Hot Tuna

How to play Hot Tuna

The lesson is simple: gambling still attracts capital when the money is visible. It is less attractive when the payoff lies far in the distance.

The biggest new uncertainty in US sports betting is prediction markets. The American Gaming Association estimates that Americans will legally wager $29.5 billion in betting handle through US regulated commercial sportsbooks during the 2026 NFL season, broadly unchanged from the $29.4 billion handle recorded in 2025. These figures refer to the amount wagered, not sportsbook revenue.

Robinson calls prediction markets “the main event”. His argument is not simply that US customers are moving from sportsbooks to prediction markets. The more important point is that sportsbooks no longer have the relatively protected market that was once assumed.

What is Hot Tuna?

Black Cube, an intelligence firm hired by Playtech in 2020 to look into alleged illegal behaviour at its rival Evolution, released a divisive report into Evolution’s actions. Evolution denied and refuted much of its findings.

Evolution then commissioned Spectrum Gaming Group to produce a report on its actions and the validity of the Black Cube report. Produced in 2022, the report has long been subject to confidentiality despite Evolution claiming the report exonerated the company.

Playtech on Wednesday published a statement highlighting what it claimed were compliance failures at Evolution, written into the Spectrum report.

How to play Hot Tuna

“For a hundred years this game lived on the corner,” he said in TCS/JOHNHUXLEY’s press release. “Now it’s got a dealer, a pay table and a seat at the table in a real casino. Same dice, new floor.”

Cee-lo—derived from sì wǔ liù (Chinese for “four-five-six”)—is played with three six-sided dice. Popular among Chinese-American players as early as 1893, it was adopted by hip-hop culture in the late 1970s and became a fixture on the street corners of Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

Nas, the Notorious B.I.G., and Jadakiss all referenced the game in their music. Kool G Rap called his 1995 album 4,5,6, and its title track included the line “Headcrack, time to get the bread”—the lyric that most likely inspired 50 Cent’s casino adaptation.

But it was Thomas DeCarlo Callaway who gave the game its biggest mainstream exposure, and gesture of love, when he took his stage name, CeeLo Green, directly from it.