From Pokernews;
"On Friday, an indictment against the founders of online poker's "big three" was unsealed by federal authorities. According to MarketWatch.com, the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker were indicted on charges of bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling. There were also restraining orders issued against over 75 bank accounts used by the online poker companies and their payment processors, as well as five Internet domain names."
Wow. A damning move from the USA Feds. A sudden, deliberate one used to scare the poker community. We have been waiting for something to happen, mainly something about online poker legalisation, but I don't think we expected it to happen so suddenly and aggressively.
The intent is clear. They wanna take us down. They wanna make examples of the 3 big sites, PokerStars, Full Tilt, and Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker. They have issued a statement of intent of trying to these 3 sites down within 48 hours, but imo this would be very difficult because these sites are legally abiding international gambling laws, so I don't know how its possible to make them shut down.
And lets make one thing clear. The law in USA for Online Poker is GREY. The 3 sites took a risk in continuing to do what they did, but they have abided in the law in every other way. Hell, they even blocked all USA players immediately as they were told to do so, with hardly any warning to the players. What they did in continuing to operate is not what can be said as being clearly illegal, because the clarity of these laws had not been passed.
Today is a dark day for Online Poker. Who knows what will happen next? But most people are speculating that PokerStars and maybe Full Tilt (they have a bigger risk because their player base is a higher percentage of US citizens) will survive. Looking at the lobby of PokerStars right now, I still see 137k players over 20k tables online, looks steady and holding. Maybe their aggressive promotion for players outside the USA was a strategy for them to keep going if something like this should happen. No doubt that for now, these games are still running and holding...
Statements have been released by PokerStars and Full Tilt saying that your money is safe. At the moment many [international] players are cashing out and it seems from PokerStars there are no problems. Full Tilt doesn't seem to let people cash out from what I've read, but I'm not completely sure about that.
As for me? Well, I'm pretty confident that PokerStars will still be running outside the USA, but how this will be effected internationally is gonna take time to figure out. How confident?? I'm confident but I cant put my money where my mouth is, not the few G's that I have in there. I decided not to get the $4k bonus, settled for 2 x $1500 and have taken most of it out.
But for me, its an excuse to finally leave the STTs. Now I have enough in my account to grind MTT SNGs only, but also enough there that if the worst of the worst happens, I wont be missing that money *as* much. The Supernova chase will probably be put on hold coz of playing lower limits, but one of the reasons I want to move to MTTs is less reliance on rakeback, and more so on actual money earned. This will put less pressure on maintaining those statuses. I haven't had the best of months in 2011, and its time to move on.
But this is just me. The general feeling is that a lot of other players outside USA are still cashing out most of their money, all like me, simply because they wanna know how this is gonna pan out over the next few days without the risk of getting their assets frozen for a while. The statement from PokerStars is an expected assurance that players moneys wont be lost. Their fantastic reputation is under dispute otherwise.
As for my USA poker players, my friends! I feel for you, times are looking tough. The future is unclear now. Its is clear that the indictment wouldn't have gone through if they weren't confident of a successful prosecution. Until the results of this court case, and the eventual legalisation of Online Poker (probably 2013 according to Gary Wise because of the elections), it doesn't look great. Pray for that one outer!
How many USA grinders are willing to leave their country in order to earn their living?
Some references;
http://jgarywise.com/
http://www.atkinator.net/2011/04/black-friday.html
Fall Out Show with Court, BJ, and Gary Wise The US DOJ drops a major bomb on online poker.
Scary times dude. Think we will be fine and able to continue what we are doing, but fuck man the US players are pretty screwed. Gl at the MTTs dude, hope you crush them :)
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