Poker Ban Update

In big news yesterday, pokerstars announced that, unlike their friends at partypoker, they will not be turning tail like little schoolchildren in the face of the U.S.'s anti-gaming-funds-transfers bill that is expected to be signed by President Bush on Friday, October 13 (yes, it will be Friday the 13th when this bill is expected to become law). This is huge news that pokerstars has elected continue serving the U.S. market for online poker while the nuances and enforcement provisions of the new bill are considered and passed during the coming 270 days per the terms of the bill. This will give U.S. players more than just full tilt among the largest sites available to play at, and more than that, the addition of market giant pokerstars can only help the cause of those companies (and players) who do not believe that this rule should or does apply to them in their provision of online poker platforms for American consumers. And, of course, it means you can continue to play in Mondays at the Hoy on pokerstars, every Monday night at 10pm ET under the "private" tab at pokerstars, at least for the time being.

In not so great news, however, yesterday was also the death knell for Firepay's transaction processing for U.S. consumers of online gaming sites. Firepay surprised a lot of people by coming out yesterday with an affirmative statement that reads much like it was written by PartyGaming's PR people, essentially explaining that, as of the day that the U.S. bill is signed into law, Firepay will immediately stop processing any deposits for U.S. customers into any online gaming sites. Firepay is softening its stance slightly, however, with respect to withdrawals from online sites to U.S. players' Firepay accounts, opting instead to give an additional ten days to U.S. players to get their withdrawals processed into the Firepay accounts before also shutting down that functionality.

In all it's hard to say whether yesterday then was a positive or negative day overall for the plight of U.S. players seeking to play poker online. Pokerstars officially not pulling out of the U.S. market is clearly great news, but with Firepay now out of the picture once the bill is signed, it is hard to be too optimistic regarding Neteller's plans. As I understand it, Firepay and Neteller are both non-U.S. entities doing more or less the exact same thing for their customers, so the fact that Firepay has come to the conclusion that it can no longer effect financial transfers between U.S. players and online gaming sites, even as of President Bush's signing of the bill into law, casts serious questions towards everyone's favorite argument that these foreign institutions will not be affected by the law because they are somehow not subject to U.S. jurisdiction. Remember, Neteller is a public company in Europe just like PartyGaming is, so whatever eventualities party is facing from being public will be more or less the same things faced by Neteller. We are really in a state of flux right now as far as what this all means for the near-term future of online poker. If Neteller too decides that it must cut U.S. players off from transfers to or from online gaming sites now, there will be a real push to see what other methods, if any, are available to Joe Q. American to get his money into and out of these poker sites.

As all this shakes out over probably just the next few days, we may well be faced with the unhappy situation of having two major poker sites available to U.S. players in pokerstars and full tilt, but yet no way to effectively get money into and out of these sites. What will that mean for traffic at these sites over the near-term?

How many of you out there would be willing to continue playing with your existing bankrolls at your poker sites of choice, knowing that there may be any number of complications involved with making any withdrawals to any financial medium which is useful to you? Is anyone comfortable enough that some option will pop up that you would be willing to keep a significant enough part of your roll in the online poker sites, and continue playing and trying to make the big score even if Firepay and Neteller go the way of partypoker as of Friday afternoon? I'm not even sure what I will do myself, but I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on these latest developments and the questions I've asked above.