In the wake of “Black Friday”, a day which saw four of the top online poker sites get seized by the US Federal Government, many poker players in America are left wondering and scratching their heads. For a long time now, it has looked like online poker was gaining more and more legitimacy. You could see all of the sponsors on the top players gear and were even accustomed to hearing the TV commercials featuring Full Tilt and PokerStars. There was even talk about a bill for online poker to become legal in the US.
So what happened?!
Why did they all of a sudden decide to pull the plug on some of the top poker sites that allowed US players to play and leave this little reminder to all of us?
Really? That’s a confusing message. It makes you sound like play a game of skill is a felony! All they do is host a platform which people can get together and play for money. They aren’t the “House” because they aren’t playing against the players. These sites are just a very profitable service; to the tune of several billions of dollars a year.
What’s even more confusing to me is the timing of the whole event. Just last week, the District of Columbia passed a law making online poker legal to play inside of Washington D.C. So I have one thing to say the US Government – Make up your mind! Is online poker good or bad? Decide! You can’t talk from both sides of your mouth. “It’s illegal in this context but not in this particular case” That doesn’t work for me.
So why did they decide to slam the hammer down on April 15th?
That’s where all of the fun begins. The following story will definitely be coming to a theater near you sometime in the upcoming years. It all begins with the US Senate passing the “Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006″. This was a law that was tacked onto the back of a US Port Security bill that needed to pass through Congress. Definitely leaves a lot of room for some shady back dealings with lobbyists backing some major players (like the NFL and Horse Racing). This law actually has in the writing that NFL Fantasy Football and Horse Racing are legal online in the United States.
Many of the major players in the game back then (Party Poker, Neteller, etc.) paid Billions in fines for the new made up law and backed out of the US market without challenging the government’s authority. Other players in the online poker market decided to ignore this law, considering online poker to be a “game of skill” and not a “game of chance” and therefore it didn’t apply to “Internet Gambling”.
The game of chance is any bet that you make that you do not directly have control of. This includes betting on a sports team winning, playing blackjack against the house or betting on a spin from the slot machine. The game of skill did not directly involve only chance, since a professional would clearly beat a novice most of the time.
This is where the slick 20-something Australian enters the scene. He was responsible for setting up the system to allow the online poker giants like Full Tilt and PokerStars to subvert this law by lying about the product that they were selling. Everything was going fine until he became greedy and got caught steeling millions of dollars from Full Tilt Poker. Being the jilted lover in this situation, Full Tilt decided to give this man up to the US government when he came to Las Vegas last year.
Instead of doing hard time for bank fraud and money laundering, he turned the tables and described to the government in detail how Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet got around the laws prohibiting banks from allowing online gambling transactions. This was the trigger for the chaos that ensued last Friday. All four of the sites’ domains were confiscated and the US government is trying to get close to $10 billion dollars when it is all said and done.
Why did the US government wait until now to pull this off? There will be a lot of speculation, and I will add to it. It just so happens that Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars were considering a partnership with some of the major casino players in Las Vegas. Since all of this went down on Friday, both casinos that were considering these deals have now backed out.
The US government will eventually find a way to make online poker legal; but for now, they found a way to punish those that did not follow the rules, however convoluted and idiotic they are. Eventually, I believe that you will see the re-emergence of Party Poker as the top dog when this all gets settled in the next couple of years.
I have been through this before with online casinos and Neteller back in 2006. If things happen in a similar way, it should take between 2 and 3 months for you to get your money back. So you may have to be patient, but don’t worry about it.
I would start by taking a look at the two most previous posts on this site: Carbon Poker and Aced.com Poker. Both of them are part of the same poker network called the Merge Poker Network.
There are two other poker networks that are still up and running as well:
The Yatahay Poker Network – The largest poker room on this network is Doyle’s Room. You will find that Doyle’s Room offers lots of poker bonuses.
The Cake Poker Network – Cake Poker is the largest poker room for a poker network which features it’s name. One of the interesting features about Cake Poker is that you can play on your mobile phone if you have a Windows Mobile Phone.
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