About this app
About Pool Shark
I started out as an adviser with the Playa, but was appointed the company’s CEO in 2024, a position I did not expect to find myself in, but an opportunity I have embraced with open arms. As a company, we provide AI personalisation solutions to businesses, something that was totally new to the market.
Coming from the outside, I needed to gather a team to help steer the ship. In the two years since I took on the role, I have been blessed to work with some of the sharpest minds in the industry and I couldn’t be prouder of what we have achieved so far.
I won’t lie, when I first entered iGaming, I had my concerns. Aspects of the industry felt stuck in a state of stasis. People were making money, and as long as that continued to happen and margins were healthy, why innovate? Just keep doing the same things over and over, with marginal improvements when necessary.
What is Pool Shark?
The regulator of gambling in New Zealand announced on Friday that the funds returned by operators will be directed towards community organisations.
Under Section 106 of New Zealand’s Gambling Act 2003, a class 4 licence holder, also known as a “corporate society” by the regulator, “must apply or distribute the net proceeds from class 4 gambling only to or for an authorised purpose specified in the corporate society’s licence”.
The DIA worked directly with class 4 gambling operators (commonly known as pokies trusts), and discovered ‘widespread issues’ such as cases where money that should have been available for community grants was instead spent on society expenses, such as the purchase of additional gaming machines.
How to play Pool Shark
Holland Casino has a responsible gambling board, which includes scientists, experts with lived experience and their own RG executives. They meet with the board every few months to talk over current processes, and the board challenges the operator’s ideas and implementations, pushing them to do better.
“They challenge us both from an academic side and a more practical side. We try to develop our rules as we go along but you have to prove every single day that you’re doing all that you need to do on responsible gaming,” Petra notes.
The Netherlands online gambling market has been the subject of many column inches and much speculation thanks to regulation that has been largely described as heavy-handed and perhaps a little short-sighted – even by the country’s own regulator.
