5.11. Residents of the United States and United States Territories are not permitted to make deposits into their accounts or engage in real-money play. They may cash out their existing account balances. Residents of other nations are not permitted to engage in real-money play while located in the United States. Any attempt to circumvent the restrictions on play by residents of the U.S. or U.S. Territories, and by residents of other nations while located in the United States, is a breach of this Agreement. An attempt at circumvention includes, but is not limited to, manipulating the information used by PokerStars to identify your location and providing PokerStars with false or misleading information regarding your residence.

any USA player get this popup on their screen yet? its in their new rules in their terms of service.

Is this the right thread for this? im curious about this topic.

WAT???BREAKING NEWS!!!!!

Damn, I'm from Connecticut like OP. Making us look bad dude.

I think what OP may be asking is: Does that popup imply that US citizens are not allowed to play regardless of where they are living. The answer is: I don't know

Not citizen...resident. If you move out of the US it's no problem.

I see the same message as well. Two interesting points: it sasy you can cash out of your account...so I guess it wasn't a one-time deal with DOJ, but an open-ended deal, and if anyone didn't get a chance to cash out, they still can? Secondly, it does say that you are not permitted to deposit money into your account...which implies that if you had a negative balance due to PS giving you credit in your account before deducting it from your bank account (which is causing major headaches for FTP), they will have to forgive those deposits and take a loss as you are not allowed to send them any money...

All the people who are going to Canada for 6 months are considered tourists not residents by the Canadian government afaik

You don't need to have Canadian residency status, only to satisfy Stars' requirements for living in some sort of residence there

All I'm saying is that the message from Stars makes it sound like any US citizen that does not have permanent residency abroad is not permitted to play. Someone that is moving to Canada for 6 months obviously does not have permanent residence abroad.

Can anyone explain why PokerStars does not allow U.S. residents to play their games for real money, even if all financial transactions are handled via offshore or foreign financial institutions where such activity is legal? Is it primarily due to their agreement with the DOJ, or is it because of other legal reasons?

I would have thought that since UIGEA focuses on financial transactions, then U.S. residents would be able to participate in online poker if they use non-U.S. financial institutions to deposit and withdraw from the poker sites. For example, if i can move to canada and open a canadian bank account, i can play online poker, but i can't play online poker using my canadian bank account if i am in the U.S. -- why?

because the government wants to be able to track the bank transactions so that they can one day tax it, duh

So, you are saying that this is purely due to the agreement with DOJ that was entered into after Black Friday? And, if they had not entered into that agreement, then they could tell their players to go get foreign bank accounts if they wanted to continue playing, right?

Also, would it be good or bad if sites like Merge were to tell U.S. Players that they could continue to play on their sites if they were to register their offshore/foreign financial institutions for withdrawal/deposit purposes?

Further, the U.S. taxes its citizens regardless of whether they reside. that means that even if you are a permanent resident somewhere else, playing poker online, you have to pay taxes on it, so wrt the tax issue, I don't see any difference if I were to reside in canada or the U.S.

Was anyone having this problem at PS? Unless the money was transferred really close to BF itself, I don't think this was a major issue for PS. I know from personal experience that they credited then debited my PS account when they couldn't withdraw from my bank (late Nov. last year), and echecks was shut down in my state as a result.

This message probably is due to the fact with the WSOP, there will be many people trying to sell online cash for money.

Pokerstars really needs to stop using the term "residence" in this manner. Because there is a difference between having "official residency" of a country and actually residing/living there.

They are confusing people over and over again. And it's really easy to find a different term to explain the rules way more clearly.

Would you like to suggest a better term for them to use Bob?

"Resides in" or "lives in" or "located in."


The point is: I can live in some other country and establish an address there without being a citizen or official resident of that country.

I can also move to some other country while still being a citizen or resident of the United States.

"Resident" in the official context is causing a lot of confusion. When Stars clearly is just talking about "where you are living and/or located." Stars does not expect any of their players moving to Canada to become official residents of the country and attempt to get citizenship there. But their own regulations when interpreted literally really do imply that and require further clarification that they don't really mean what it says.

Further, it's completely fine to be a citizen or resident of the United States and play on Pokerstars....if I have residency somewhere else and play from there. They need to stop saying that U.S. residents can't play on their site. They can. Stars is incorrectly implying that U.S. residents need to renounce their residency. And some U.S. citizens are misinterpreting that too and think they have to break away from their country in some official way. They don't. They just have to have some apartment or house in Canada or Mexico or somewhere else and move there (likely not permanently of course).

FWIW, most of us in the U.S. are citizens and not residents. The term "resident" is used for somebody in the process of trying to get their citizenship. Somebody with a "green card" for example becomes an official U.S. resident. It's the same thing. A "residency card" is the thing many know as a "green card." A non-American can get residency in the U.S. through an official work permit or marriage (or by applying via a relative who has gained citizenship).

They don't allow the euro players play there either until they play enough and won't pay taxes.