Poker News Roundup for the week

Macau Millions Main Event was won by Alvan Zheng. The HK$3,000 buy-in saw 2,343 players and a first place prize of HK$911,000 for the winner Zheng. The 2016 World Series of Poker Circuit Choctaw $1,675 no-limit hold'em main event was won by Andy Philachack after he saw off 1,565 players. He took home first prize of $393,188 and the WSOP Circuit gold ring. You will have previously read about the unhappy players at PokerStars with their new rewards programme. Amaya and some high stakes players met up this week although they are keeping tight lipped about what happened at the meeting due to non-disclosure agreements. There might be some good news on the horizon for Russian poker players. Poker could well be legalized as a skill game. The article in the Business Insider written by Robert Carmona-Borjas said "After a meeting with Russian Finance Ministry officials in August, Marina Bludyan, chairwoman of the public council of the Poker Enthusiasts League, said international operators will be required to maintain data servers in Russia and prohibited from exporting the data to servers outside the country. One of the big attractions of online poker legalization inside of Russia is the possibility of allocating at least some of the resulting new tax revenue to amateur sports development, especially for children. These kinds of benefits from online poker may, in the end, even convince American legislators to change their view, paving the way for a more liberal approach to online gambling in the US." High Stakes poker players at PokerStars had their accounts frozen whilst PokerStars searched for bots. Jason Mo tweeted about his account being locked and 24 hours later he tweeted the following: "been over 24 hours, pokerstars account still locked with a large 6 figure sum and no explanation, whats up"