Twitch Casino Malta

This latest podcast with Daniel makes me want to see Roshtein as a guest, I feel like he would have some awesome gambling stories to share and is overall an interesting guy.
Roshtein is a slot streamer and casino affiliate. Here is a clip of him winning 99.8K euros live on Twitch.

• He has some controversy around him because some people think he uses "practice mode" or fake money while placing $50 Euro bets.
  
• It seems he is in a grey area on twitch where he's allowed on but Twitch doesn't want him on there despite his avg viewership being around 10k viewers. (often gets shown as offline)
  
• He is based out of Malta
  

Clip of Rosh expressing his interest in being on a podcast

Hi everyone, I’m Maria Ho: Professional Poker Player, TV host/commentator and world traveler.
I’m a dual citizen of Taiwan and the U.S. - born in Taipei, Taiwan and raised in Los Angeles, CA. I started playing poker in college at U.C.S.D. when I showed up, uninvited, to my guy friend’s home game. With a couple six packs of beer in hand I talked my way into the game, eventually started beating the boys, and worked my way up in stakes at the local Indian casino before embarking on my first WSOP in 2005.
I’ve made over 2.6 million dollars in poker earnings, which includes 32 WSOP cashes, 3 WSOP final tables, 4 WPT cashes, and 6 other final tables on the pro circuit. In 2011 I played heads-up for a World Series of Poker bracelet and finished 2nd for $540,020 - breaking the record for the largest cash by a woman at the WSOP. At the 2012 and 2014 WSOPs I was the Most-Cashing female player (with 6 and 8 individual tournament cashes). And I’m the first and only player to be the WSOP Main Event “Last Woman Standing” three times over.
Outside of poker playing I’ve dabbled in a variety of TV shows and competitions. I was on season 3 of American Idol, competed as the only all-female team on the Emmy-winning The Amazing Race, been a panelist on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, and have been invited to compete on PokerStars Shark Cage for the last two seasons. As a strategic commentator and TV host my work includes the HPT, ESPN 360, and Poker Night In America: The Tour.
...And if all that doesn’t keep me busy enough I’m the celebrity spokesperson for the WinStar World Casino and I host Poker Central Live with Maria Ho weekly on Twitch from wherever I find myself in the world: Sydney, Monte Carlo, Dubai, London, Vancouver, Maui, Cancun… and sometimes from my own bed in California! http://www.twitch.tv/pokercentral
Currently I'm in Malta where I'll soon be hosting Europe’s largest stand-alone poker tournament, Battle of Malta, November 4th-9th! http://www.pokerlistings.com/battle-of-malta
Proof: https://twitter.com/MariaHo/status/659774481171398656
........
Thank y'all so much for all the interesting and unique questions! I really enjoyed answering them! Hope my answers were helpful/insightful! This AMA is now closed. 😊

I wrote to Twitch a little while ago with the following message, have yet to get a response. Just curious what other peoples opinions on the subject are?
"I am writing to question whether Casino Channels are harmful to the denizens of Twitch. It's an area of Twitch that I regularly view and have even streamed on a few occasions myself, my frequent activity there, along with my experience within the gambling industry has led me to question if this is appropriate content to be shown on Twitch. First and foremost, I would like to express that I am not just some random ‘Social Justice Warrior’ trying to ruin other people’s fun. This is my fun also, I enjoy gambling, I enjoy watching others gambling, but I am also a parent and have some morals and it is impossible for me not to recognise the pitfalls of this community. I am also a long-time Twitch user and personally, I would consider that specific community being detrimental to Twitch's image.
Gambling is prohibited in many countries and even those where it is allowed it comes with heavy restrictions. In my country, for example, the UK which has some of the more liberal laws relating to gambling in the world, the gambling operators are highly restricted in regards to how they can advertise and such. Yet on Twitch with a few clicks, every user can access channels that are blatantly advertising all sorts of online casinos. Most of the frequent streamers within this section are sponsored by the casino's they are using, or even in employment with the casino. While I would rather refrain from naming particular streamers there are multiple that freely admit to playing with casino funds, specially tailored bonus packages for them and other benefits not available to the people that they are often trying to get to sign up to the sites they are advertising. In all honesty, my perception of the entire Casino section within Twitch is that it is effectively an open marketplace for all sorts of Casinos (whose legitimacy should be questioned, but I will touch on that later) to advertise their products. Furthermore, my perception is that they are often falsely advertising their products.
I would like to elaborate a bit further on my point of false advertisement. There are streamers who I would strongly assume are in employment with casinos that have affiliate programs that offer a whole range of benefits to their viewers signing up for that casino. For example, there are streamers again seemingly in employment with the casino; Multilotto, who offer a 550% welcome bonus for their viewers. What's not advertised on the stream is that bonus comes with 45x wagering (e.g., you deposit $100, you get $500 to play with on the first deposit along with pages of other terms and conditions literally setup to make it almost impossible to win. You must do $18000 worth of gambling to clear that bonus on games with roughly a Max RTP of 97%, it is pretty much set up for you to fail to clear the wager, should you manage to clear the wager in my experience I would say you should probably buy a lottery ticket too).
Again, while I prefer not to name specific users as honestly, I believe it is a widespread issue within the Casino section of Twitch, I am friendly with one streamer who recently moved from Norway to Malta to take a position with the casino he streams for, his position with them is in their marketing department and on a daily basis he streams himself playing on their casino and effectively luring viewers to sign up to that site. There is never any mention to his employment with them, the image is he's just a "Regular Joe" playing with huge sums of money on that website - that attracts lots of viewers, as a gambler myself, there is appeal in watching someone else doing something I can't do myself - yet likely he is not using his own money just as most others probably aren't either. When the RTP (return to player) is set in the casino's favour it is not sustainable for these Casino Streamers to be streaming hours each day as ultimately even the wealthiest of these people would end up losing everything - however it is sustainable when they are using "casino money", when they are salaried by the casino, when they have affiliate programs that pay them for each sign up and then pay a percentage of the money that their sign ups deposit. I believe it is a rule on Twitch that if you're being sponsored by a game (or other product) you must disclose that information while you're playing that game or advertising that product on stream - while I have absolutely no evidence of most of these streamers being sponsored or affiliated with the casino's they play on - it is blatant when they frequently advertise the casino on their stream.
Referring to the multitude of Terms and Conditions mentioned previously, most of these sites exploit the simple human nature of ignoring or skim reading the massive lists of Terms and Conditions that they have and will quite happily refuse payment of winnings should you even slightly cross the boundaries. I mention this as while I fully accept it's within their right, barely a day goes by with me watching some of these streams, that I do not see one of the viewers complaining that they have been "robbed" by one of the casinos. It seems quite unethical for me for them not to clearly highlight these most pivotal of terms upon signup.
While legally I am sure a company of Twitch/Amazon's outstanding reputation has fully investigated if Casino Games can be streamed, I would question if morally it is acceptable. I can go to any one of the casino's that are being streamed from right now. I can fill in a simple signup form - email/password/date of birth - and then can deposit literally thousands of dollars to gamble. There is no through age verification process, identify verification process or payment verification process at that stage. I can literally sign up and gamble. It is not until you try to withdraw money that you must verify your age, address, identity, payment used etc. That basically means if my daughter, for example, had a PayPal, Skrill, or even a mobile phone (as many of these sites allow you deposit via a service which basically puts a charge on your phone bill) she would be able to gamble. She would be able to lose thousands of dollars in fact, without anyone knowing until the phone bill came in. That's wrong. That's wholly wrong. I haven't even touched on the fact that gambling is a highly addictive product. In the UK, the slots games, roulette and such are frequently referred to as the "crack cocaine of gambling". I must be honest, even as a responsible adult, just via watching these streams I ended up signing up to a few myself and playing, I played with amounts I could afford to lose and was very comfortable with it personally. I have seen other "viewers" appear as streamers also - the lure and enticement these streams generate cannot be dismissed - and realistically it's not like people are being enticed to play League of Legends or Forza, they are being enticed to play a product that can literally bankrupt people. A product that is so addictive, that it has a multitude of support groups, just as many as Alcoholism or Drug Abuse have I suspect.
Going back and touching on a statement I made previously about the legitimacy of these casinos. Most of the casino's that I have seen played on stream are in one of 3 places, Malta, Curaçao or Gibraltar. The Maltese Casino Industry is still under heavy scrutiny for its association with illegal, criminal groups, such as the Mafia (not all the casinos, but some), a simple Google search will show this to be true. Such a fact hardly fills me with trust and confidence in depositing my money into these casinos! For the mere sum of $350,000 any Tom, Dick or Harry can go to Malta and get a Maltese Gambling License for $100,000 and license a range of the most popular casino games for a year for $250,000 and basically have the two key elements required to legally offer gambling products online to multiple countries in the world. That is not a massive amount of money, it is an amount of money that enables all kinds of people to access the gambling market and for an industry that relies on trust, I find it quite worrisome that it is so accessible for many. Just as a side note, once you have signed up for one of these casino’s, you get a ridiculous amount of emails and SMS messages informing you of other casinos and their welcome packages etc, to the point where I have been getting 2 SMS a day and 4-5 emails after signing up on two casinos! So, for those addicted to the product, it is quite relentless.
You also have some very big streamers on Twitch who occasionally stream themselves playing Roulette or Blackjack. Streamers with 10's of thousands of viewers, undoubtedly many of which being underage. Its effectively the same as a TV Station showing gambling, alcohol or cigarette commericials during The Simpsons or a Disney show. It just doesn't seem right.
Finally, based off my few experiences as a steamer within the Casino Community, there were a number of factors that worried me. Firstly, one of my friends who was watching afterwards was expressing an interest in trying out the casino also, thankfully he listened to my advice of not trying it. Constant requests for increased stakes and prolonging the stream (effectively numerous people requesting that I gamble more money and gamble longer, of course it was easy for me to deny, but it could be problematic for others). Finally, requests for a link to the site I was playing on, something which I also denied and told them I didn;t recommend it. This may seem overly dramatic and sensationalist, however I strongly feel that it is just a matter of time before we see a story in the newspaper or on the television of a streamer or viewer taking their own life due to gambling problems fuelled by the Casino community on Twitch. Gambling is a real problem. I hope that you will take the time to consider the concerns I have expressed. I certainly don't want to spoil anyone's fun, but there is a fine line between fun and people’s lives being ruined when it comes to gambling. I also intend on expressing my concerns to the UK Gambling Commission as many of the sites being used on Twitch are inaccessible to UK Customers as the UKGC refused them a UK Gambling License (something needed for even online casinos to offer their products here). I will also be sending a similar email to Youtube whom offer similar gambling/casino streams as Twitch."
TL;DR Version: Gambling is harmful for many people. Some Twitch streamers are actively encouraging gambling.