November Through December 2012 Updates
– Usually worth a good read is Bovada/Bodog owner Calvin Ayre’s 2013 predictions. Here it is.
– Well, according to the press New Jersey will likely pass their gambling bill. It’s notable because they have a pretty sizable population of 8-10mill, compared to Nevada with only a couple million. Also, PokerStars might be up and running if the bill passes as they recently were in talks to buy the Atlantic Club Casino (for a meager $50mill) which is a pre-requisite to operate in New Jersey – must have a B&M casino.
– The efforts to gain a Federally ran poker environment have officially failed for 2012. Senator Harry Reid has announced that the Federal poker bill will not pass during the lame duck session of 2012, and gives it minimal chance of passing in 2013. The Poker Players Alliance and casinos have stated they will now focus on each State to receive their licenses and begin operation via non State border crossing poker pools (intrastate poker).
– Antigua has not given up their fight on the United States protectionism of online gambling through the internet and has announced they will impose multi-million dollar sanctions against the United States. Basically it would mean lots of free stuff for US customers, for example basically most intellectual property produced in the US like software, films, music etc. The United States decadence to scrub the laws they want, and obey World Trade Laws that only benefit them should not be tolerated and I for one am happy Antigua is following through. Besides all the other things we could mention, just another reason to add another country that hates us because of our politicians.
– A lawyer made a statement on a popular news site, and it seems to be spreading as ‘truth’ but it’s just an opinion of a lawyer about when Full Tilt Poker funds will be released. He is saying it won’t be until 2015 because the DOJ won’t want to repay the funds until PokerStars pays the $547 million they owe to the DOJ. He also states that unless you have $10k or more, it won’t be worth it because of the process and likelihood of having to get a lawyer to get the funds. The year when it’s paid is anyones guess, but I believe the US will pay most of the money owed. It would seem the ‘claims administrator’ they are supposedly seeking for the end of January to do this job would be sufficient. One wonders why they simply can’t just hire PokerStars to do it in a week…
-The American Gaming Association issued a youtube video and letter to Congress about Federal Legislation. I must say, it is atrocious. You can see it here, it’s a short, misinformed, sensationalized piece of garbage. It makes poker players look bad.
– In an video discussing the “fiscal cliff”, Senator Harry Reid was quoted as saying the hold up on the Federal Internet poker bill was the “Republicans” in which they need support of 15-17 people. So far, none are supportive he said. Here is a link to the video if you are interested, it addresses the issue at 4:49.
– I’ve touched on this in the past, what poker in the United States might look like. I admit, I’m not much of a “social media” poker site follower and honestly, don’t much understand it nor do I care to…although I probably should. Some concepts of paying players by ad revenue generated with massive traffic, basically the same concept of youtube paying its uploaders seems like a good idea for people with no money or freerollers. Who knows, I’d imagine those sites have the possibility of generating massive revenues just like Facebook does, and in return pay it out in tournament winnings thus escaping any ‘gambling’.
– But let’s talk about poker as it is right now (assuming no Federal legislation is passed). We’ve determined only a few states have the population to sustain a State poker site. I think most have agreed on this. In my opinion even for this to be successful there can really only be 1 or 2 sites that monopolize the market in these States or the player bases will be too distributed to have populated games. Right now poker rooms like Bovada or Betonline have about a 65% credit card success rates. This actually is not all that bad with all things considering. Not like they really care about poker players with only ~ 10% of their revenues coming from poker, they simply want poker as an attraction to get them betting on sports or dumping chips in the casino. So now we have a situation where the average player sees an ad on television, they may or may not play at an offshore site, but either way a huge population of what’s left of the current US accepted offshore sites will lose lots of their players to the States. Anyone who has logged onto any poker site that takes US players knows it’s pretty sad (look at pokerscout player numbers and compare them to the historical chart on this page). All the players are good and there’s barely any games going on. The poker community still seems somewhat split as to wanting Federally ran poker rooms or keep it at State and offshore sites. My opinion is that without Federal poker and hoping that most States opt in, poker in the US will not recover, at least not in possibly but a few States. There simply is too much segregation. Internet poker was built on trust, and that has been massively tainted. People will feel safer at Government sites even if the player pool is low. I forsee Betonline, CarbonPoker, Bovada and the majority of other sites that rely on the US market will close their poker rooms within 2 years. Some sites have already begun cutting rake levels drastically to prepare, this is great but how many of the type of poker players that we need to sustain a healthy poker environment even know they are getting raked? Things change everyday in this industry, but my prediction is another 5 years for poker in the US to recover, but never really fully recover to what once was prior to 2006. Surprising I was correct on the last 5 year prediction about how long poker in the US would last before the government had their hands in the jar. Here’s to hoping I’m wrong!
– The US Attorney’s office has issued a statement regarding Full Tilt repayment, four months after they said they were to release a statement “within weeks”. The statement is minimal and basically just says they are still looking for someone to distribute the funds and that they will have started work in January 2013. What that means exactly is anyone’s guess as to how long it will take to actually have our owed funds paid. The statement can be read here.
-A statement has been release by Rich Muny of the PPA about the DOJ/Full Tilt repayment. In short, it sounds like they haven’t even really started to sort things out and the PPA said they are a “long way away” from redistributing funds. This is quite amazing really, Pokerstars/Full Tilt could literally have this set up in less than a couple days to have funds redistributed, give it to the US government and it takes years. And why is our economy in the shitter? Here is the full statement released officially on twoplustwo. Sorry guys, wish it was better news.
– The PPA is supposed to be meeting with the Department of Justice this week (reports being possibly today, by Rich Muny of PPA) to see how they can speed up the redistribution of funds to US players from old Full Tilt accounts. We will keep you updated. So far no updates have been released by the PPA, expect first news to hit twoplustwo under PPA Board Member “theEngineer”.
– Not that this matters to US players, not right now at least, but Full tilt – since relaunch appears to be operating at 40-45% player capacity without the US base and after a year and a half closure. It’s not all that surprising that Full Tilt is the 2nd largest poker site right now, but will it last? What we have is thousands of players with money they consider “free”. It’s like stimulating the economy, a ton of money is injected into the system to create activity. But will these players continue when their funds run out. The average poker players life at a poker site is 2-3 years so I believe Full Tilt will lose it’s initial player base pretty quickly, but regain it with continued marketing efforts. I still think it’s disgusting that many of the ex-pros are acting like nothing ever happened just because things got resolved. In my book the majority of these ex-sponsored pros are bottom feeding degenerates, second to the government. Playing with money that wasn’t theirs and putting up a farce for the railbirds to prop up their own names and Full Tilt.
– Chad Elie, a man who was sentenced to prison for the processing of funds for Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars has started to speak out about the truth of Full Tilt and the people behind it. Apparently some interviews are soon to follow. He opened up a twitter account and started to speak @BlackfridayChad
– While somewhat confusing, the GEObet (Goldenarrownetwork.com) released press this week that they were set to launch the “first” real money games online. If you visit GEObet.com you’ll notice they have not only online poker, but casino and sports. It seems they have combined various networks that serve the world, and currently the US “illegal” market. For instance they use Merge for poker (US accepted), Microgaming for casino (stopped serving the US in 2008) and Oddsmatrik for sports (not US accepted). I tried to open an account from California as a test and was denied with notice, “Not legal from your country”. The Press Release is very confusing and does not make much sense but it appears they spun the story to make it look like real money games were going to happen in the States with Tribal Casinos that partnered with them but it seems it will all be remote gaming from their land only. The press release was very confusing but it appears this network has a shady past and very potential ties to Joe Norton and the Mohawk Nation. Basically one of the alleged guy behind the mass theft during Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet and….where is AP and UB now. Joe Norton was supposed to be one of the owners, on paper at least.
