After this past Friday’s news that the DOJ and FBI would crackdown on online poker in the US, leading to the eventual outcome of a Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars shut down from the US market, there are still a lot of unanswered questions even after a full week.

Question 1: What about the other US-friendly online poker sites?

As news trickled in that “PokerStars bars US players” and “Full Tilt shuts down” the online poker community immediately wondered if other sites serving the US market would be targeted next –Networks like Cake Poker, Merge Gaming, as well as Bodog are all still players in the US market—and after a week there seems to be nothing pointing to any pending indictments against these sites. While this doesn’t mean they are in the clear, it is likely that these sites are simply too small to go after –the likely investigation costs would far exceed any amount the government could expect to get in return from these sites.

Question 2: How will US players deposit and withdraw?

If online poker players in the US found it difficult to deposit and withdraw before, imagine how difficult it will be now! It’s unlikely any reputable payment processor will want to cross the US government, and sites will likely be looking for more “legal” ways of processing US transactions. This development will likely lead to online poker sites leaving the market simply because transactions are too difficult and risky, or the other possibility being that players will be charged a very substantial fee on their transactions.

Tags: Black Friday, Crackdown, doj, Eventual Outcome, Fbi, Full tilt Poker, Indictments, Investigation Costs, Lead, Lot, Online News, Online Poker, Payment Processor, poker players, Poker Sites, Substantial Fee, Unanswered Questions, Us Government

This entry was posted on Friday, April 22nd, 2011 at 6:34 am and is filed under Poker Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Unanswered questions after poker’s Black Friday”

1. US Poker Sites Guy says:

   April 23, 2011 at 12:07 am

   I agree that I don’t think they’ll go after the others until there’s a result in this case. Then it’ll be open season to clear the playing field for Caesars etc.

   Processing prob won’t get much tougher in the meantime. Stars & Tilt were a lot more aggressive than the others, and it has always been tough anyway.