September + October 2009 US Updates

For to-date information visit our daily updated US poker sites homepage.

October 30

2:09am – The now current estimate on taxes that legalized US gambling would generate is $42 billion over 10 years. So let’s round down to $4 billion per year (cause what’s a couple billion to the US anyways). That would give the United States 1 day an hour and 32 minutes of added time before the national debt clock starts ticking again for the year.

October 29

4:40am – Full Tilt continues with echeck problems, 6 days and counting.

4:32am – As the deadline nears with only 1 month left until the UIGEA I decided to update section VIII’s FAQ section #8. It involves what we can expect with deposits and withdraws after the UIGEA. I’m not a mind reader but have been following what most industry experts concur on what will happen, including the American Bankers Association. Either way now would be the time to withdraw what money you need or deposit some money to play with in coming months. Don’t be the person that’s on the forums complaining they need their funds to pay bills and delays are occuring. This is the first time the industry has seen anything like this. I don’t expect much to come from it, but it’s best to be prepared.

October 26

4:06am – This is the first time I’ve seen it but Fulltiltpoker.com is now accepted American Express credit cards. Previously only Absolutepoker had Amex as an option. Full Tilt’s echecks still seem to be down.

October 25

3:00am – As of late afternoon yesterday a few poker forums I visit started reported Echeck deposit/withdraw interruptions at Full Tilt Poker. The problem seems to have hit multiple people and I too can confirm (pic below) they are down for the moment. Pokerstars.com is having no problems.

2:33am – What I thought was going to be a good option (PicClub) past the December 1st deadline for the UIGEA has been getting pretty ugly between the Merge Network and PicClub (both have issued statements not staking any claim in the disolved business between each other). I still can’t publicly state what exactly happened but basically I was told by 3 people now why they don’t do business anymore and they are all pretty much saying the same thing. I still think they are a safe option for US players to use, but it seems not so much for the gaming sites. I’ll just let Merge or PicClub announce the press release as I’ve been asked not to say anything. But, as I said it’s more of an internal type of thing among businesses that shouldn’t really be out in the public. Business goes bad between companies, money is lost, and greed comes into play. It’s the online poker business, founded and run by a lot of corrupt and shady individuals.

2:30am – Just to keep things up to date, they had the hearing on the Kentucky domain name forfeiture case. From what I’ve read it went well…as expected and the whole thing is pretty much a waste of breath.

2:18am – John Pappas of the PPA issued a youtube video about the upcoming December 1st deadline for the UIGEA. It’s a short 2:50 video that discusses what they are doing to push back this deadline. The video talks about their efforts in joining up with the national horseracing and dogracing association with a petition to the Federal Reserve in efforts to get the UIGEA delayed by 1 year. Online dog racing and horseracing sites are fearful that the UIGEA will force banks to overblock transactions from their US customers (these are legal transactions deemed by the UIGEA). Coincidentially the law was meant to protect those industries, not hurt them. Oops. Secondly, Pappas said they have reached out to 50 Congressman to push this issue on the Treasury for the 1 year delay. The third comment he made were just about the bills they currently have in circulation to regulate online gambling.

October 19

1:23am – Doing my random depositing / withdraw check on the forums I noticed a few threads with players having issues with echecks at both Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker. It is sparatic and no systematic banks, certain echeck processor or state problems seem apparent. Various players are having issues with both deposit and withdrawing via echeck, but it doesn’t look to be any sort of normal tightening of echecks nor does it seem to be a ton of people with the issue.

October 15

10:01pm – Strangely enough the Merge Network dropped PicClub, a depositing and withdraw option that has been said to be UIGEA proof according to the lawyers. I would think all the sites would be stocking up on every sort of backup depositing option they have right now, not ditching ones that can withstand the UIGEA. Personally I think PicClub doesn’t get much attention right now because its not a super easy to use deposit option, but worst case scenario and on December 1 it’s hard to get money into poker sites people will be looking for any option. In either case, the owner of Picclub stated in his email that they would be offering it individually to Merge sites, for those that wanted it. I can’t release any information as to why PicClub dropped Merge at this time but it’s not because of the players security of Picclub.

October 13

12:01am – Another attempt to push back the UIGEA from being enforced on December 1st, 2009 is on its way by the Poker Players Alliance. According to the PPA, they have sent a petition to Timothy Geithner (US Treasury Secretary) to delay the UIGEA under the Administrative Procedure Act. He has 180 days to reply, but unfortunately the UIGEA goes into affect in less than 50.

October 12

12:53am – Expect Pokerstars and Full Tilt to get even bigger towards the beginning of 2010. France, the 5th largest online gambling country with 1.3 million gamblers (the US has 10mill), is expected to pass a bill which will force sites like Partygaming, Bwin, 888 and so on to stop accepting players. They then will make these poker / casino sites re-register the players 6 months down the road when they get a license to operate and accept bets from France. Most players will just move on to Poker Stars and other US accepted sites that don’t follow these rediculous laws. This is bad for the shareholders of these companies because they not only lose their entire French base, but more importantly the high rollers. It won’t be easy getting them back as they move on to greener pastures.

October 9

10:44pm – Gamcare released a statement today which said uses of their free gambling problem help group had risen by 21%. While this is a UK based organization I’m sure the US politicians will spin it out of control. Gamcare even stated in the announcement that the increase was NOT due to a rise in problem gambling, but attritutable to increased awareness of their free help. I can almost guarantee this percentage will be misrepresented by those against regulation of online gambling in the United States. The UK is a good benchmark to go off because they have regulated online gambling, but in these circumstances it’s only worth noting that the Bill Frists of this world of FOF members will publish it as false information to get votes in their favor.

October 6

7:38am – Finally, a US court has said that poker IS a game of skill in South Carolina and is less dominated by chance elements. The ruling came at the expensive of 5 individuals who were eventually found not guilty because of the judge’s conclusion of poker being a game of skill.

October 5

11:08am – According to GamingIntelligence, Barney Frank sent a letter to the Federal Reserve and US Treasury asking for the UIGEA to be delayed for 1 year. As you know, Barney Frank also has a bill out to delay the UIGEA. In the letter he cited his bill and is saying the UIGEA will put more strain on the recession and needs to be put off for a year.

October 1

7:12pm – I’m pretty shocked when I read the headline story today that David Carruthers is withdrawing his guilty plea on the Betonsports case with the USA for multiple charges involved with the gaming site. Kind of strange to say the least…

More bad news about this corrupt industry was announced today, Pitbull Poker has officially closed down after the owners were arrested today after being caught trying to literally get out of dodge in the middle of the night. They were packing up their costa rican office in the middle of the night when employees tipped of authorites. Superuser accounts were allegedly involved. Rediculous.

And yet in another bizarre move, Pokerpages.com has stated they too will be shutting down their website. They are without a doubt one of the most visited poker news and related site on the internet with a compete.com and alexa.com rank in the 30k range which equates to a crap ton of ad revenue. Weird. I’m curious to see what they do with the website.

September 28

3:03am – More bank fund seizures have occured. This time is was 6 accounts that got seized, the amount of millions is yet unknown but it has been verified by various news sources that they were from Wachovia and related to online gambling sites. Although, they were stated to have been seized because of “money laundering”.

1:00am – If you haven’t heard yet, J. Todd talks a little bit about the “new task force set up to stop online gambling” in his Perspectives Weekly video and a little bit more about the Kentucky issue, which honestly I don’t even follow anymore. But, apparently he’s trying to appeal his recent loss in trying to take over the hundreds of random casino and poker domains.

September 25

5:04pm – There was an amendment for online gambling added to the “America’s Healthy Future Act of 09″ which would have basically put tax revenues towards healthcare. Unfortunately it was shotdown and excluded last night. Reason: They didn’t want another controversial subjected added to it.

On a side note, the Poker Players Alliance said they will continue with their efforts to get legal online poker on ballots for states within the US. They just failed in trying to do so in Massachusetts but have higher hopes for other states.

September 21

10:21pm – According to Chris over at G911, the US Attorney’s office of Baltimore has set up a new task force to aid in the tracking of “illegal gambling transactions.” Apparently it’s for mortgage fraud but includes online gambling. Apparently they will be going after credit cards and echeck processors. As I’ve repeatedly read over the last couple weeks from lawyers and bankers, echecks will basically be wiped out once the UIGEA deadline hits.

September 20

2:14am – Here is J’s recap of the Budapest gaming conference last week. Wish I could’ve got, but too darn far away. Perspectives Weekly video.

September 15

1:56am – Here is some information on the poker industry “player volume” statistics. According to PokerPages PPI Index live tournament games are down 23%. This reflects that 23% of money used to buy into tournaments is almost 1/4 down year to date in LIVE tournaments.

Also, I have analyzed the peak player traffic for the two major online poker rooms that accept US players, and two that do not. You can follow the progress on how they compare from nearly 3 years ago on the past poker sites traffic timeline chart on this page.

As you will notice by the latest 7 day average, there has been a significant jump for the US accepted sites, especially that of Full Tilt Poker with nearly a 38% increase in peak traffic since the beginning of the year. The other US site, Pokerstars only saw a 9.5% increase.

The non US sites look very stagnant as usual, with Everst Poker looking the worse of them all with it’s continued downslide since early 2008. Party Poker seems to be remaining the same as they have done for quite some time now.

As you can see, online poker continues to grow while the bad economy pushes the land based casino profits and live tournament appearance rates even further in the red. Makes sense, spend thousands on a trip to Vegas or sit on your couch, play a tournament, have a cold one and watch some football!

September 11

9:34am – Let the games begin. 888 today announced a deal with Harrah’s and their B2B division “Dragonfish”. Dragonfish (dragonfishtech.com) will supply a casino and poker platfrom for Harrahs, allowing for a World Series of Poker platform brand and a Caesars casino brand. Non US accepted (for now) of course… Suprisingly, Party Poker was not the ones to make the first move towards Harrahs like most of us thought. More can be read at egrmagazine.com.

September 7

7:27am – There seems to be a spike in player activity as of the last week. I will be compiling some weekly stats to add to the chart that we’ve been doing for the past few years as a timeline. It should be done by tomorrow. I’d like to get one before, and after the WSOP main event airs.

12:35am – I had read this story and completey forgot to mention it. iMEGA was rejected this last week in their attempt to rid of the UIGEA on counts that it was vague and intruded on privacy rights. There is more to the story and you can read it at imega.org. Basically they talk about the States having the power not the Federal government and in a quote by them,

“…gambling on the Internet is unlawful where state law says so. But there are only a half-dozen states which have laws against Internet gambling”.