June / July / August 2012 US Gaming News
- The Republican party delivered a swift kick in the balls this glorious day. In what they call “Making the Internet Family-Friendly”, the GOP is calling for a prohibition on internet poker and the reversal of the recent clarifiying-publication on The 1961 Wire Act by the DOJ. These snuffs continue doing as they please with complete regards to research proving online poker is not a source of addiction and the internet, as far as most are concerned works just fine. Internet poker on a state level will suck. It will be light years away from being the same as playing online at somewhere like Poker Stars from outside the USA.
-A Federal judge in New York has ruled poker a game of skill. Now the question is will the overseas poker companies be able to operate to New York citizens without a US license. I really don’t see what not, but I presume NY State laws will interfere…Either way, big step forward today.
-Bovada.lv (the US version of Bodog) plans to reopen to New York and Utah today.
-The United States Department of Justice still has no immediate plans on how to distribute American funds to US players. In fact, they just released a statement seeking an organization to cooperate with them to help them facilitate the release of the money. There is $159m owed to 1.3m US poker players. More waiting. Here is their press release. http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/employmentmra.html
- Just a small update on some depositing and withdraw issues for the popular sites right now. Lock Poker and Cake is extremely slow, pushing 4 weeks+ for checks for last months withdraws. I spoke with the head manager and owner, they are working on it and new processing should be back soon (no exact date as to when but apparently this month). Bovada is on schedule to begin paying out players in a faster manner with the upcoming football season, therefore poker deposits/withdraws will be expedited as well from the current 25day average to 10 during football season. VIP bettors will have 1-5 day payouts. If you’re having trouble depositing on Bovada they will be vamping up to a 60% success rate on CC deposits as well. In general, everyone who has a poker room associated with a sportsbook has slowed down, and will dramatically pick up for US football season as they don’t want to deplete their processors prior.
- The poker players alliance has issued a page for the remission of funds for prior US players with money on Full Tilt/Stars. They will be issuing a guide shortly. Sometimes I’ve found the PPA a bit slow at processing news so keep an eye out on other news sites or here.
- Ok, so you should know by now that the announcement was made about the agreement by Poker Stars to buy Full Tilt Poker (Officially). While non-US players are being refunded within 97 days, it never said how and when US players will get their money. Generally in seizure cases like this we’ll have to wait for the DOJ to issue a claims of remittance to the government. This is going to happen for US players. Time to wait a bit more. I did this for a six figure amount for the seizure of money in a defunct poker ewallet (usemywallet) and it was a lot of paperwork. Needless to say I did not receive the money back because only 4 people filed and the government could get away with not paying, with millions waiting, the government will gladly be the ‘hero’ and pay our money back this time, which all they did was steal from Full Tilt Poker to cause this in the first place.
- Expect a press release from the southern district of NY and Poker Stars about the payback of US funds this week.
- The half brother (Brent Beckley) of the co-founder of Absolute Poker / Ultimate Bet (Scott Tom) has received his sentence today. He will get 14 months in prison. Not bad for stealing millions. I usually have no problem what the processing side did on the poker sites that have gone bellup since backfriday and the UIGEA, but the AP/UB guys are the scum of them all. According to the readings, he was given a less charge because he had not intended to do harm to banks or financial Government losses. Who cares about the players because that’s what the government was looking out for?
- The Federal Government is now seeking a piece of the US internet poker pie. Both Senator Reid and Senator Kyl, the latter who ‘coincidentally’ helped author the ban on internet poker in 2006 are pushing for Federal Legalization which would mean States could play against each other.
- Ray Bitar, CEO of Full Tilt Poker has turned himself into the Department of Justice today. His lawyer is saying this will help expedite the return of funds and the Stars/Tilt deal. Bitar faces up to 145 years in prison. It will be interesting to see how this plays out…
- There has been more ‘business’ related stuff going on with gaming lately. Everyone is just waiting and watching as Nevada and other states begin the licensing process. This week the companies IGT and Ballys were awarded licenses to operate intrastate poker in the US. They still have about 8 months before they can launch real money games in Nevada. California continues to go back and forth with online poker. When it does happen it will without be the holy grail for online poker in the US if you are a pro or someone living off poker. Without really needing to say, anyone living in California and is good at poker is going to mop up. I will be renting a place out there in Laguna Beach after the WSOP to get used to California.
There were some issues at Betonline last couple weeks. Players were complaining about lack of funds being able to be played with at the poker site. Customer support (which is seems to be trained to be incompetent, or simply just like to play dumb) referred to software upgrades as the cause of downtime. Also, I added a bonus release calculator on the homepage if anyone is interested.
- Intertops has closed to new customers from the US as of today. All existing players are unaffected.
- I briefly spoke via email to the gaming professor, I. Nelson Rose who runs www.gamblingandthelaw.com about his thoughts on a couple issues regarding legally run State poker sites in the US. A couple concerns I had were that some States might not allow credit card deposits (it was in previous bills that circulated). He said there will be no problem with credit cards. Another concern I continue to have is the actual success of state run sites for example if you see exhibit A on this page towards the bottom. Mr Rose mentioned something interesting. He said that likely by the end of the year the State run sites may have INTERNATIONAL COMPACTS with other countries, such as England, if certain legislature clarifies the law. I’ve had my doubts that State run sites would succeed but if they become International it’s an entirely new ball game. In my opinion for State by State poker sites to have a large enough player base they will absolutely need International players. Where there are US players – especially the kind State sites will attract, there will be fish, and where there are fish we supply the nutrients for successful poker sites. The WSOP poker site is in a dominant position if this happens.
- There will be a large push for poker sites related to Bodog / Bovada in the United States. It appears they will be opening allowing licenses of their US facing brands to compete with the surge of other Networks (Merge / Revolution Network). I didn’t divulge much into it but it sounds like Bovada owner (Calvin Ayre) isn’t too happy about former higher ranking employees opening sites and taking up the US gaming space ie: Lock Gaming aka the Revolution Network. The billionaire has been known to personally attack the owner of Lock on his website and facebook. I like both brands so look forward to whatever Bodog is up to.
