. However, the Esports projects will initially be rolled out only in Spain in coming months before being expanded further to include international audiences.

Ellen DeGeneres Has Been Hosting High-Stakes Poker Games

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Turns out, Ellen DeGeneres is a poker freak. The talk show regularly hosts high-stakes poker games at the California home where she stays with wife Portia De Rossi, but only Hollywood’s top names are invited to play.

Wait, is it legal? Well, of course, the games are completely legal in California. Reportedly, Ellen’s poker games are pretty huge, sometimes racking up pots worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, the poker games have drawn so much attention since they show Ellen’s life outside her famous TV show – this is likened to her dark side.

According to Radar Online, the comedienne has a tendency of not holding anything back during the games – some of the participants of her poker games have described her as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of sorts with poker being her medicine of choice. A recent invitee gave an account of how she was not able to keep up with the game and this earned her Ellen’s wrath and rage for supposedly ‘ruining the game.’ This frightened the guest and caused her so much grief that she eventually decided to fold her cards and get away from Ellen’s $18.6 million oceanfront property.

The invitee, whose identity remains undisclosed said that “The energy around the table was very tense. Ellen threw a tantrum, and her screams echoed through the halls as frightened guests looked on in sheer disbelief!”

Is Too Unbelievable?

Obviously, this is definitely not the image that DeGeneres has been portraying on TV ever since she began her stand-up comedy routines in the late 70s. It was about the same time that Ellen made an appearance on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1986. Since then, Ellen has appeared in a number of films including the massively successful Finding Nemo and Finding Dory animated film. She also starred in a self-titled show, Ellen, for 1994 to 1998 before jumping on to her talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2003. Her Show has earned her 29 Daytime Emmy Awards alongside a Primetime Emmy Awards, two Grammy Award nominations as well as three more Golden Globes nominations.

Chelsea Handler, Melissa Etheridge, and Olivia Munn are some of the few Hollywood bigwigs who have been courageous enough to risk their pride by going against Ellen. All the attendees describe the games as tense and dark especially because they had to be careful not to step on the hosts, toes. Sometimes, she even throws objects in the room if things do not go her way.

Circle’s Latest Acquisition Could Make It A Financial Giant

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Circle, a renowned financial services firm that specializes in cryptocurrencies and related mobile payments, yesterday (February 26^th) announced that it would be purchasing the cryptocurrency exchange known as Poloniex. The exchange has been operational since 2014 and was at one time considered to be one of the biggest exchanges in the market. Even though a lot of competition has sprung, Poloniex remains to be among the top 20 largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume. According to Fortune, Circle will be parting with $400 million or thereabouts for the acquisition – this move effectively makes Circle one of the most influential and largest companies in the industry.

In an official statement following the announcement, Poloniex said that its teams would be strengthened by the operational and customer support resources from Circle that will help them to scale effectively henceforth.

We recognize that our extraordinary growth these past few years has not come without some growing pains for our users. We look forward to bringing Circle’s experience to increase the scalability and reliability of our platform and operations. – Poloniex.

Circle’s history is quite interesting. It was first pitched as a bitcoin company that intended to make bitcoin more accessible – something along the lines of being the PayPal for bitcoin where the users could buy and sell bitcoin quickly and easily in the simplest way possible. Later, the company went ahead to dub itself as a social payment company, a Venmo competitor. However, the company eventually got back into the cryptocurrency game full swing with Circle Pay.

Circle Pay is Circle’s peer-to-peer payment service that is now one of the companies more critical efforts. Circle also runs an over-the-counter trading desk for large crypto exchanges and investors known as Circle Trade. Circle Trade essentially fosters liquidity between cryptocurrencies and a number of fiat currencies. It also powers Circle Pay. Fortune reveals that Circle Trade manages $2 billion in monthly transactions and it generated close to $60 million in revenue in a span of just three months.

A Timely Expansion?

Now, Circle is expanding its portfolio of products with an easy-to-use investment app called Circle Invest that will mostly cater to people who want to start buying digital currencies. Ultimately, having a cryptocurrency exchange of its own would be great for Circle and this is where Poloniex comes in. Circle intends to build on the work that had already been done by the Poloniex team with the end goal being to push it past being “an exchange for only crypto assets.”

“We envision a robust multi-sided distributed marketplace that can host tokens which represent everything of value: physical goods, fundraising and equity, real estate, creative productions such as works of art, music, and literature, service leases and time-based rentals, credit, futures, and more,” Circle co-founders Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville wrote.

Poloniex assured its users that there would be no disruption of the services the exchange offers during the transition. All the updates that will be made in the course of the transition will be done in the background and will be geared towards optimizing user experience, security as well as the overall performance of the exchange.

Second Annual Live Gaming Summit: What to Look Forward To

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Since its rather humble pioneering start over a decade ago, live casino gaming has grown to be a vital component of the online gambling industry – the revenue statistics are proof of this. In fact, according to data provided by H2 Gambling Capital, by 2014 over 60 percent of the European Union’s regulated market’s Gross Gaming Revenue was generated by live online gaming. This already impressive revenue stream is expected to increase by 50 percent by 2020.

Owing to these outstanding financial statistics mentioned above as well as the tremendous market developments in the recent past, the Live Gaming Summit was conceptualized so as to bring together operators, providers, experts and many other stakeholders in the gambling community. This year on April 26^th, the second ever annual Live Gaming Summit, is set to be held in Barcelona and will extend beyond discussions on online gambling to other key components of the gambling industry such as TV betting fantasy sports and land-based among many others.

It Is Getting Bigger

Many of the operators and suppliers who attended the recent ICE Totally Gaming Conference showed a great deal of interest in 2018’s Live Gaming Summit. Last year, close to a hundred visiting parties from over fourteen countries participated in the maiden edition of the annual Live Gaming Summit and they got to enjoy a number of sterling presentations as a well as an all-night networking opportunity.

As it stands, participating speakers from Ezugi, Evolution Gaming, Mr. Green, Unibet, and LeoVegas have already confirmed their attendance. With the diversity that the summit is promising this year, the summit has confirmed the attendance of representative from a number of AR and VR suppliers, fantasy sports providers, TV betting companies as well land-based casinos. Also confirmed to be attending are a decent selection of sponsors and media partners even though they are yet to be officially announced.

This year’s annual Live Gaming Summit will be hosted at the elegant Casino Barcelona which will still be running live action of its blackjack and roulette games. so, there is really so much more to look forward to.