Baffling moments in gambling, you state? What?

As top gambling journalists, it’s not our job to be baffled; it’s our work to cut through the difficulties with razor-sharp feedback and observations.

Sometimes, though, you merely need to throw your hands in the fresh air and go WTF? With that in mind, right here are the top five most baffling gambling moments of 2015.

CSIG Rhetoric

The Coalition to Stop online Gambling CSIG) is a specialist at churning out baffling statements, and in 2015, these may have hit their zenith. The coalition subscribes to the ‘it’s-true-because-it-rhymes’ brand of rhetoric, and thus phrases such as ‘click your phone, lose your home’ and also the slightly zingier variation ‘click your mouse, lose your house,’ went down gangbusters at anti-gambling cocktail parties in 2010.

Representative Jason Chaffetz’ (R- UT 3rd District) assertion that RAWA is a pro-states’ rights bill, despite all evidence to the contrary, was pretty ‘out there’ in the bafflement stakes, we thought. And meanwhile, John Kindt, a professor at the University of Illinois Law School, was partial to quoting a scholarly study from 1999, the times of dial-up Internet, as evidence that ‘Internet gambling can’t be regulated.’

Finger on the pulse there, Professor.

However, the award for the baffling that is most CSIG statement of the year goes to a ‘news’ header on the organization’s internet site which screamed ‘Online Gambling Hurts Farmers.’

The logic of why this demographic is very at danger is lost we realize CSIG is not averse to resorting to the use of emotive language to make an intellectually dishonest point or two, but farmers on us, and? The correlation that is only will make had been that spades might be utilised by farmers to dig things, so there you go.

The Daily Fantasy Sports Scandal

The daily fantasy sports (DFS) scandal had been pretty odd when you think about it. DFS continued its unstoppable rise throughout the first nine months of the year, with the very best two web sites, FanDuel and DraftKings, securing vast sums of dollars in investments as the multibillion dollar industry started mulling international expansion and world domination that is eventual.

With all of this at stake, you might have thought that someone at the two kingpin businesses would have recalled to prohibit their players from playing games at rival sites.

Nope.

DFS became thoroughly unglued by the end of September, when it emerged that the DraftKings employee had accidentally released player data prior to the week’s NFL games had started. This employee won $350,000 playing at FanDuel in the same week.

Accusations of ‘insider trading’ were maybe overblown, and the employee was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing, but the public’s faith in DFS was shaken, and suddenly the industry ended up being facing attacks on all fronts, from player lawsuits to judicial investigations to denouncements from regulators and politicians.

Beware the Ides of March

That Caesars Entertainment’s debt appears at an industry that is unprecedented of around $20 billion had been a fact that baffled the Nevada Gaming Commission at a meeting to discuss its messy bankruptcy proceedings this season.

The Commission called the situation ’embarrassing,’ and suggested that the ongoing company refrain from ‘building any Ferris wheels for the while’ to chuckles from assembled users of this press.

‘Everyone throws the economy underneath the bus,’ snapped payment chairman Tony Alamo testily.

In looking for Chapter 11 proceedings because of its main working product, Caesars happens to be accused by its second lien creditors of restructuring its assets in an easy method that unfairly prefers its controlling private equity backers, who had been the people that got Caesars in this mess within the place that is first.

Faced with lawsuits and accusations of fraudulent behavior, Caesars devised a restructuring plan that is new. Now the ongoing business is faced with the duty of getting its reduced bondholders on board. The deadline because of this is March 15 of next year, after which Caesars will lose control over its own bankruptcy proceedings.

Shakespeare scholars among you will recognize this date because the one known as ‘the Ides of March’ in the Roman calendar and the fateful day’s Julius Caesar’s assassination by his previous supporter, Brutus.

Who’d have thought that a bankruptcy judge would have this type of wicked sense of humor?

There have been so many baffling moments this year, we had to make this piece a two-parter, so come back tomorrow for more bewildering gambling landmark moments from 2015.