Underage gambling on the decline

We round-up some of the stories you may have missed including a Tom Dwan sighting and William Kassouf divides opinion (again).

Underage gambling decreases

We often hear scare stories about poker attracting young vulnerable children, in particularly from Sheldon Adelson. But, as reported by PokerFuse, two seperate studies, one in the UK and one in Denmark, have both shown underage gambling has declined.

The UK study has shown a 30% decline in underage gambling in the last decade and the Danish study shows a 23% decline in underage people who have gambled online. 

Both studies also concluded that the impact of advertising gambling products was minimal to young children. 

Kassouf a Shooting Star

The WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star event in March is a unique event in poker as it features 50 celebrity bounties with a $2,500 price tag on their heads. 

This year the inclusion of William Kassouf as one of those bounties has caused a lot of debate (as Kassouf tends to do). Some think he is the man of the moment, others think his stalling and antics are bad for the game.  

Poker veteran Kathy Liebert was particularly incensed on Twitter, which prompted organiser Matt Savage to defend his decision to include Kassouf (follow the thread on the tweet below):

I think it's ridiculous that they make Kassouf a star at Bay101. Rewards a guy who gets attention by annoying players and for penalties?!

— Kathy Liebert (@pokerkat) January 7, 2017

Dwan back talking poker

Poker's most famous absentee has to be Tom 'durrrr' Dwan who has mostly disappeared off the map, apart from the occasional Macau high stakes rumour. 

So any appearance of durrrr is newsworthy in itself but this one appears to show him making his way towards being a public figure again in poker. This month he appeared on high stakes gambler Paul Phua's YouTube channel, which is creating strategy videos it seems:

Jungleman flashes the graph

One player who likely will be very interested to see Dwan back in the public eye is Daniel 'Jungleman' Cates, who has previously called Dwan out for ducking resuming the durrrr Challenge. 

Not having Dwan as an opponent clearly has not hurt Cates's bottom line as he recently posted this graph showing off his winrate:

Should Kassouf be a Shooting Star? Is durrrr making a comeback? Is your graph like Jungleman's? Let us know in the comments: