USA Updates for July 2008

For current information visit our US poker page.

July 30

5:10 am – Today the House Judiciary Committee will be marking up the bill HR2410.  “Marking up” essentially just means considering the text, changes and deletions to the bill.  This HR 2410 was introduced by Shelley Berkley in mid 2007 to “study” internet gambling and it’s pros and cons, thus commonly referred to over the year as The Study Bill.

There seems to be continued excessive delays in cashing out at both Playersonly and Sportsbook poker due to processing problems.  Seems like any poker room connected to a prominent sportsbook and you’re likely to run into processing delays.

July 25

3:02 pm – Still lots of threads being posted on forums about checks bouncing from poker sites, casinos and some sportsbooks.  Some are saying up to 40 days for checks to be issued.  CNBC  even wrote an article on it titled, “Online Gambling:  The Betting is Easy, but Collecting?” .
July 24

1:00pm – Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet have created a new network called the Cereus Network.  The press release makes it sound like they were going to merge the sites into a new site called Cereus but this is not the case.  Instead they are just forming a “network”.  Both sites will remain the same but played on this new software platform with players being able to play each other from each site.

July 21

11:19 pm – Last month Bachus said many lies in his efforts to scare congressman from voting yes for a bill that would have made it so the Treasury didn’t have to release the completed regulations to enforce the UIGEA.  Well a lawyer from McGill University Gambling is finally calling Bachus on his lies.  Bachus had the balls to say this to his fellow Congressman and American people.

“McGill University found that one-third of college students who gamble on the Internet ultimately attempted suicide.”  “That is why the rate of suicide on our college campuses has doubled in the past 10 years.”

That’s obviously laughable to anyone who knows their ass from their mouth.  Here was McGill Universities reply to the Bachus’s lies.

“This assertion, which is reportedly based upon our empirical research, is not predicated upon any factual evidence. None of the studies conducted with adolescents or college students, to the best of my knowledge, have looked at a connection between Internet wagering and suicide attempts.”

1:44 am – The forums at twoplustwo continue to be littered with threads about cashing out and withdrawing lately.  Nothing bad to report thank goodness.  Most sites are in the same boat and getting payments out, even if some are taking longer than others.  On a personal note, a couple people I’ve spoke to thought I was some old guy so I decided it was finally time to put a personal blog on the homepage, it won’t have a comment section because Im tired of the occasional haters.  Also, pokerscout has asked me to remove the peak traffic archives but I hope he reconsiders and realizes this is a valuable piece of history we’ve recorded….Dan if you’re reading this…. please .  Everyone go to pokerscout and support his site!

July 19

6:16 pm – Here is a brief recap of this week.  Betonsports was denied a motion to dismiss their case on Friday by Judge Medler.  Jim Mcdermott drew up a bill that would raise $40 billion in tax revenues if online gambling becomes legal (one of the legalization bills like Barney Franks would have to pass first).  The bill is HR 6501.  Also, 888 is squeezing their affiliates once again in an effort to increase their revenues by taking money from webmasters (explained more in J. Todds video).  Here is J. Todd’s video Perspectives Weekly recap.  I’ll be doing a poker site analysis on July 25 to compare the 1 year change in “peak player traffic” which coincides with the 1st week broadcast of the WSOP.

July 14

5:58 pm – There was a good thread posted by Leapfrog at twoplustwo which goes over what we now face in the race to stop the UIGEA regulations and also gives a couple links and quotes that are interesting.  I’ll briefly give you the cliff notes on the whole situation.  The thread quotes Barney Frank in a LVRJ interview this weekend saying…

“The problem the other side has is that nothing is going to be done on the regulations because it’s impossible to get them done”.

Even though HR 5767 got a 32-32 vote and didn’t go through, a supposed “inside person” whose claims were somewhat backed by a PPA representative in the post is that Republicans who voted against HR 5767 are changing their minds after the outrageous claims and lies Bachus made during the first go around.  According to the rumors the second go around it’s VERY likely we will see the regulations stopped from going through.  Rich Muney, from the PPA says,  “Wexler hopes to have a new vote before the August recession.”

July 11

12:47 am – Checking around the poker forums it seems most people are talking about withdraw issues from Full Tilt.  Sounds like there was a batch of bad checks and people are still having issues with refunds etc.  Some players are getting bonuses and free money for the wait.  There is an email if you’re concerned and have a check you’re waiting on, its checkupdate@fulltiltpoker.com

July 9

4:26 pm – Partygaming is citing US problems for their missed forecast in earnings.  According to Party, their numbers were lower than expected because of too much competition from sites that accept US players.  Sorry Party but things are just going to get worse for you come air time of the World Series of Poker.  Some shareholders also aren’t happy with how the whole US negotiations have been going as nothing is really being released publicly about it.

July 4

2:57pm – Happy fourth of July everyone.  Here is J. Todd’s Friday Perspectives Weekly video recap.  Everything is slow in the various poker forums so not much bad/good happening this week.  Next week I’ll probably do a traffic analysis of the poker sites to see where we stand from a year ago.  The tables have been full the past couple days with traffic peaking pretty high for most US facing cardrooms.

July 2

7:12pm – Some casinos and related poker rooms are fighting back against a recent attempt to stop certain processing methods from going through.  I’m not going to mention names or sites or even the processing methods but a few places out there will have a much better processing conversion rate…..it’s mostly for casinos though, atm.  If you’re signed up at one of these places you’ll get what’s called a “player retention” email.