January, February, March 2012 USA News Archive

Please see our main USA page for recent news.

- Here is a recap of latest US poker related legislation and news.

* Iowa has passed an Internet Poker Bill in the Senate. It now moves to the house. Taxes on the poker bill would be….22%. YIKES!

* Hawaii was expected to explore internet poker, it has not. This State would do very well if they had any sort of gaming due to the huge population of Asians.

* Nevada continues to move forward with online poker as they expect to look at poker licenses in April and May. Also, “private” groups are gearing up for testing of poker sites.

Anyway, as you can see pretty boring stuff. Lots of dead poker bills and more than likely lots of scheming going on behind the scenes with these politicians. Also, the much anticipated Full Tilt Poker acquisition = nothing yet.

- We had server issues and lost some data and you may have noticed the sites being up and down for a week so I’ll try to go over some things that are of somewhat importance in cliff notes.

* Pokeraffiliatesolutions is reporting that WinningPoker Network has the best deposit/withdraws for this month followed by Bovada, a grade lower, and then Merge another grade lower, and towards the bottom was Cake Network. I don’t really trust WinningPoker enough yet, so right now I think Betonline.com is still the best (not on their list).

* Iowa celebrated what looked like online poker in their State but it was rejected in the House.

* Despite being rejected last year by the governor of New Jersey, it appears he might approve online gambling this year. They would be the first State.

* Nevada announced online poker licenses should be handed out by the month of May. The games (online poker) would be up and available in Nevada by the end of the year.

* US Congressman, Spencer Bachus, who was strongly behind the 2006 bill which started the downfall of online betting saying stuff like, “Online betting ruins peoples lives and rips families apart, eventually leading to bankruptcy, and crime.” The same “morally righteous” man is now under investigation for multiple claims of insider trading. That’s karma A-hole.

* And the best for last. Full Tilt is rumored to complete its deal tomorrow with the French investor. If not tomorrow within the next week or two. Once the deal is complete expect to hear how payback will be completed and also how many pennies on the dollar you can expect.

- Well it appears this Calvin Ayre of Bodog indictment is earth shattering because it seems everyone is making it out to be some sort of shock “breaking news”. When you go on record like he was at his site Calvin Ayre.com bashing long time previous (10year +) employees that are still in the gaming industry and compete against him it’s no wonder ’someone’ ratted on him. I’m not going to name names but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to draw a basis conclusion on where the source came from. I was very surprised to see Calvin in London, UK (indictable country) last year for his party, and announcing he was going to be at these places before hand. Personally I don’t want to see him in custody of the US one bit and hope he was in a non indictable country when he read the document, not that I have the slightest concern that the US cares to catch him. They’re more concerned about pushing this to the media, scaring US gamblers, and then pushing their own brands come late 2012/2013.

- The domain Bodog dot com has again been seized, this time from the homeland security. Calvin attempted to ‘pretend’ it wasn’t in use anymore and that they had changed to Bodog dot eu. This doesn’t affect anything except for Bodog dot eu’s placement in the search engines. Basically just the government wasting money as the domain is completely pointless to seize since it does nothing to stop people from gambling online in the USA considering all US players have to play on Bovada now.

-What I thought would happen a long time ago, Antigua and Barbuda are picking up their fight against the US again in regards to the USA’s disregard for World Trade Treaties against online gambling. While they have already won previously, the new stance on internet poker in the US, and blocking of foreign licenses is clearly in violation of Trade treaties. If treaties are not respected by the USA, then there is no reason Antigua based websites should follow other treaties. So…free American Intellectual property for all!

-Lockpoker.com has opened up a second cashier due to slow processing on the Merge Network side. There had been a lot of complaints for sluggish withdraw times (myself included) but the second cashier has apparently improved withdrawing and depositing by over 50%, so that makes them the fastest poker room for processing at the moment. Hopefully it lasts…

-Also, a warning to any Cake Poker or network affiliated site players. Withdraws have been in que for over 3 months for checks. Avoid them at all costs right now.

-The Everleaf Gaming company has closed to US citizens citing USA Homeland Security orders. Popular sites on this network included Minted Poker and Luvinpoker.

-Another closure this week includes that of WSEX.com’s poker site, (World Sports Exchange). Not really a big loss since nobody really played there.

-The US DOJ oversight hearing on Internet Gambling today/yesterday was also held. The Indian tribes are of course saying that the new law of legalized poker would extremely hurt their revenues. But let’s be honest, they just want a piece of this internet poker pie because we all know barely any of their revenues are generated from poker at their casinos.

-Well according to Calvin Ayre (owner of Bodog), Full Tilt Poker likely will not pay players back until an agreement is made for various Full Tilt “Pros” to pay back money they borrowed from the site while playing there. In total there is about $20 million owed, with Phil Ivey owing $4m and Eric Lindgren also owing $4 million. Other pros include David Benyamine, Layne Flack, Mike Matusow, Barry Greenstein etc. This is apparently a serious liability that the new owners want paid before they pay US customers. Much of the press has been very negative towards the Full Tilt Pros. Despite having a significant amount in FTP myself, I don’t believe the majority of these pros are withholding any money that they don’t legitimately feel they have a right to, or are for whatever reason not paying it back immediately. Barry Greenstein only owes $400k, and he hasn’t paid and he’s very well off and I completely believe there is a solid reason behind him not paying what would be a small amount for his reputation – life. This whole thing is probably just press trying to sensationalize this story even more because it continues to get so much attention from major outlets, gaming and not.

-The PPA came out with a survey that was kind of interesting, but not the best way to conduct a survey if you ask me. Let me get to their survey. The PPA surveyed its members and 90% of the people support Federal licensing of online poker. Like many of the readers here, the answers are skewed because most of the people who joined the PPA were most likely screwed by one of the sites in the past few years whether it be Full Tilt money being held, ewallets frozen, or Absolute poker fraud. In any case just remember, the main reason so many people got the shaft was because the government stepped in and seized so much money over the years, putting massive burden on these poker companies. If it weren’t for the US Department of Justice and their shock and awe type of runs on the poker players funds, its very likely most of the online poker rooms wouldn’t have ended up in the situation they are now in. Basically the government fucked poker players, and now we need protection from, well, the government. So while the majority want Federal licensing just remember who caused this mass downfall of online poker in the US.

-With that said, I’ve recently noticed from a business standpoint more and more people looking for poker related stuff. I believe all the news about poker now being ‘legal’ in the major outlets is pushing this. There has definitely been an uptick in the post-December poker Wire Act’s stance on internet poker.

-It also seems that Chris Ferguson, poker player and part owner of Full Tilt Poker, siphoned about $45 million out of Full Tilt starting in 2007. Where that money is, nobody knows. This could potentially lead to a non-deal with the potential new owner of Full Tilt, Bernard Tapie according to Subject-Poker. How any of these previous FTP owners didn’t know US poker would eventually come to an end is beyond me. I can recall speaking with a large gaming friend and even we knew it would eventually come crashing down. Greed causes blindness I guess.

-The lobbyists are out and pushing for federal legislation of internet poker early this week. Both MGM and Caesars are also backing federal legislation. While I hate anything to do with the government for online poker to work on a large scale it does need to be on a federal level in order to more effectively have a real poker room for all US players and not just people playing each other online in their own states. The states obviously want all the tax money to themselves…

-Ok so here is something new that I don’t think even the large companies have been taking into account. I continue to read how the US gambling market is valued at $6 billion dollars. It ranges, but that’s about the number they keep coming up with. This number seems to be derived from the loss in stock value back in 2006 during the UIGEA. OK, for starters people in the US still gambled online after the UIGEA so the number is instantly off. The $6 billion that left public companies simply went to private companies where US players were already active. That’s not the main point I’d like to make. The US online gambling market is MUCH LARGER THAN $6B, Reuters believes it will jump to $10B but that is still low. Here is why, and if you’re a poker player or someone looking to get into making money playing poker this analysis is important to you, it’s not just businesses that will make money with an increased market value but good poker players especially.

-Those actually in the gambling market who currently accept bets or affiliates to US gaming sites know the biggest obstacle is finding a way for people to fund and withdraw from their accounts (thanks UIGEA). Aside from the fact most people are scared to deposit because of what happened in April with Full Tilt and Absolute Poker (thanks Black Friday), it is very difficult to deposit online. Let me give you some stats that I have.

-From the United States, poker players deposit on average 15% of the time. That means if they go to a poker room and signup, there is a 15% chance they will play for real money. What all the ‘experts’ aren’t accounting for is that this 15% would be extremely higher in a regulated market. Only 15% are depositing because restrictions of the UIGEA that still block foreign gambling deposits. We’re not going to assume anything here. In the United Kingdom sports bettors deposit at a rate of up to 90%, and even higher. Of course most people who signup at a bookmaker are going to bet, otherwise what’s the point of signing up? Let’s transfer that to the United States. In the USA, sports bettors only deposit at a rate of 20%. That’s a 70% difference, and it’s simply because of the ease of depositing (legally) in the UK vs the illegality of depositing in the US and how hard it is to deposit from the US these days. Now that we have a base for numbers lets look at the ‘true’ value of the US online gambling market.

-If the numbers prove correct, one would expect approximately 70% of the money made by US gamblers is being left out due to deposit restrictions. While I don’t believe 90% will actually deposit to play poker, I do believe it would be nearly 75% depositing to gamble. This means that predictions are 5X lower than expected. The true value of US online gambling would in fact be ($6b X 5), or $30 billion dollars, not $6 billion.

-Now those who were around back in 2003-2006 know how much different poker was. It was almost impossible to find an online poker table to sit at for sites like Party Poker because sooo many people were playing at once. But now, it’s hard to find a poker table to play at or a sit n go because most of the virtual tables are empty. If poker is legalized in the US via an interstate method (people can play against other states and countries) then once word gets out my figures blow pre-2006’s numbers out of the water. That is of course if the US citizens are still into poker as much as they were before. While I don’t believe they are, personally I believe legalized poker will revive it, but ONLY on interstate/multi-national levels. It will be a VERY lucrative time for poker players who are even half decent at poker. The % rates in this update were taken from the US accepted poker site and sportsbook, Betonline.com which has the highest deposit rates for both verticals.

- I was reading G911 and saw a Reuters video about Jack Abramhoff speaking about the recent change in US law about online poker/lotteries. A bit shocked to see him giving an interview on gambling considering what a total piece of scum he is after he defrauded so many people in the US gaming industry, mostly tribes, but he also was pretty much behind the mafia hit on the now dead Suncruz casino founder, Gus Boulis. Anyways he pretty much says straight up everything about gambling in the US is about politics and corruption. While not really ‘news’, it’s interesting to watch him speak so candidly about how much corrupt money is exchanging hands to get online poker legalized. Here is the youtube video. I’ve mentioned it before but if you’re ever interested in a documentary about US gambling, “Jack Abramhoff, and The United States of Money” is really good.

-Well I’ve been reading some of the legal minds, organizations and gaming site owners interpretation of the future of online poker now that the Wire Act does not cover it. Let’s just say the opinions vary greatly, as usual with any sort of speculating about the psychology of the US government and the players at play. Most agree we will have intra-state (within ones state borders), but not until after 2012.

-I can’t help but wonder why Harrah’s and Caesars would not have internet casinos and poker in 2012. They’ve already have the framework with an online casino and poker room already operational (WSOP.com) for the past year. As licenses go out I would think they could very easily be prepared asap making them among the leaders. I believe the WSOP will become the biggest poker giant. Many believe whomever acquires sites like Party Poker (MGM), or Poker Stars would be the leader but remember it is difficult to say. Party Poker has an enormous database of US players emails, a large following of ‘play money’ players from the United States and a vast amount of ex-US players that have loyalty to the site, same with Poker Stars.

-On the other hand when people think of poker in the USA they generally think of the WSOP. Party Poker was quoted many years ago as saying advertising in the United States among the WSOP catapulted their site to epic proportions. Now the WSOP will have exclusivity to that. So from my standpoint, I see the WSOP.com (Harrah’s), PartyPoker/BWIN (MGM) and Pokerstars (Wynn) becoming the next BIG 3. I don’t believe current market share will play a huge importance on who becomes big, it’s who has prepared best and has all the marketing in place when the flood gates open. Of course, we can’t rule out Google, Yahoo, or Facebook either. Speculating on this particular future will make your mind go in many different directions.