One area in which UK regulators expressed plenty of interest in 2017 was how children might be exposed to gambling at a young age. In October, the UK Gambling Commission and other organizations sent a letter to hundreds of online gambling operators asking them to remove ads that were likely to appeal to the underaged, especially those with cartoon characters.<\/p>\n
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Even video games aren\u2019t immune from questions about how they might turn young people on to placing bets. One MP opened an inquiry into the use of loot boxes that can be purchased for real money in video games, questioning whether these should be regulated as a form of gambling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The government review of the gaming industry also recommended restrictions on the kinds of arcade games children should be allowed to play as a way to prevent gambling from becoming normalized at an early age.<\/p>\n
Courting Phil Ivey<\/h2>\n
But perhaps the highest-profile legal battle over gambling in the UK this year was Phil Ivey\u2019s lawsuit against the Crockfords Club in London, which reached the nation’s highest legal authority. Ivey had hoped to recover \u00a37.7 million ($10.1 million) in winnings that he and a partner had earned by playing a baccarat variant called punto banco while using a controversial “edge-sorting” technique to eliminate the house edge.<\/p>\n
While many in the gambling world agreed that Ivey\u2019s play was skillful and not cheating, the UK Supreme Court unanimously upheld previous decisions that found the winnings to be ill-gotten gains, so Crockfords didn’t have to pay the poker legend.<\/p>\n
Essentially, they found that because baccarat was meant to be a game of chance, even a clever way of gaining information without actually being dishonest or manipulating the cards himself was enough to void Ivey\u2019s winnings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the United Kingdom has established itself as a global leader n regulated gambling, it’s still a country that regularly fights battles over exactly how far the gaming industry can and should go. And 2017 was no exception. Several legal and legislative fights took place this year over gambling regulation in the UK, with fixed-odds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":63009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,60,13,61],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Great UK Gaming Battles of 2017: From FOBTs to Phil Ivey's Legal Fight<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n