Belarussian high roller Nikita “fish2013” Bodyakovskiy who is rightfully perceived as one of the best NL Hold’em players, won super high roller tournament with $65,000 buy-in in Macao defeating Tom Dwan himself in the head-up. Bodyakovskiy earned $420,255 total.

The real name of the Belarusian players is much less known in comparison with his nickname -  fish2013. According to HighStakesDB data, the profit of the Belarussian went over $600,000 in 2016, though he lost about $450,000 by March, 2017…

Poker vloggers were very active during the recent months. Daniel Negreanu began to record some nice content, Jake Cody develops his channel (one of the most interesting about poker), Alec Torelli regularly uploads videos e.tc.

We liked one of the latest vlogs of EPT Deauville champion Jake Cody where he visits Asia, Macao, for the first time, participates in exorbitant cash games and Macau Poker Cup Red Dragon Event tournaments.

The famous online commerce giant - Chinese corporation Alibaba (which, by the way, owns the popular on CIS territory web site Aliexpress), organizes its own poker tour with total prize fund of $7 million! The next stage is scheduled in Shanghai with no particular date disclosed yet.

We wrote about poker in China in September: payouts in iPhones and cash games being restricted so one could get in jail for participating in them; we also wrote of official tournaments there.

We all were mistaken so much. The market of illegal poker “trinkets” is huge. HUGE. The Chinese ask for $5,000 for the device we’ll talk further. And that is Chinese! It would have cost several times that in America or Europe. Probably, you’ve been ripped with the help of this device several times…

Thanks to superb article by Elie Bursztein, who is the head of Google Google's anti-abuse department, which invents ways to protect users against cyber-criminal crimes, we’ve managed to realize how good at work are different poker analyzers.

Those who created them really deserve some sort of award. This is truly an engineer piece of art, which is used worldwide.

As you might know, gambling is officially prohibited in China. It doesn’t stop poker enthusiast though. Just like in any other country where gambling is prohibited, the Chinese think of their own ways and tricks to bypass the law. Besides, donэt forget about many underground games around the country.

At the moment, official poker life in China is centered in Macao, and is quite poor in comparison with Vegas, for instance. This comparison isn’t correct even. Vegas is head and shoulders above Macao.

For the first time in two years (starting June, 2014) Macao casinos showed positive economical results. In comparison with August, 2015 gambling facilities earned 1.1% more – $2.36 billion total. This fact may seem insignificant but in reality, things get better than it seems. Wynn Palace casino opened in the region Cotai, and Parisian Macao (Las Vegas Sands) will open its doors in the middle of September.

“Macao economics is now in the period of spreading cost and increased competition in conditions of aggressive macro environment“, says Jaime Suh, Daiwa Capital Markets analytic.

Las Vegas, next to Macao, Singapore and other Asian countries starts the technical revolution. Huge areas (in terms of Western countries) are given to the building of the “stadium-type” complexes: tens or even hundreds of people are able to simultaneously play blackjack or baccarat against live dealers.

It all started in 2012 when big casinos of Macau started to try to find a solution to the problem of limited gaming space and a limit for a number of tables.

Malaysian company is going to build a new casino complex in Sihanoukville at the south of Cambodia. Resort city has about 15 gambling facilities functioning and the Chinese are having a nice close look to it.

Asia can’t stop surprising us. While Atlantic City gets bankrupt, gambling corporations in Cambodia and Vietnam have huge plans. On the March, 1^st Malaysian company SV International got approved from Cambodian authorities to invest money into new huge project in Sihanoukville: sun and seashore, casinos, hotels – all together as usual.

There is even motivation video on this topic:

The issue with gambling license is still up in the air. Salient Ventures company, which belongs to SV International, have already announced they bought the license, the finance minister of the country says otherwise.

Extrapolation is a friend of statistician, economist, marketer and any other person who works with huge amounts of data. They are no numbers relevant to poker. Poker stands alone. And sometimes logic behind its development is very hard to get.

Extrapolation can be used to make a forecast of some events or trends. Everything is very chaotic in poker to make some scientific conclusions, however it is very interesting to speak about it.

We’ve already defined the best poker players of 2015, told of the most important events of 2015, it’s time to look into the future.

Other World

The world has changed. It is in human nature that he can’t see everything with an untired eye. There are always tons of factors separating him from the right conclusions. The oil is becoming cheaper with each and every day despite many countries were trying to make the most of it by selling and selling it over the years.

One just can’t change the way of thinking he got through the years momentarily.

Player who has earned $17 million just stopped playing NL Hold’em and Omaha at the highest stakes. The reason is the most trivial: “I don’t beat ‘em”. This player’s name is Patrik Antonius…

In his latest interview, Patrik Antonius told to one well-known poker resource some interesting things.

1. The world of live high rollers has seen better days

The Chinese, according to Antonius, more and more play by themselves (organize private games and do not invite others). They only begin poker movement on Philippines; there is no regular game yet.

There is no game in London, Macao, Vegas. It used to be better back in the days. That is the reason Patrik Antonius plays poker so rare. Sometimes sits out for months. However, it’s not the best part.

Macao just can’t meet the demand of gambling from the Chinese. And considering economical drop-down trend of gambling giant, the situation will soon get out of control. Moreover, there are plenty casinos now just outside Chinese border, although the country authorities prohibit junket tours to their citizens

June has become the 13^th straight month when Macao profit decreases. More to that, profit of the worlds gambling center is now as low as it was five years ago – that is the lowest for a very substantial period of time. Profits are decreased by 36%.

What’s important, most of the major clients of Macao are Chinese, over 60% of total number. Beijing finally started to realize the problems of the independent territory. Some changes were made last month to make conditions of staying in Macao more comfortable for Chinese: you can stay for 7 days there now (used to be 5) and now they can go there twice a month (only once a month earlier).

But that’s not going to cut it.

Despite continuing decrease of earnings of Chinese casinos big cash game in Macau is rolling full speed (well, almost as good as always). Sometimes stacks of players consist of tens of million dollars and there is not enough room for all the chips.

Unreal game in Macau isn’t going anywhere. The best pros in the world together with the most powerful and richest businessman are still there. They don’t talk about it much. Players won’t benefit from it, especially in modern day realities of today’s China: there is big war against corruption – almost everybody is getting tested.

But some info comes through. And here it is.

In addition to the enormous tower-hotels, several shows of world standard, numerous entertaining centers and a few hundred gambling tables City of Dreams has one more trump card: the only PokerStars room in Macau.

Short Profile:

The name: City of Dreams or CoD Macau

Its owner: Melco Crown Entertainment

Location: China area, Macau

The square of gambling halls: 39,000 m²

Opening year: 2009.

The top-of-the-range casino in Macau, the largest one, the most famous one, the most beautiful one. The seventh largest building in the world has everything inside of it: gondolas, shops, boxing matches, poolside cocktails, baccarat and even poker.

Summary:

Name: The Venetian Macao

Owner: Las Vegas Sands

Location: Cotai Zone, Macau

Total area: 980,000 m2

Opened in: 2007.