Both Black Friday (April 15th) and Blue Monday (May 23rd) went through the online poker scene like a Tornado and we are yet to see a light at the end of the tunnel. The next shockwave was the meltdown of FullTiltPoker, even though most were aware of the illegal bank transactions it still came pretty surprising and as a shock to all. There are rumors that European investors or Jack Binion will buy them for $150 Mio but that is yet to be confirmed and also delayed due to new complaints.
Whereas Pokerstars is almost back to normal and there are no news from AbsolutePoker and UB (pending payout requests for weeks, traffic gone on vacation to wonderland), Full Tilt Poker is the one site in the news as of lately. At first, the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) suspended the licenses for Full Tilt Poker. According to a rumor, a few days later at the most recent board of directors' meeting, Ray Bitar was voted out of his role as CEO and he is one of the people in charge that was mentioned in the indictments of Black Friday. This is yet to be confirmed even though lawyer Jeff Ifrah has stated the following:
“We can completely deny the reports that Ray Bitar is no longer CEO. In fact that [rumour] really ruined his day yesterday. It doesn’t help anyone for sites to be reporting news that’s not true.”
“We can completely deny the reports that Ray Bitar is no longer CEO. In fact that [rumour] really ruined his day yesterday. It doesn’t help anyone for sites to be reporting news that’s not true.”
Whether this has any influence on regaining the gaming license of the AGCC or not remains unclear as of now and there is no official confirmation either that Full Tilt Poker has been sold and will soon be back up and running. One thing for sure though is that it will probably take a long time before one of the market leaders will regain the confidence and trust of its customers, because what would actually stop them from cashing out all their funds as soon as they can access the cashier again?
Recently, Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) introduced bill HR 2366 and the Online Poker Act of 2011 is supposed to restore the online poker rights by allowing licensed companies to offer Internet poker with real-money play to U.S. residents. It is yet another step towards the legalization of online poker, in fact it is not illegal to play online poker in the United States though. Only the gambling transactions in the form of deposits and withdrawals are illegal according to the UIGEA from 2006.
The recent actions and developments have shown that the US has planned this for quite some time already and the poker sites tried to bluff too often, it works out as long as you don’t get called but when there is a showdown, you know you are behind. The remaining online poker sites that still allow Americans to play for real money are more considerate and careful with their advertising and the same goes for the online poker forums as well. It is just a logical consequence because nobody can really predict what will happen in the next few weeks.
Cake and the Everleaf network improved their software and Cake recently introduced a new VIP system as well, same goes for the Merge Gaming network but they were not able to handle the massive increase of traffic (sign ups since Black Friday up by 70%) and have stopped their rakeback deals as of June 1st 2011. Support and all money transactions were delayed and as a direct result, they established a Blackout period for new sign ups from the US in order to catch up. First it was announced to take approximately 3-4 weeks but this deadline has already passed for more than a week and there is no news in sight.
It is a logical step though and better to act now before it can get worse, after all they have to make sure that they can still offer the same quality to all of their players. In the meanwhile, most payment processors are not available anymore and it becomes increasingly difficult to get money on and off the sites. At the same time, it is also more and more difficult to maintain the same promotions and if you are still fortunate enough to play online, you should not waste your time and complain about bad beats and suckouts.
Not only the US but the whole online poker industry has been hit by this shockwave and even though most non US poker sites try to continue with their schedule business as usual and push promotions while focusing on the European market, only time will tell what the future of online poker will be like. After France and Italy, now Spain will also follow the footsteps and regulate online gambling and it requires a special gambling license to still operate and offer games to Spanish citizens.
The time has come to use all available free time that you can dedicate to this card game as reasonable and effective as possible, it doesn’t hurt to work on your game and improve the knowledge about all various aspects of this fascinating game that we all like so much. The situation might appear hopeless, but that doesn’t mean we should give up and rather stick together and do whatever we can to establish poker as a game of skill. We don’t mind being taxed if the gaming experience is regulated in a reasonable way, this way we can make sure that the current dilemma will not repeat again.
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