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Eerily Familiar

Comments (8)
by , Oct 2, 2006 | 5:59 am

So Party’s pulling out, and so is PokerStars … Pacific Poker is out but Paradise Poker is staying put (for now). Is it just me, or does all this remind you a lot of the (temporary) implosion of the Dallas poker scene earlier this year?

More on the online poker “crisis” here.


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  • Uncle Ray

    So… where does that leave you in the PartyPokerPicture? Overseas? Out? Lobbying in the states?

  • Tagg

    So, does this mean that the WSOP main event field shrinks back down to 2002-era sizes, or are we going to see a run of twenty consecutive wins by 21 year old Scandinavian kids whose governments are a little more reasonable?

  • TheActorTony

    Putting a casino in Reunion Arena is looking better and better, ain’t it? I hope Winstar and Choctaw are ready for all of the new business they are about to receive.

  • jeh

    Maybe Party, Tilt, Bodog, Stars, Paradise, UB, etc., should have spent more on lobbyists and less on marketing at the WSOP. The budget that Party must have spend on all those “Monster” ads everywhere alone surely could have bought at least a dozen senators.

  • Bob

    I’m going to have to actually read the bill, but, from what I can gather, the law prohibits banks and credit cards from paying online gambling sites.

    Well, since it is a U.S. law, it only restricts U.S. banks, etc. So, my question is, what is to stop you from opening an account by sending a money order to an offshore bank, and settling your online gambling activity that way?

    There has already been some discussion about how WTO treaties to which we have committed may invalidate the restrictions.

    Again, I’m going to have to read the bill (googling the .gov sites now…).

    Bob

  • Bob

    BTW… the bill is H.R.4954

    Good luck trying to find the specific section…

  • jeh

    It’s secs. 801-803. It starts at page 213 of the conference report of the Port bill. But I agree with your initial read. There’s going to be a lot of business opening up for London-based banks soon. But there’s too much panic in the herd right now for many to realize that this isn’t really much of a hurdle. Any large British bank could easily hurdle this, since the Fed isn’t going to prohibit Barclay’s or Lloyd’s from EFT’s into US bank accounts. It’s just one more step, no big deal. IMHO.

  • Bob

    I read the sections, and it’s a shoddy piece of law-making (surprise, surprise). The vagueness alone makes it unenforcable.

    US banks can’t send funds for “illegal internet gambling”, yet, it doesn’t define precisely what “illegal internet gambling” is (just that it ain’t horseracing, who obviously paid the right people to get the exemption).

    And, you have 270 days from the date of signing? Seems like plenty of time to get those off-shore accounts set up (or for the online sites to set up their own banks). The Caymans and the Swiss gotta be loving this…