The online gambling legislation passed last weekend looks like it is going to kill most online poker.
Go read this post by Iggy with a long statement by Nolan Dalla on what is happening.
Party, 888 & Cryptologic are shutting down their US operations, Stars isn't for now. Full Tilt is going to stay up until the FTC (I think) finishes its rulemaking, which will take up to 270 days. We'll see what the smaller sites do.
My 2 cents:
One of the sites it going to have to battle the US government in court once the rules are set down. My guess is it will be Full Tilt. They are the most closely tied to the US market, and probably can't survive without their US players. Party & Stars have enough non-US customers to probably stay afloat. Also, Full Tilt's owners include alot of American poker "celebrities" who aren't going to want to either move out of the country & never return or sell their stakes at very depressed prices.
What's going to happen with Tradesports? They are in kind of a gray area, they don't really take bets, they just own the market.
I bet most of the second tier poker & gambling sites will be out of business within six months. The big sites will either be fighting the government or will have cut off the US completely.
And how does all of this work with Neteller? They are the middleman for most of the poker sites. Does using them create a buffer that the poker sites can use as cover? And to borrow a phrase from IP law, does Neteller have enough "non-infringing uses" so banks can legally continue to allow money transfers in and out of them?
In the next day or so, I'm going to read the whole act & may have more comments at that point.
For a bunch of good posts, go read Bill Rini's blog.
Yeah, this really sucks.
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