Today's the Day

Yep, Friday is a sad day here in Hammerland, as President Bush is said to be signing the safe port act, including its pesky little rider outlawing the transfering of funds between online gaming sites and U.S. players, this morning. The marketing dwarf this morning says the Act is set to be signed at 10am ET today, which means that by the time most of you are reading this post, it will probably already be illegal for financial institutions to transfer funds from you (if you're in the U.S.) to an online poker site, or to withdraw money from an online poker site into your U.S. bank account. So now the fun part begins, as we wait and see who is really willing to put their money where their mouth is, and who is not. So far among the companies I am personally interested in, partypoker has bagged and has to win the #1 biggest pussy award from me. I mean, they are the leader in the U.S. online gambling market, and then they just up and pull out of the entire marketplace just like that, even before anyone else had announced similar intentions. I still can't believe that move, but let's be honest. The partypoker software has always sucked, and it's gotten worse these past several months, though I don't know why.

Which leads me to late last night, as I returned from baby duty once again at around 3:15am ET. Upon returning to the pc for the first time since auto-donking in the 20k and the WWdN Not due to baby waking issues, I logged on to my big poker sites of choice to do some business at each. First stop: partypoker. Full withdrawal of all funds left, which was only about $47 since I had already prepared for their pussiness last week. In fact, ironically I had to deposit the minimum $50 into partypoker just so that I would have enough to withdraw the minimum $50 to my Neteller account. So that is done. I will probably try to log in tonight after this thing becomes law just to see what happens, but as far as I'm concerned, partypoker and that bitchling 40k guaranteed tournament are dead to me. Dead. In the end my lifetime stats on the 40k are tremendous so I'm happy I got my shot in while I had the chance, but even if party someday returns (legally or otherwise) to the U.S. poker market, I'm done with them. I play against pussies, but I don't play with them. Eff partypoker. And you can tell them I said that.

Second stop last night: Neteller. In a strange last-minute decision, I've decided that for now, my best move is probably to keep my poker money in the poker sites, where I should be able to play with my money for at least some time as this whole "illegal" thing shakes itself out. So, I ended up making a nice-sized deposit from my bank account back into Neteller, a small portion of what I withdrew back to my bank account a couple of weeks back when this whole shizz hit the proverbial fan.

Next stop last night was pokerstars. Along with my theme of effing partypoker as I described above, I also want to reward the sites who are taking a stand and not abandoning their loyal customer base in the U.S., at least not without some kind of a fight. So, I put a nice deposit into both pokerstars, where I do a lot of my online poker playing already anyways. This way, as I said, I expect to be able to play with that money for some time, even without knowing what's going to happen with Neteller or any other money transfer mechanisms.

Last I moved on to full tilt, which as most of you know has already been my favorite online poker site for some time. And they are even cooler than pokerstars, because unlike stars who just announced a couple of days ago that they plan to stay in the U.S. for the time being, full tilt was really the first of the major sites to make that kind of a public stand against The Man, and for that I am very appreciative. And so, I rewarded them as well with a decent-sized deposit, on top of their very attractive 50% reload bonus up to $500 which I already took full advantange of earlier in the week.

So, for now, my bankroll is back on the two poker sites I plan to use for the time being. I'm not going to let either roll get too big, so if I have any other big wins I will certainly withdraw however I have to get that done, but for now what I have in pokerstars and full tilt should let me continue to play for some time. And, if my performance continues like it has thus far this year in the online poker world, I can hopefully generate more profits (and more withdrawals) without having to figure out how to get any more money into any of the sites I'll be playing at from now on.

One quick thing to note, in case anyone is interested in this stuff. I did go and attempt to sign up for a Firepay account using a Canadian mailing address (since nothing gets mailed to me if I'm only using electronic transfers to and from a bank). Unfortunately, Firepay required me to link up to a Canadian bank account then, which has different numbers and different standards than U.S. banks do, so I was unable to get that set up without having an actual account in an actual Canadian bank. I imagine one way to get around this online gaming funds transfer ban is to sign up for the poker sites using a non-U.S. address, and sign up for Neteller or Firepay with a non-U.S. bank account, and you should be good to go. Right? But so far, Firepay did not work without me having an actual Canadian bank account. Similarly, Neteller would not let me change my mailing address to a non-U.S. address without also chaning my funding bank account to a non-U.S. bank. So, no luck on those two fronts if anyone has been trying that so far. If anyone has other ideas that seem to be working or that might work, please let us know here!