Gareth Edwards, online gambling group 888’s IT and marketing expert and head of poker operations has resigned and will be departing the company, he has confirmed, although he remained tight-lipped Thursday on his future plans.
Edwards is widely respected in the industry for his marketing and strategic planning talents, which have made him an important and creative executive asset at the gambling group.
Leaving the Australian Bond University in 2002 with a B.IT degree in Software Engineering, Internet Technology and E-commerce, he joined Bond Wireless as VP of Technology / CTO, working in management at the company for almost four years before moving to Mansion Group in November 2005.
He entered the international gambling industry with the Mansion Group as a business consultant, where he worked until January 2006 before moving to PokerNews Limited where he became a member of the board before joining 888 in November 2007, where he held senior management positions in marketing, with emphasis on online poker, before his appointment as director responsible for Marketing and Strategy.
In 2003 Edwards was granted a US patent covering a method for authenticating and verifying SMS communications.
He has played a key role in several major 888 strategic moves, such as the partnership deal with the World Series of Poker covering the two WSOP tournament series held annually in Las Vegas along with the WSOP Asian Pacific, a recently launched WSOP event, and the WSOP TV shows in Europe; and the partnership agreements the company has clinched on moving toward a position in the evolving US online gambling markets.