Baffling moments in gambling, you say? What?

As top gambling journalists, it is not our job become baffled; it’s our task to cut through the difficulties with razor-sharp responses and observations.

Sometimes, though, you simply need to throw your hands in the fresh atmosphere and go WTF? With that in mind, here are the top five many gambling that is baffling of 2015.

CSIG Rhetoric

The Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling CSIG) is an expert 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 house’ while the slightly zingier variation ‘click your mouse, lose your house,’ went down gangbusters at anti-gambling cocktail parties this year.

Representative Jason Chaffetz’ (R- UT 3rd District) assertion that RAWA is just a pro-states’ rights bill, despite all proof to the contrary, was pretty ‘out there’ in the bafflement stakes, we thought. And meanwhile, John Kindt, a teacher at the University of Illinois Law class, was keen on quoting a scholarly research 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 most baffling CSIG declaration of the season would go to a ‘news’ header on the organization’s site which screamed ‘Online Gambling Hurts Farmers.’

The logic of why this demographic is very at risk is lost on us, and we understand CSIG is not averse to resorting to your usage of emotive language to make an intellectually dishonest point or two, but farmers? The correlation that is only will make was that spades might be used by farmers to dig things, so there you go.

The Daily Fantasy Sports Scandal

The fantasy that is daily (DFS) scandal was pretty odd when you consider it. DFS continued its unstoppable rise throughout the first nine months of the year, with the most truly effective two internet sites, FanDuel and DraftKings, securing vast sums of bucks in opportunities as the multibillion dollar industry began mulling international expansion and eventual world domination.

With all of this at risk, you may have thought that someone at the two kingpin companies would have remembered to prohibit their players from participating in games at rival sites.

Nope.

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

Accusations of ‘insider trading’ were possibly overblown, and the employee was fundamentally cleared of wrongdoing, but the public’s faith in DFS was shaken, and suddenly the industry had been 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 proven fact that baffled the Nevada Gaming Commission at a gathering to discuss its messy bankruptcy proceedings this present year.

The Commission called the situation ’embarrassing,’ and suggested that the ongoing company refrain from ‘building any Ferris wheels for a while’ to chuckles from assembled members associated with the press.

‘Everyone throws the economy beneath the coach,’ snapped payment chairman Tony Alamo testily.

In searching for Chapter 11 proceedings for the main working device, Caesars was 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 guys that got Caesars in this mess in the first destination.

Faced with lawsuits and accusations of fraudulent behavior, Caesars devised a new restructuring plan. Now the business is charged with the job of getting its lesser bondholders on board. The due date because of this is March 15 of next year, after which Caesars will totally lose control over its own bankruptcy proceedings.

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

Who’d have thought that a bankruptcy judge would have this kind of wicked feeling of humor?

There were so many baffling moments this year, we had to get this piece a two-parter, so come back tomorrow for more gambling that is bewildering moments from 2015.