February & March US Updates
Current information located on the US poker sites webpage.
March 30
7:00am – Some guy did a really good recap of the Microgaming/Tusk scandal that involved the closing of dozens of poker sites whereas poker players funds were not paid out. According to the site, there is over $5.3 million abandonded and owed. Of that $5.3 million only 15% is expected to be paid back to players after liquidation. Sad.
6:30am – The NFL has recently appointed Jeff Miller to lobby and keep the UIGEA in it’s current form. His statements was that they, “want to maintain the integrity of the game and online gambling threatens that.” I like how he classifies it as online gambling, not online sportsbetting. To be honest, I think sportsbetting should be perfectly legal as well…too bad for the wire act and the corruption that led to it 60 YEARS AGO.
March 28
10:26pm – In J. Todds weekly video he covers the Australia gambling ban attempting to be imposed on their citizens. He also covers the Lee Rousso case in Washington via a telephone interview. The case was upheld and it is still a felony to gamble online in Washington.
7:44pm – The EU has finalized its report with the US. Apparentlly the EU finds the US to be non-compliant with WTO obligations…..something I thought they had come to the conclusion, and been compensated for a long time ago (even though it be for horseracing only).
March 27
3:27am – I am thinking of replacing section IX which lists the current semi-active bills for online gambling. These bills rarely change, and when they do it’s in the media anyways. I feel a section which keeps track of withdraw times for deposit methods for the top 5 US poker sites would be very useful. It will be tedious because it involves a lot of forum monitoring and customer support talk so I’m not sure I’m up for the challenge. If you are interested in this email me at info@compatiblepoker.com with “yes” in the subject line.
March 24
8:33pm – Bugsyclub has closed its doors permanently. They were a US facing room which wasn’t all that popular but more so for players using a Mac or Linux. All players accounts will be transferred to Pokerstars.
March 22
10:33pm – The major US poker sites that I keep track of are showing a stagnant / decline in players towards the latter part of this month. I expect this to continue as Spring Break usually causes this. Nothing to worry about on the legal/depositing side. Just normal annual occurences.
March 19
4:01pm – Strangely enough, Australia is now attempting to IP ban online poker sites. The list of sites was leaked to wikileaks. Here is the list of Australia poker sites that are attempting to be banned.
4:12am – A quick update to anyone who plays at Doylesroom and most likely anyone on the Cakenetwork (Cake poker, Sportsbook, Playersonly etc). If you are going to withdraw, do it by Fedex. Regular mail checks are taking up to 10 weeks! I believe the fee is pretty high for the fast couriers, like $50 but maybe if you do a little complaining you can get a free tournament ticket or something. 
In a duplicate test it took about a week for a courier check and it’s been over 80 days for a paper check. They said a few processors went down.
March 16
5:43am – I wanted to thank Scott for writing in and giving us more information about Partygaming re-entering the US. Party Poker would be looking to offer its games to states that are seeking to regulate online poker such as California, Oregon, and Massachusetts.
A poster over at twoplustwo made a great point about Partypoker. One reason they were so successful was they marketed to the “dumb” novice player so to speak. This brought in loads of beginner players, which in turn is why even the average player was able to earn profits easier. A great foundation for successful poker sites.
Unfortunately when they started to air these television ads in the back of my mind I kind of knew this was the beginning of the end. Gambling ads on TV in a “grey area” market….not the smartest. So while they were the first to advertise on TV they may have brought the UIGEA onto themselves.
March 13
4:41am – The Financial Times wrote an article yesterday that quoted Partygamings Financial Director as saying they hope to be allowed back in the US “in the not to distant future”. To be honest I don’t know what to think of this article. Hyping up the stock? Mis-reporting? Or simply a play on words? The finance director goes on to say he was “reasonable optimistic” the US market would reopen soon. I hate to downplay this but I don’t see this happening anywhere near soon. It will have taken 3 years to finally implement the UIGEA, what makes him think it will magically re-open just like that? Even if Barney Frank gets the UIGEA stopped I don’t think Party would legally be allowed to re-enter until regulation comes in.
March 10
2:18am – I ran across an article in Foxnews this morning that had a quote in it by the new US Trade Rep, Ron Kirk. Hopefully the man will have a look at how the US treats online gambling agreements. While the US is allowed to back out of agreements (like online gaming) other countries are not?
“I believe in trade and will work to expand it, but I also know that not all Americans are winning from it and that our trading partners are not always playing by the rules,” Ron Kirk
2:03am – Sportingbet announced that they may be on a path to finalizing discussions with the DOJ. If you may recall the CEO of Betonsports, David Carruthers was detained by the US DOJ about 2 years ago. He is finally going to get a trial date on the 18th of this month. A Reuters article stated they expect to reach an understanding in 2009 although things continue to move slowly, according to Sportingbet’s CEO. To my knowledge I still don’t think players have been paid by the liquidators of Betonsports when player funds were frozen.
March 6
3:14 – J. Todd covers the UIGEA overblocking of credit cards for lottery tickets. Also the Attorney General of Utah has said he will support Barney Frank’s bill to regulate online gambling. J also believes California will regulate online poker this year….
March 4
11:42am - It seems the UIGEA is biting some state run lotteries in the butt already. Overblocking of credit cards to purchase lottery tickets has already begun and the DOJ doesn’t seem to care according to iMEGA. The ironic thing is most poker and casino sites now know how to get around the coding used to block gaming transactions, while the state run lotteries are becoming affected.
March 3
5:03am – Nothing to report on. Slow goes it this week so far.
February 27
11:42am – Pricewaterhousecoopers released a statement saying the United States would generate nearly $52 billion in tax revenues in the next ten years if internet gambling was regulated and taxed. This is 22% higher than their 2007 estimate.
February 26
2:10am – California may be looking to get into online poker according to various news articles. Legislators will be attending an internet gaming conference in May. iMEGA is expected to be there and so is 888 and Cryptologic poker software providers. California must be desperate, being the second largest foreclosure state. The Indian casinos can’t be too happy about this news despite it being a long shot! My question is why choose 888 and Crypto to be the software provider, uhhhh.
February 25
6:05pm – Alex from Bodog sent us an email saying that cashout length time has dropped from 10-15 days to 5-10. Definitely better than the 40 days prior but they still lack the deposit methods for new players!
February 23
12:02am - Pokerhost.com has just officially moved from the non-US friendlly Microgaming platform to the US friendly platform, the Cakenetwork. The new site design actually looks kind of appealing.
February 21
3:26am – Barney Frank was quoted as saying to expect the new bill to repeal the UIGEA next month. Also here is J. Todd’s Perspective weekly video recap. He talks about how the EU wants to fight the US over internet gambling….again and more about the Betcha.com guy, which I never really followed in the first place.
February 19
1:17am – Poker Host is coming back to the US market after being forced to stop accepting players on the Microgaming Network. Rumors are they will follow the same footsteps as Doylesroom and join the Cake Network.
February 17
1:58am – The judge in South Carolina is expected to make his ruling about the people who were arrested and charged in 2006. If you’re following this, the judge did make a decision that poker is a game of skill and NOT chance. The ruling is expected this Thursday.
1:21am – I’m running a contest for any bloggers out there who want to post their bad beat stories on their blog (not atypical stories bad beat stories ie: aces vs kings). I’m giving away $1K to the winners with the best stories. It just started so if you’re interested here is the link to our blog about the bad beat contest, since nothing else is happening in the news. I want to hear the worst of the worst! I’m doing this because there is no news going on right now for US players….
February 14
12:02pm – Not suprisingly Pokerstars.com didn’t see a big jump in numbers yesterday, as Friday usually isn’t a big day for people to play online poker. With them breaking traffic records right now I would think tomorrow would be the record breaking day that sets the bar for at least a 6 months to a year. Saturday usually sees highest peak players and most signups but with it being Valentines Day there might be a lot of pissed off girls out there if people are playing right now.
February 13
7:15pm – Pokerstars.com traffic increased 27% overnight yesterday. They had a peak player volume of almost 47,000 compared to the normal 37,000. Considering they are already the largest poker site online this increase is quite extrodinary. The reason being their 25 billionth hand promotions they launched where money is being given for each milestone until they reach the big hand. It will be interesting to see how high the traffic gets as the weekend progresses into the increased prize pool of the Sunday $2.5 million tourney and the 25th billion hand. When you login at
Pokerstars.com all these special promotions are shown.
February 12
2:31am – Duplicate Poker, the site that was claiming to be the only “legal” poker site on the internet has announced how much they owe affiliates after going into liquidation. 344 affiliates filed claims against the company for a total of $487,500. The liquidators expect to have know how many cents on the dollar each affiliate will end up getting paid in about 60 days.
February 10
3:59pm – J. Todd covers “Barney Frank vs UIGEA in 2009″ and his bill to “neuter” the law. Here is the Perspectives Weekly video. This is todays video, Tuesday, as J. Todd was sick and had family issues last week so didn’t do a Friday’s one.
February 7
3:01am – The legalization of online poker finished 11th of importance in the Citizen’s Briefing Book. It was also number #2 for most user comments, right under the legalization of marijuana, doughhhh. Anyways, according to pokernewsdaily, the top suggestions were hand delivered to the President.
February 6
4:05am – Barney Frank says he will re-introduce the bill to regulate online poker in 2009. He believes the UIGEA was forced upon the DOJ because of religous rights, which “dies” under the Obama administration. He says it WILL get passed….but how many times have we heard that!
February 5
2:13am – I found an interesting little note on Dan’s site, pokerscout. It said that last year cash game traffic had increased 15% overall. That’s a pretty impressive number and just goes to show what sort of impact the UIGEA has had so far. Obviously the number might have been higher if not for the UIGEA but any number in the green is good. Also, recently both Cake and the Cereus Network are on the climb with double digit increases in player traffic.
