Online Poker Updates in US for September 2007

For latest news please visit the recent US online poker webpage.

September 28

3:26pm – Here is this weeks video episode of Perspectives Weekly. He recaps the iMEGA hearing, latest WTO sanctions, and also talks about some Patriot Act issues. He recaps the iMEGA hearing, latest WTO sanctions, and also talks about some Patriot Act issues.

12:43am – A member of the Poker Players Alliance Board of Directors, Rich Muny has just spoken that he’s gotten word the regulations for the UIGEA will be issued this week. The President of iMEGA, Ed Leyden also emailed us confirming this news as well. You will find slight discrepencies in time frames but in general both seemed to agree on deadlines and that regs are going to be out no later than this week.

Following the release of the regulations there will be a 60-90 day comment period. Following that there will be a 120-180 day time frame for a “comment re-evaluation” period essentially meaning up to another 9-12 months before finalized and amended regulations are in effect. Both sources sounded confident in their remarks.

So what does this mean for poker players? Short term, nothing. In 7-12 months depending on how strict the regulations are and if a temporary restraining order is granted or not to iMEGA, deposit options will likely begin to tighten even more than they are now. Here is our semi-official news release on all the information we gather on the UIGEA regulations release.

September 27

7:22pm – Rumors stemming from twoplustwo are claiming that iMEGA sent out an email alert this morning claiming that the UIGEA regulations will be published tomorrow. I’m skeptical of these claims because for one I never received this “email alert”. Secondly, the only evidence that could possibly support these claims of regulations coming out would be from a Bloomberg article that quoted the following sentence yesterday.

“The U.S. Office of Management and Budget on Sept. 25 approved draft regulations to implement the measure, according to its Web site.”

In either case I have contacted both Joe Brennan of iMEGA and also Terrance, the journalist of the Bloomberg article to see if we can get some more evidence that regulations may in fact be on their way. For now, it’s strictly a rumor.

September 26

1:56pm – Lately a lot of big news sites have really been pushing some of the online gambling issues in the US, especially the WTO dispute. A few minutes ago CNN reported a follow up story on the issue of the WTO/Online gambling dispute which is likely to result in billions of dollars of lost US dollars. The title, which is a bit misleading, says the US owes the European Union $100 billion in trade sanctions. Last time I checked the EU was claiming much less than that but hey, the trout gets bigger every time you tell the fishing story right?

11:02am – Gambling911 had a reporter at the iMEGA hearing this morning. In short, the Judge said the case was complicated and would need a couple more weeks to review it for an outcome. From the sounds of it, this hearing went well for iMEGA. The fact that the judge is uncertain is more than a lot of people were expecting.

3:41am – Well, today is the big day for the iMEGA vs Gonzales hearing held at the NJ US District Court. All news will be posted as soon as it comes in.

September 24

10:19pm – The Financial Times reported on the latest compensations for online gambling for those countries affected by the UIGEA and their rights with the WTO. Here are the cliff notes to the article.

Talks between the US and the EU will continue until October 22 over just compensation. (events chart updated)
The US proposed opening up technical testing sectors and warehouse/storage services to “make up” for other countries losses in the online gaming sector.
The EU will discuss this proposal next week although many believe it should be rejected because it doesn’t nearly equate to the $4 billion the EU is said to be losing.
The US only wants to offer $500,000 to Antigua instead of the $3.4billion. Antigua says they will ignore US patents if not properly compensated.

September 23

12:50pm – iMEGA.org has released news about the governments response to their TRO brief. At the bottom is the link to the full .pdf brief if you’re interested in reading the entire thing. If not, the main points are highlighted below in the previous post.

September 22

7:06pm – The defendants in the iMEGA vs Gonzales case have issued their reply. I have the .pdf brief but Joe hasn’t created a link to it on his site so I will sum up the defendants response. If you want the full .pdf brief email me at info@NOSPAMcompatiblepoker.com if Joe hasn’t yet published it on iMEGA.org by the time you read this.

I. Plantiff lacks standing to challenge the UIGEA under the first amendment.

A. Plantiff has not demonstrated a credible threat of prosecution under the UIGEA (Defendants claim no one has been threatened with prosecution under the UIGEA)
B. Plantiff can not base standing on rank speculation about the economic loss of third parties.

II. Plantiff lacks standing to challenge the UIGEA’s allegedly inconsistency with the WTO decision.

III. Plantiff’s constitutional challenge of the forthcoming regulations under the UIGEA is unripe because those regulations have yet to issue.

IV. The UIGEA is not a content based restriction on speech and therefore is not subject to scrutiny.

6:20pm – I contacted Joe Brennan Jr. of iMEGA yesterday to see if there was any progress in regards to the defendants in the iMEGA vs Gonzales case which seeks the temporary restraining order against the UIGEA. According to iMEGA’s latest press release the defendants had until yesterday to respond to the request of the court for the TRO. Joe said nothing yet has been released on PACER. There has also been no press releases by Antigua Sun regarding the WTO/UIGEA compensation news which was scheduled to be released today. Makes you wonder why the US Gov. even sets deadlines.

September 20

2:05am – Just noting that there should be a decent amount of action this week with important upcoming events….or at least more deadlines pushed back. Please refer to the US poker events chart for deadlines scheduled this week.

1:45am – Yesterday a study was released that reported on the number of problem gamblers from 1999 and compared them to a new study conducted in 2007. According to this “Gambling Prevalence Study” there was NO change in the number of problem gamblers. The number of problem gamblers remained at .6% over an 8 year time period.

So now we’ve got two recent and highly qualified reports under our belt, the Harvard Online Gambling Study and this Gambling Prevalence Study that prove problem gambling is not becoming rampant like our fellow opponents lead everyone to believe. This fares well for when Rep. John Conyers or Shelley Berkley push forward on their Internet Gambling Study Bills next year.

September 18

7:58pm – Calvin Ayre has officially announced they will be no longer using the “newbodog.com” domain anymore and moving to “ Bodoglife.com“. From the sounds of the news release they are giving up on the legal dispute to get back the domain, Bodog.com. Either that or they plan on it being a very long dispute. Here is the Bodog life news release.

September 17

11:11pm – This marks the 1 year anniversary of this US informational page. Thanks to everyone who supported this page and helped by emailing updates in to make sure things on this page stayed as accurate as possible. Thanks again.

5:35pm – MSNBC posted an article about the WTO dispute about online gambling. I’m not going to post the 2 page article because everyone has basically beat the story into the ground by now and it didnt reveal anything all that new. But, a trade analyst of Cato ended the article with this VERY optomistic quote.

“This won’t happen fast; America is going to dig its heels in,” says Sallie James, trade-policy analyst at Washington’s Cato Institute. “But if I had to bet, I would say that by this time next year America will have changed its laws.” And in this case, that means all bets will be on.

6:10am – The Washington Post reported an hour ago that Michael Mukasey will become the new US Attorney General although not yet confirmed by the White House. It’s hard to tell what this means for US poker players. Mukasey has been handling terrorist cases for the past 10 years as a federal judge. We all know by now how anti-online gambling people like Bill Frist push BS things like “terrorist funding” through online gambling as one of their main motives. Here is one quote from the Washington Post that sums up what kind of guy we’re looking at.

“While he is certainly conservative, Judge Mukasey seems to be the kind of nominee who would put rule of law first and show independence from the White House _ our most important criteria,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

September 14

1:01pm – Here is the new Perspectives Weekly video which covers the recently written article by online gaming legal expert, Nelson Rose, entitled Is Playing Online Poker Safe“. J. Todd also throws out some Harrah’s conspiracy theories.

September 12

12:18pm – Egaming review briefly reported on an article about the WTO and UIGEA. According to Reuters the US is hopeful in reaching a settlement with all the countries affected by the UIGEA. They called Antigua the one “sticking point”. The US trade representative, John Veroneau said they will likely need more time to determine compensation. The deadline is set for September 22 but hopes more time will be allotted if needed.

Also in related news the Las Vegas Review reported Barney Frank saying his bill to overturn an Internet gambling ban has stalled, but he said pressure from foreign countries could revive the legislation. It’s not dead. It’s not very active said Frank.

Both Barney Frank and Shelley Berkley said no further action was expected on either of their bills, HR2046 & HR2140, this year.

September 10

8:55pm – iMEGA has responded to the US DOJ motion to dismiss the TRO against the UIGEA. The US DOJ now has until Sept. 21 to respond.

3:26pm – A rumor stemming from Gambling911 is saying that iMEGA will be issuing a press release this week regarding their case in which they seek a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the UIGEA. There was no say about whether this was good or bad news. I just emailed Joe Brennan of iMEGA to see if he could give us any info. If he emails back we’ll post any heads up he can give us.

11:07pm – At Pokerstars.com they are running “Poker Players Alliance” freerolls again. Basically they give new players an entrance into a $5000 freeroll in turn for signing up at the PPA. It’s good to see PPA memberships increase but getting members this way is sort of like a bribe and inflates the true “power” of the membership numbers in my opinion. At least it gets the word out to those who don’t know what the PPA is.

1:47pm – Here is J. Todd’s Perspectives Weekly video. He covers the new tax law covering land based tournament winnings in the US.

9:34pm – Its been a little over a month since I’ve analyzed poker site traffic in chart form so I’ve added on some more stats below this post.

Also, an interesting question came up on a forum asking about how much money poker sites like Full Tilt and Poker Stars are making because of all the US players. Obviously this information is not readily available but if you look at publicly traded companies (PartyGaming aka Party Poker) you can get a general idea from their quarterly reports. So that’s what I did.

Because Party Poker has around the same volume of players as Full Tilt at the moment you could assume their revenues are somewhat the same (assuming operating expenses are somewhat equal). With that being said I would estimate Full Tilt is netting approximately $750,000 per day. Poker Stars being nearly double the size of Full Tilt would get a slightly higher estimate of $1.6million-$2 million because they don’t allow rakeback and have lower bonuses.

Anyways here is the updated chart. I added “7 day avg cash players” for todays date. The other numbers are “peak” player volumes. The numbers are provided by pokersitescout and analyzed by me. Yellow highlights represent the numbers I added today. Please refer to the US poker site traffic report for the chart

Brief review of Stats

Peak daily traffic stayed stagnant for US accepted sites in August. Non US sites saw a slight drop off.
In September towards the middle broadcasting of the WSOP Main Event there was a large increase at PokerStars while Full Tilt dropped off quite dramatically.
PokerStars seems to be gaining the most steam putting up some impressive numbers.

12:23am – Full Tilt has launched GatorPay on a limited basis. According to the email I received back they are only using it for a select few as a new method of depositing to work out any “bugs” before mass implementation. GatorPay is a prepaid teleco company and a Nucharge/Add-funds/deposit-now/fonelinx clone.

September 5

12:46pm – Well I guess you could say it’s the dog days of summer with not much going on. Sun-Sentinel wrote an article saying that poker revenues are up 60% in Florida because of the addition of No Limit games and some minor increased stakes. The West Palm Beach poker room generated $1 million in one month. But just to give you a comparison online cardrooms like Full Tilt generate that much in 1 day. Party Poker was making $2.7millon in net poker revenues a day before the UIGEA. They mention that the “higher stakes” are what brought in all the new revenues to the Florida poker rooms but talk nothing of the UIGEA which I believe had a big impact as well. Why jump through hoops just trying to deposit $100 when you can drive down the road to play.

September 3 – LABOR DAY

2:31pm – Calvin Ayre’s ex-Bodog.com domain is now officially wiped from the search results. His once multi-million dollar natural listings in google are no longer. In fact, a search for “Bodog” in Google now results in the #1 position being redirect spam. Bodog.com does not show up at all.

I can’t believe Bodog’s Search Engine Optimization team would not have knocked some sense into Calvin over the true value of the domain and it’s rankings. People see the Bodog logo on TV with all his on-air broadcasting. When they type in Bodog.com and it leads to nothing they search in Google for Bodog and still….nothing. Now, not only did they lose millions of dollars in search results they’re having to pay affiliates who rank above newbodog.com while just trying to find out why Bodog.com leads to a dead domain. If this is legal, it would seem 1st Technology LLC is holding out for more than $50million now or Calvin would have just paid them.

2:00am – Absolute Poker just released the requirements for the 9% interest bearing accounts. The updated part is in the bulletted section.