January 2010 US Poker Sites

For the latest information on poker in the US please visit our US poker sites webpage.

January 29

1:35pm – Deleware has legalized land based poker, blackjack, craps and roulette games in their casinos. The Senate voted yesterday in favor of the bill.

3:24am – I wanted to remind anyone in California, actually it will have an impact on all the states, but the date of February 9th is when the Senate will meet to discuss the compatibility of online poker and tribal compacts. I’ll do an update on the 8-9th so you can check out what was discussed.

January 26

12:31am – Among the many states looking to further online gaming, Iowa is now jumping aboard. They’re looking to expand poker into “special event” poker tournaments. Not much but a start. Also, I forgot to mention Delaware last week is seeking poker in their 3 casinos which would generate $40 million per year for the state. Everyone now is still looking at the increased stakes in Florida that is likely to happen mid this year. As a Florida native, I could see poker becoming a very big thing in this state, when not long ago we were only allowed to play $1/2 limit games. Now we’re looking at stakes and games people can make a living off of.

January 25

2:59pm – I’m back from the Bahamas, and well wasn’t too surprised to see not much news about US gaming. Depositing and withdrawing looks to be functioning just fine at all the major sites with no major issues to report.

January 21

7:17pm – Pappas of theppa.org released a video a couple days ago (sorry I’m in the bahamas and the internet sucks) urging poker players and members to do all they can for the vote on licensing internet gaming in the committee. It didn’t get much press because well, it’s just one of the first steps in what seems like and endless staircase! Either way they are expected to vote in February on the bill.

January 17

11:46pm – Echecks have been re-issued at AP and UB. They are calling them “EcheckUS”. Echecks are now working in full across the board at the major poker brands.

January 16

10:18pm – A bill (NJ Senate 490) has been released to legalize online gaming in the state of New Jersey. It would allow all games, including that of poker to be played online in the state borders. While bills “for” legalizing online gaming is great news I’m still not sold on the actual functionality of state run poker sites. The traffic would be just too low. I guess the government on a Federal level will have to wake up and watch the money go out to the states before we get nationwide legalization. The real money is in the casinos and sports betting online and there is no doubt this is a cash cow to the states, and while as much as we hate to see poker tagged in this group, it’s almost a must “profitably wise” for legalization. I hope that makes sense…. Either way I still stand behind my thoughts that legalized online poker in the US (in full functionality) is more than a decade + away, hoping to eat my words of course.

Meanwhile, at quick glance it looks like on July 1, 2010 Florida will see raised cashed game stakes at the land based poker rooms. That means no more measley $100 buy-in max where you have to play $5/10 with $100.

January 13

3:11pm – Corrupt Senator Kyl is pissing off people again with his UIGEA tactics. Like the “Nanny” he is, Kyl is punishing the US Treasury for allowing the 6 month delay of the UIGEA by not confirming the appointees of key people in the Treasury department. This selfish act is having impacts on the United States as a whole. Former head of the Federal Reserve said this about corrupt Senator Jon Kyl. “How can we run a government in the middle of a financial crisis without doing the ordinary, garden-variety administrative work of filling the relevant agencies?“ And this my friends, is why he ranks #1 when you google, “corrupt senator”. This reminds me of the movie “Shooter” with Mark Wahlberg where the movie ends with the corrupt Senator saying, “You can’t do this, I’m a United States Senator”. Mark’s character says, “Exactly” ….and puts a bullet right in his brain.

January 11

11:42am – In an interesting article done by GamingIntelligence, they spoke about Party Poker’s potential to enter the market if the United States does legalize it. In the article it said 3000-4000 people sign up a day ( ~4 million since the UIGEA) to play for “fake money”. I’m suspecting a very large majority of those are or would eventually be wanting to play for real money considering Party Poker still gets a huge amount of search traffic from the United States.

11:04am – Daniel Tucker, the leading Chairman for the Indian Casino tribes in California has spoken. Barney Frank is the gay white devil. No, no, that’s not what he said but he might as well have, calling Barney Franks attempt to legalize online gambling nationwide the biggest threat in 20 years. Saying it was “unjust and outrageous”. Tucker said it will transfer billions of dollars away from the Indian Tribes to offshore accounts, but forgot to mention the billions it would bring back to the United States, but I’m assuming he doesn’t care much for that, much more than they care for one another.

January 8

8:20pm – Here is J. Todds weekly video recap. After a week off because of personal issues J. Todd is back and discusses how there is hope in California for state run online gambling, how Slovenia has banned online gambling, Germany continues its effort to ban online gambling and Norway bans online gambling except for state run sites. I don’t really follow countries outside of the US (or state specifics, although I have been more recently because of their importance) all that much but did read an article, which for some reason has since been pulled from Egaming Review about a ban in the NRW region of Germany, which happens to be the most populous area of Germany. Also to J. Todd, sorry for your loss.

January 4

9:05pm – Poker players in Penn State will be glad to hear that the House has passed the bill to legalize poker games. Blackjack and craps, also in. Basically the only reason they added these table games is because of tax revenues and the possibility of cutting jobs. Hmmm, there’s quite a few other states that could use the tax revenue and one good way to do it would be to legalize online poker in those states, Florida, Cali, but….that’s a whole different conundrum.

January 2, 2010

3:46pm – I’d kind of like to report on something being back and all but on all the forums and news sites, there is nothing to report on. Not even a thread running at twoplustwo about problems withdrawing or depositing! Good news….

3:21pm – I am back from a much needed surf trip to Puerto Rico and we’ve been making some changes to the site, so sorry if you notice things a little bit out of whack at times. Updates will continue daily again, although I see not much happened.