The WSOP November Nine series has come to an end with an improbable (certainly deemed so by the bookmakers, who were mostly favoring JC Tran by a wide margin) win by none other than Ryan Riess or as his fans affectionately call him, “Riess The Beast”. His lion-like resilience, cold-blooded playing style and readiness to act when there was a sizable opportunity truly earn him the nickname, one that will most likely stick through the ages, much like “Texas Dolly”, one might dare say. The Michigan native’s victory was a whole lot less of an improbability once the game started: Ryan comfortably took the lead in the early stages and maintained it all throughout, only to concede it to Jay Farber after Day 1, which was on Monday, November 4. Well, it went way past November 4 when all was said and done, at about 2:30 in the morning Vegas time. Day 2, though, was finished much quicker, with Ryan Riess being crowned the 2013 world champion at a ceremony attended by all his fans who were there for him for the whole duration of the competition, including his family members, close friends and Michigan State University colleagues. Ryan cited Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 stunning win as a personal inspiration for him during all those years that built up to his current ace-player status. 14 years old at the time, he took Moneymaker’s shining example as a real opportunity builder, becoming a Kmart cashier turned into pro poker player. However, the Kmart job wasn’t his highest achievement before commencing a successful poker career – Riess is a graduate of MSU with a Bachelor’s Degree in Hospitality.

The final nine players of the 44th annual World Series of Poker have been selected from a total of 6,352 hopefuls that entered the competition in late May. By surviving all stages and winning considerable amounts of money along the way, the nine contestants look forward to the most thrilling and action-filled table of the entire series – the Final one, to be played on November 4 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

While for the other 6,343 players this year’s competition is well over, the “November Nine” pros look forward to its highest point. Any of them can end up the winner of $8,359,531 and a WSOP gold bracelet worth more than $500,000, but all of them will walk out with sizeable amounts of cash, as the prize pool is a whopping $59,708,800. Let’s take a look at the Final Table players’ seat assignments, chip counts and general info: Seat 1 – Sylvain Loosli with 19,600,000 chips Born and raised in Toulon, France, he proudly represents the country even though he resides in London, England. At 26 years of age and holding a business degree, he has little to brag about when it comes to live tournaments, with no career WSOP cashes and a minute sum of $3,198 recorded earnings worldwide. However, he is basically an expert in online poker, where he’s won more than $1,000,000 so far and that feat will serve him well at the Final Table, where he’ll have the chance to make the most out of his skills. In his spare time, Loosli enjoys snowboarding, surfing, playing tennis and travelling. Seat 2 – Michiel Brummelhuis with 11,275,000 chips The 32-year-old Dutchman from Amsterdam is one of the more experienced players, this being his fourth time of playing at the Main Event, first since 2008. Besides having already more than quadrupled his WSOP winnings and more than doubled his career ones by his performance at the 2013 Series, Michiel also improved his country’s overall stats, being the first Hollander to advance to the WSOP Final Table. He looks forward to improve them even further by becoming the fourth Dutchman to ever be awarded a WSOP gold bracelet. Seat 3 – Mark Newhouse with 7,350,000 chips Originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the 28-year-old pro now resides in Los Angeles. His player experience is quite vast, as he has been in every Main Event since 2006, acquired $152,725 in WSOP winnings and previously cashed six times. Now he hopes to significantly add to his already impressive $2,004,277 in live tournament winnings. Seat 4 – Ryan Riess with 25,875,000 chips The youngest competitor among the November Nine, Riess is currently 23 years old and a resident of Las Vegas. Having graduated from the Michigan State University with a business degree, he is now focused on poker, already being a professional player with several WSOP cashes and $309,478 in live tournament winnings. Seat 5 – Amir Lehavot with 29,700,000 chips Amir is at the other end of the age spectrum, as he is the oldest competitor (38 years of age) to play at the Final Table this coming November, despite the fact that he is of the very average age of this year’s Main Event field. Born and raised in Israel, the nation he also represents at the tournament, he now lives in Weston, Florida. His poker professionalism is evinced by his twelve previous WSOP cashes totaling more than $800,000, a gold bracelet victory in the 2011 WSOP championship of $10,000 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha and total career tournament winnings of more than $1.5 million. Lehavot is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with an Engineering degree. Seat 6 – Marc-Etienne McLaughlin with 26,525,000 chips Coming from Brossard, Quebec, Marc-Etienne is the Canadian representative at the Final Table and hopes to become the second French Canadian to win the world title and bracelet. His chances are rather high as this is the fifth year in a row that sees him playing in the Main Event, along with the fact that he cashed six previous times and earned $639,168. Besides playing poker, McLaughlin, 25 is also a tattoo artist and enjoys playing ping pong and soccer. Seat 7 – JC Tran with 38,000,000 chips The 36-year-old pro of Sacramento, California sits comfortably in the chip lead and is looking forward to maintaining it when all is said and done in November. The odds are greatly in favor of that happening if one is to judge based on career stats – JC previously cashed 44 times, won two gold bracelets and a circuit ring and earned $1,843,946, all these at the WSOP. His total winnings stand at an impressive $8.3 million that is bound to become more than $9 million no matter what happens at the Final Table in November. It will also be his largest WSOP cash, guaranteed at a minimum of $733,224. Seat 8 – David Benefield with 6,375,000 chips David joins the Final Table in possession of the smallest chip stack but that will not deter the part-time professional from successfully vying for the first place. The 27-year-old Texan from Fort Worth now resides in New York City and is a part-time student of Chinese and Political Science at Columbia University. Having twelve WSOP cashes and live tournament winnings totaling $633,243, the experienced player will be looking strong at the Final Table. Seat 9 – Jay Farber with 25,975,000 chips The 28-year-old Pennsylvanian’s presence in the Final is perhaps one of contemporary poker’s biggest surprises – Farber plays as a hobby and only entered the WSOP Main Event last year. But the truly astonishing part is his lack of any previous cashes and total lifetime poker winnings of $2,155 (that’s correct, two thousand one hundred and fifty-five US dollars)! The November event will certainly catapult both Jay’s poker career and the earnings associated with it, the latter increasing by hundreds, if not thousands, of times.

May 27, 2013

The NASCAR slot machine just recently mentioned in our news feed has made its debut in Las Vegas this past Friday at the initiative of Boyd Gaming, with the company offering it up for play at several of its locations. Some of them are the casinos at Main Street Station, Orleans, Gold Coast, Suncoast, Sam’s Town, California or Fremont.

The move had been announced on Wednesday, May 22. Chris Gibase, Boyd’s senior vice president of operations, conveyed the following message in a statement: “Our customers love NASCAR, so it makes perfect sense for Boyd Gaming to be one of the first casino companies in the country to offer this game.”

Boyd Gaming has been sponsoring the annual Nationwide NASCAR race in Las Vegas since 1997, with the contract extended in March of this year through 2017; the company is one of the longest-running title sponsors in this particular NASCAR series.

Gibase also commented that “We see Bally’s NASCAR game as a perfect example of what our guests are looking for when they visit a Boyd Gaming property. It’s an engaging and memorable gaming experience.”

May 13, 2013

Designer Bill Wadleigh recently spoke about his forthcoming NASCAR-themed slot machine, one which has a very interesting bonus game. His ideas ran thus: “We’ll just make a tire a wheel. Wheels are very attuned to gambling.”

However, the slot machine is not simply about wheels and reels, a thought also expressed by Wadleigh – “It is a video game”. And we can take him up on his word, since he was originally involved in the video game industry. Now the head of development at Bally Technologies, he has found himself increasingly closer to his roots, even as Bally and so many other slot machine producers are at the commencement of a process meant to close the gap between traditional reel slots and immersive video games.

“From a technological standpoint, on a slot machine, it’s pretty insane,” Wadleigh stated. “Insane in a good way.”

The most immersive slots, including the NASCAR-themed one, have gone outside of the basic player-character interaction realm; they are accessorized with 3D engines, state-of-the-art video cards and complex mathematics. Thus, the machines offer gamblers scenarios that they can control, very similar to the video games popularized by Xbox and PlayStation.

Click the spin button on NASCAR in order to benefit from the “U-Race” bonus: once that happens, you are racing three laps at Daytona. There are four characters that you can choose to sit behind the wheel – Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson or Kevin Harvick – but you are in control. Three arrows will appear as you begin the race: left, straight ahead and right. Pick one and that determines the driver’s decision.

When tapping the right arrow, “I can pass on the high side!” will be the driver’s response and he will act according to it. The forward arrow will elicit the confident “I’m going for the lead!” assertion and, behold, that’s what the car does. At the finish line, you are cordially informed “Couldn’t have done it without you!” – winning is not that easy, though, but there is money to be earned with every decision (the actual beauty of a bonus).

Wadleigh says that possibilities like taking part in a race or interesting bonus scenarios maintains the player’s interest and desire to play again. “We’re out to find something that’s compelling to a player,” he said. “And not just compelling once, but a repeatable event that has a lot of different variety in it.”

According to the American Gaming Association, there are more than 853,000 electronic gaming machines in the USA, Nevada being at the top of the list with more than 178,000. On the national level, casinos make 62% of their revenue from slot machines.

Slot makers invest a lot of time and energy into developing games based on television shows, movies or pop stars. Wadleigh expressed it as the industry’s desire to bring about something new and exciting, whether by a subtle, incremental change or a vastly radical one.

Pawn Stars is one example of how novelty and excitement can be brought to the world of slots – you have the opportunity to trade with the famous characters starring in the History Channel show. Once you roll the Rick bonus, the deal-savvy leader Rick Harrison appears on the screen. Among many things, you have the chance to sell him a rare gas pump from the 1930s.

However, Rick is skeptical about the item’s authenticity and asks you whether you’d like to call an expert. Once “Call an Expert” is activated, Rick calls and quickly afterwards gives you the answer: “Sorry, my expert said it’s a reproduction. … Thanks for stopping by my shop.”

Another bonus is the Old Man one, where Richard Harrison pops up saying “So, what do we have here?” It turns out to be an acoustic guitar from the 1970s that the Old Man examines and lets you make an offer.After that, he counters it and you accept the final price – $170, which is also your winning amount.

If the above-mentioned slot innovations are not compelling enough for proving how the gap between traditional machines and immersive video games is being bridged, one can take a look at IGT’s CSI (set in New York, Miami or Las Vegas), WMS’ Alice In Wonderland or Bally’s Michael Jackson and become convinced of the concept’s accomplishment.

“It’s so much more than hitting 7-7-7,” Daniel Sahl (a sociology instructor at UNLV who has been studying the connection between slot machines and video games for the past three years) said. “(Manufacturers) are doing an amazing job tapping into the cultures people love.”

May 13, 2013 The €25,000 High Roller competition at the 2013 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo® Casino European Poker Tour Grand Final has passed its final stages. The prestigious event was won by Steven Silverman, who also attained the largest score of his career.

Place	Player	Prize
1	Steven Silverman	€775,400*
2	Tony Gregg	€760,000*
3	Fadar Kamar	€760,000*
4	Vanessa Selbst	€290,300
5	Toby Lewis	€232,400
6	Chris Moore	€193,500
7	Igor Kurganov	€154,700
8	Victor Sbrissa	€116,100

_{*Denotes a three-handed deal.} When the final day of play commenced, Silverman was third according to the number of chips and all the attention was focused on defending champion Igor Kurganov and Team Poker Stars Pro Vanessa Selbst. Kurganov defeated a field of 133 players and won this event in 2012; he was looking for a spectacular repeat, while Selbst won the $25,000 High Roller at the 2013 Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure and entered Day 3 of this tournament as a chip leader. Kurganov’s hopes for a miraculous back-to-back feat were shattered as on his final hand of Ace of DiamondTen of Diamonds he went all-in with against Silverman’s Ace of ClubsQueen of Spades with the blinds worth 15,000/30,000/4,000 during Level 23. The community cards were revealed as Seven of HeartsSix of ClubsThree of DiamondsJack of DiamondsTwo of Clubs, having Kurganov eliminated with €154,700 in money won. As the next level unfolded, Selbst re-raised to 185,000 Tony Gregg’s raise of 80,000. Gregg replied by making it 480,000 to go to which Selbst further responded by going all-in for about 1.8 million. Gregg called, with his Ace of ClubsKing of Clubs to compete against Selbst’s Queen of DiamondsJack of Diamonds. Initially, Selbst was in the lead when the flop turned out to be Queen of ClubsFour of ClubsTwo of Diamonds, but the turn wasEight of Spades, with the river showing Ace of Spades, thus making Gregg the victor and locking Selbst in fourth place at €290,300 in winnings. When the three-handed action began, a few attempts at striking a deal were made, unsuccessful at first. Later on, Silverman, Gregg and Kamar agreed to a deal that earned €760,000 each and left €15,000 and the title to be contended for. Fadar Kamar quickly fell in third place, leaving Silverman and Gregg to play for the trophy, the extra cash amount and the Shamballa Jewels bracelet. The two are good friends and went for a little break where they enjoyed some coffee; after that brief respite, Silverman rapidly stretched his lead over Gregg, precipitating the final hand play. That occurred when both competitors went in, Silverman with Ace of SpadesJack of Spades against Gregg’s Two of ClubsTwo of Hearts. On the flop, Six of HeartsFive of DiamondsThree of Hearts, Gregg took the lead but the Jack of Clubs turn made Silverman the front runner. That title stuck to him when the Jack of Hearts river was revealed and eliminated Gregg with €760,000 to take home. Silverman scored the extra cash, bringing his total to €775,400 – the best performance of his career and all the more exciting since he entered the tournament via a €3,000 satellite.

May 11, 2013

The State of New Jersey experienced the sharpest decline in gross gaming and tax revenues when compared to the other 21 states which had operational commercial casinos during 2012.

This was one of the key findings of the 2013 State of the States survey published by the American Gaming Association, a trade group headquartered in Washington, DC.

Other outstanding discoveries of the survey included the fact that Philadelphia held on to its title of No.1 racetrack-gaming market in the United States (its gross gaming revenue stood at $835.3 million) – Parx Casino and Racing of Bensalem was in the lead there for the third consecutive year.

Also, the survey found that an increasing number of young patrons (aged 21 through 35) are frequenting casinos – they constituted 39 percent of those polled for the first time and were more attracted to non-gambling amenities such as restaurants or nightclubs.

As a whole, the United States commercial (non-tribal) casino industry grossed a revenue of $37.34 billion in 2012, an improvement of 4.8% compared to 2011, thus signaling the third straight year of growth. Not only that, but last year brought about the industry’s second highest level since 2007, before the effects of recession were felt.

Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., the outgoing president and CEO of the American Gaming Association, expressed optimism and excitement at this particular result of the survey, telling reporters in a conference call that “That’s tremendously good news. You add the impact of casino tax revenues and jobs, [and] both the present and future look bright for the industry.”

Fifteen of the twenty-two states that had operational casinos in 2011 experienced an increase in the gross gaming revenues of last year and the main reason that New Jersey was not among them proved to be the impact of Hurricane Sandy. The devastating natural disaster also took its toll on casinos, forcing them to close and further deterring potential customers by keeping tourists away.

These realities, coupled with an increase of gaming activities in neighboring Pennsylvania, allowed for Philadelphia to overtake Atlantic City in gross gaming revenue for the first time in history. “Pennsylvania has been one of the great successes in our industry,” according to Fahrenkopf – he also quoted Caesars Entertainment’s CEO Gary Loveman as saying that the Northeast is an underserved market and that the statistics in Pennsylvania truly reflect that fact.

“But, of course, there is a price for that, and I think Atlantic City has been hit by that,” he added. “Those that live in Philadelphia no longer have to drive to Atlantic City.”

On the East Coast, several states are increasing their casino activities, with New York considering the possibility of adding nontribal casinos, Maryland already doing it and Maine also having an increase in the field; MGM Resorts International is in the process of building a casino in DC. Fahrenkopf prediction is that the competition will increase in the next few years.

However, one gaming aspect that New Jersey seems to be a winner at is the employment of a greater number of additional people: in 2012, the number of casino jobs in the state increased by 5.8%, bringing the total to 34,726. The greater part of this 5.8% growth was contributed by Revel, a company that added 2,000 jobs in a place, as Fahrenkopf described it, “that really needed it”. At the other end of the spectrum, Pennsylvania’s casino jobs saw a 2.7% increase and a grand total of 10,162 employees.

The American Gaming Association’s fifteenth annual report surveyed 300 people aged 21 through 35 who had been at a casino in 2012. This age group had the highest rate of casino visitation, 39%, compared to the general adult population at 34%. Younger clients also wagered online, played poker and tried their luck at the lottery in higher numbers than the general casino public. Online betting is gaining popularity and support in the US nowadays, as three states (Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey) have legalized certain forms of Internet gambling.

The younger population that took part in the survey was also more likely to frequent non-gaming attractions when going to a casino, such as concerts, nightclubs, shopping, spas and pools – Atlantic City and Las Vegas are actively marketing and investing in them.

Fahrenkopf was again highly positive in his remarks when assessing the impact of younger people on the casino industry: “That all bodes well for the future. They are our lifeblood.”

At the national level, this industry employed 332,000 workers in 2012, down 0.9% from 2011; it generated $13.2 billion in wages, benefits and tips.