GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 37 - February 2017

QUOTABLES Quotables “This is an absolutely dreadful amendment. It should be thrown out, rejected, sent back to the House of Lords. It is fundamentally wrong. It seeks to punish those who may be innocent, to fine them for telling the truth, for saying things that people in power do not like. It goes to the heart of our free press and it should be thrown in the bin.” —Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg on the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Act, which forces internet providers to keep internet connection records and hand them over to the government if asked. “This decision makes no sense to me. The trial judge said that I was not dishonest and the three appeal judges agreed, but somehow the decision has gone against me. Can someone tell me how you can have honest cheating?” —Phil Ivey, after losing an appeal against Genting Casinos regarding money won using an edge-sorting technique. “A poker site should be transparent. . . . It should do its best to explain its actions. It can’t seek to please everyone by making changes that hurt the business, but it shouldn’t ignore the public. It should be held accountable for the decisions it makes. It should be able to explain itself in a way that reasonable customers will understand.” —Poker pro Phil Galfond, on his new real-money online poker site. “We’re a company that collectively has a little over 5 million customers in a fantasy sports base with almost 60 million total. For us to ever hope to compete for those customers, we really felt this was something that was necessary.” —DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, on the merger between DraftKings and FanDuel. “As the online gaming industry continues to mature, I believe that it is in the best interests of Amaya to be positioned as a private company. While Amaya incurs the substantial costs and scrutiny associated with being a reporting company, it obtains no benefit from being public.” —Amaya founder and former CEO David Baazov, after making a cash offer to take the Canadian owner of PokerStars private in a deal that would have been worth $6.7 million. “Gambling advertising . . . is ignorant of the many and varied ways young people consume modern media, particularly online. The reality is that standards are not consistently applied to the internet and a fundamental rethink and redesign of regulation is required for advertising online.” —Julia Hornle, professor of internet law at Queen Mary University and co-author of report that examines the effect of gambling advertisements on children in the U.K. 6 w w w . g p w a t i m e s . o r g