With the recent shut down of online poker in the USA the games on Pokerstars have become noticeably easier. The fields are smaller but games are soft. 18% of Pokerstars players are from the USA compared to 35% for Full Tilt Poker. The development of worldwide poker tours such as the European Poker Tour, Latin American Poker Tour, Asia Pacific Poker Tour and the Australian & New Zealand Poker Tours by Pokerstars really places them well to survive and maybe even grow if they focus on and develop these new markets.
Online poker will return to the US market, the government is just going to legislate it and tax the market. The licenses will be sold to those who are interested and possibly Pokerstars and Full Tilt as we know them now maybe excluded from the re-opening of the market. They took the risk of continuing to operate during a time when others like Party Poker did not offer online gaming to the US market in reaction to legislative changes. Some land based gaming companies such as Harrah’s have indicated interest in obtaining such licenses.
The indictment largely focuses on financial transactions, claiming the online poker companies violated a 2006 law that Congress passed to cut off the flow of cash to online gambling companies, saying the firms “deceived or directed others to deceive United States banks and financial institutions into processing billions of dollars in payments.”
In the meantime ‘American online grinders’ either have to re-locate to Canada or become live pro poker players if they aren’t interested or motivated enough to get ‘real jobs.’ One of the great pleasures of playing online poker is being able to play when and where you like. All you need is a reliable internet connection and you are on. Obtaining and transferring funds online has been the real catch to American players in the past due to the ‘payment processing act’ but we are fortunate in Australia to have no such issues.
At present some players are worried that their funds may be frozen or unavailable. This seems to be just a temporary issue as this Forbes article outlines; http://blogs.forbes.com/nathanvardi/2011/04/20/u-s-online-poker-players-will-get-their-money-back/. This is actually an opportunity for Australian poker players to make hay whilst the top American grinders are blacked out.
