August 2008 US poker news
Aug 31
3:34pm – Aug 31
3:26pm – Strangely enough Pokerstars.com lost their google rankings last night for the big poker terms like online poker, poker, etc. They are also having trouble ranking for their homepage. At least they didnt get the same penalty we got! I doubt their penalty or whatever it is will last longer than a week. Also here is J. Todd’s Perspectives Weekly video. Have a good Labor Day weekend!
Aug 26
10:04pm – Online-casinos.com is reporting in an interview statement that Bodog is doing just fine, according to the CEO of Morris Mohawk Gaming. “Bodog has not and is not planning to close its doors to any market. In fact, Bodog is researching new potential markets and will continue to accept new players from all existing markets,” said the CEO. I have yet to get a phone call back from the head casino affiliate manager.
Aug 24
1:55 pm – Bodog laid off about 250 employees a few days ago and some sites are starting to publish stories that they are leaving the US market. Bodog has denied claims that they will leave the US. Tomorrow I will talk to the online casino manager to see what he says, as he was unreachable on Friday.
Personally, I don’t see how they would survive leaving the US market. If you remember last year, the same crap rumors were being spread about Bodog leaving after football season. Not only that but Bodog does’t have a license to advertise in Europe yet and none of their pages are translated. If Bodog were to drop the US market they would be dead! I was debating whether to post this copy of a thread that started at twoplustwo or not but what the hell, you can take it for what it’s worth. The thread got deleted but it was supposedly written by one of the people who got laid off. Here is the Bodog US closing rumor deleted thread.
Aug 22
9:08am – According to the Gaming Intelligence Group, the World Poker Tour Enterprises is facing delisting from the Nasdaq. The stock can not trade below $1 for more than 30 business days or they get a compliance letter, which the WPT got. They are trading at $.80. They will have 180 days to bring things back up.
Aug 19
12:02 am – I had almost forgotten about iMega until I read this news piece by pokernewsdaily.com. In it imega says the following.
“We’re diligently working on preparing our case and we will file by the end of next month.” iMEGA is suing to declare the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates privacy rights in the United States.
As the article goes on iMEGA says they believe the case will go on until deep into 2009.
Aug 18
12:12 am – Things at Bodog have not been very good lately. I talked to my affiliate manager on Friday and he had just resigned from the company. Basically he wasn’t happy with the processing at Bodog and how things were going with the company. If processing sucks, the affiliate managers get a mouth full from affiliates because you, the player can’t deposit and Bodog loses, the affiliates lose, and the player gets frustrated and doesn’t play.
He said credit card success rates were 1 in 10 (which is awful) and they weren’t being pro-active in coming up with new deposit methods. Who the hell wants to use Western union to make deposits! Traffic at the poker site is steadily declining, if it weren’t for the casino and sportsbook Bodog would be in serious trouble as people are leaving left and right. Management or something needs to change. J. Todd also discusses them a bit in his Perspectives Weekly video and it wasn’t suprising to see a long running thread about “Bodog cashouts & deposits” going on at twoplustwo.
Aug 14
4:06 am – The UIGEA really has been a funny thing. Credit cards used to rarely go through for online gambling and now so many sites are just uncoding the deposits. It doesn’t seem to be as noticable for poker but the online casinos have it down pretty good. I’ve talked to a few casino managers and they’re getting upwards of 90% credit card deposit success rates. Some places even have 4 or 5 backup inhouse processing solutions. Inhouse processing is where the industry seems to be heading. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong as it’s probably highly illegal to uncode these transactions but I just think it’s funny what the UIGEA did, it’s just made the operators smarter to some extent.
Aug 11
5:32 am – Bodoglife has added a new prepaid phone card deposit option called Virtualpin. From initials looks it seems to be similar to Nucharge before they got the kabash. Bodog also seems to be having major issues right now from server problems to connection issues within their site….either that or it’s just me but it’s been going on for over a week now.
5:15 am – According to the Gaming Intelligence Group, the RGA ( Remote Gaming Association) has come out saying they will support the new bill HR 6663. This is the same bill that the Poker Players Alliance explicitly said they will not support. Because you have to be logged into the link I got the info from I’ll link you to an article on Gambling911 which basically says the same thing. Here it is.
Aug 8
2:02 pm – Unfortunately I read the press release by Ladbrokes wrong last night. While they will be joining the Microgaming Network instead of licensing their software, they will not accept US players. They are simply allowing their non-US players to play against US players on a US accepted network.
12:05 am – (edited) Ladbrokes announced they will be merging with the entire Microgaming Network today. It’s a bit strange as they currently license the poker software as a stand alone platform from Microgaming but the change that is occuring is they are pooling their players so they can play against all other Microgaming skins. O’Reilley, the managing director of Ladbrokes said, “We have evaluated the legal position and are happy with our situation.” Ladbrokes Plc finished up 2.8% today. This does not make them a US accepted casino or sportsbook, or poker room.
Aug 7
3:35 am – It’s now been over 10 months since the regulations for the UIGEA were released. We’ve had our opponents pleading for the regulations to be put out for enforcement for months and our lobbyists shoving out bills to stop the regulations to no avail. On top of that it’s been almost 2 years since this whole thing went down, the Neteller owners are God knows where and it’s almost like the DOJ doesn’t remember them anymore, at least not when I call to get updates. Not only that but bills that are getting published for our cause do nothing but make things even more confusing.
Like in everything, especially gambling, everyone is going to take sides within sides and go for what makes them more money. What am I getting at? I don’t really know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if these regulations never get put out after new administration and we continue with the cat and mouse DOJ vs payment processor fight. As far a regulating online poker, I don’t see it, and I just don’t see it ever getting banned so my 4 am rant is that online gambling will continue as is (with minor hicups) for years to come.
Aug 2
1:36 am – Here is a funny video found by Jeremy at pokeraffiliateworld. What the governments priorities are….. watch video.
3:48 am – Yet another bill has been introduced to combat the UIGEA. This one is called the UIGEA Clarification and Implementation Act, or HR6663. As the name says, it will basically clarify what is considered “illegal internet gambling” which by now we’ve come to know that this mostly applies to online sportsbooks. Here is a quote from the PPA about their stance on this new bill which they are NOT explicitly endorsing. Before the quote I wanted to mention that the bill to “Study online gambling” did not get voted on the other day during the Congressional discussions for mark up. They never got to it and now there is an August recess.
The PPA takes issue with the following language in HR 6663, which actually names online poker specifically: “Federal Internet gambling prosecutions have involved sports betting, creating a lack of authoritative court decisions on the applicability of other federal criminal statutes to Internet poker and casino-style gambling.” The PPA, in turn, argued that the bill “only adds to the existing confusion and contradicts its own rule of construction by implying in its findings that the sites on which millions of Americans currently play are offering poker services in defiance of federal law.”
Aug 1
10:56 am – iGamingbusiness is reporting that the US is postponing planned meetings with the European Union over what they believe to be discriminatory online gambling law (the UIGEA). What a shocker….
Also I read this article at Cardplayer but forgot to post it. Basically members of Congress who voted for the UIGEA sent a letter to the Treasury and Federal Reserve to actually “define what is illegal internet gambling”. Later in the letter they basically say themselves, the ones who voted for this piece of junk legislation known as the UIGEA, that the law is unworkable in its current state. What is even funnier about this whole situation is the ones who voted and passed this law didn’t even know what the law was. I guess that’s what happens when our bright minds don’t read what they pass….
J. Todd does a pretty good recap of all the stuff that happened this week in his Perspectives Weekly in case you missed it all.
3:41am – The US DOJ has confiscated $24 million from Bodog according to a Forbes article. Earlier this week I heard of casino affiliates losing many thousands do to a payment processor/chargeback issues but I’m not sure if it’s related to this or not. The article on Forbes says it might rattle the confidence of online gamblers. $24 million is pocket change to Bodog and any prominent poker or casino site. Not only that but Morris Mohawk is claiming there are many false and misleading statements in the Forbes article. These sites are generating hundreds of millions each month. Some of Bodog’s money was seized from a Nevada State Bank….need I say more. I really can’t see players not getting paid or having money seized especially after what happened with BOS
