Just a quick update here from the trenches, on D-Day minus one after President Bush signed the port security bill with the anti-gaming legislation tacked on into law in the United States. In case anyone is curious, I can confirm that it is business as usual this weekend for the major poker sites serving U.S. customers following the passage of the anti-gaming provisions. Of course partypoker and a few of the other smaller U.S. sites are going through with their promises to block all players from U.S.-based IP addresses on their sites as of the signing of the bill by President Bush. But otherwise the online poker landscape in fact looks very similar this weekend to how it looked just before the transfer of funds between U.S. players and online gaming sites became illegal on Friday morning at 10am local time in Washington, DC.
For example, pokerstars on Friday night was running its normal operations, including for U.S. players, and things seemed to be going off without a hitch. The main lobby on pokerstars reported approximately 91,000 players online at around 10pm ET on Friday night, exactly 12 hours after the signature of the port security bill, and that 91,000 figure is more or less right around where that number has been for many months, so no dropoff in action has even been observed on pokerstars since the bill went into law.
And a similar story at full tilt, where Friday night's $20,000 guaranteed tournament at 10pm ET boasted more than 1200 players, if anything a bit larger than the recent roll call for this event for a Friday evening. But again the traffic numbers for full tilt are generally in-line this weekend with recent usage levels for he site that was the first to stand up to the U.S. government and announce its commitment to continue to serve the U.S. market, where it maintains its innocence and its right to offer an online poker platform to everyone around the world.
Lastly, I purposefully went ahead and made some transfers with my Neteller account last night and this morning, and again can confirm that it is business as usual for the leading e-wallet application used to transfer funds to and from online poker sites by U.S. players. Again there appears to be no degradation in service, no new terms and conditions or special announcements being made by Neteller, nothing out of the ordinary at all. So for now, U.S. players have the means to get money into and out of and to play at most of their favorite poker sites in just the same way and to just the same extent that this was possible 24 hours ago, which is I'm sure a welcome sign to us all, not only as poker lovers but as lovers of personal freedoms for everyone.
1. Not all US players. Neteller will not allow people in some states to have accounts, Maryland being one. I'm not sure what other states have this restriction. Currently, I have no way to move funds around.
Posted at 10:16PM on Oct 14th 2006 by kaellinn18