Oh, so players from New Jersey will be logging on for the $1 Million GTD on Americas Cardroom in October?

Wasn't Party Poker #1 before Pokerstars took the spot after UIGEA forced Party out of the American market? How "convenient" for Pokerstars that a law designed to cause problems for gambling sites was the one factor that allowed them to take the #1 spot.

It certainly seems as if these laws were designed to benefit Stars.

No, probably not. A quick google search shows that America's Cardroom does not currently accept players in New Jersey.

PokerStars also does not accept players in New Jersey.


Players in New Jersey can play on the following New Jersey regulated poker sites: WSOP NJ; 888 NJ; Party Poker NJ; and Borgata NJ. WSOP NJ is owned by Caesars. 888 NJ partnered with Caesars. Borgata NJ is obviously owned by Borgata. Party Poker NJ partnered with Borgata. Ultimate Poker was another site, but it went out of business. There might be some other sites.

Additionally, I believe there are some non-New Jersey regulated sites that accept players from New Jersey. You can look it up with google if you want to see what sites accept players from New Jersey.

The UIGE applied and applies the same to PokerStars, Party Poker and every other company in the world.

Yet, Pokerstars is the only site benefiting from it.

Right, because of the laws.

They will in the near future.

They definitely benefitted when Party Poker made the decision to stop serving U.S. customers due to passage of the UIGEA.

I don't see how laws ringfencing countries in segregated player pools benefits PokerStars.



Right. I'm sure that America's Cardroom reviewed New Jersey law and decided against offering (continuing to offer) online poker in New Jersey.



I'm sure that they will if they are able to either partner with someone who has a license to do so or are able to get a license on their own and are able to satisfy all requirements. I know that they have been working on this for a while.

America's Cardroom, btw, could try to do what they need to do to seek a license to offer online gambling in New Jersey also if they chose to do so.

Interesting theory that the motivations of the United States government in passing the UIGEA was to benefit PokerStars.

There are a lot of pro-Israeli types in the US government. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that a site owned by a dual Israeli citizen slid into the #1 spot and made billions only as a direct result of UIGEA laws.

Shadier things have been done by governments before. It's not at all outlandish to suggest that Ceasar's/Pokerstars targeted their biggest competitor Borgata/Party Poker and used political connections to give themselves a clear cut edge in the market.

What? You just said:







Which, is the reason the laws benefit Pokerstars.

Nobody would play on any of the New Jersey sites (including Pokerstars) if those players had access to global sites like America's Cardroom with a $1 Million GTD weekly. Even Pokerstars would go bust in New Jersey if there weren't laws restricting New Jersey residents from playing on sites like Bovada, America's Cardroom, and Carbon.


America's Cardroom would struggle to find players and wouldn't be able to successfully host a $1 Million GTD weekly if they did that.

The laws benefit Stars because they chose to continue doing business in a country Party chose to exit?

Where does FTP factor in here? Was the whole UIGEA thing an insanely brilliant long con to help Stars take over FTP after coughing up a billion dollars in fines to the DOJ?

Chose to exit?

I remember reading about the FBI waiting for one of Party's top guys at the airport when he came to America on a business trip. Saying that party merely,"chose to exit" is a laughable understatement.

Would Pokerstars own Full Tilt if it weren't for UIGEA?

NOPE.

Like I said...The only site that benefited is Pokerstars.

Ok, then. I guess you're going with Jewish conspiracy to make one specific Jewish person (family) rich.

The UIGEA applied exactly the same to every company in the world. Party Poker read it and decided to withdraw from the U.S. PokerStars read it and decided not to withdraw from the U.S.

The UIGEA did not make offering online gambling illegal or anything like that by the way in case you didn't know. The UIGEA only applies to online gambling that is illegal under another law.


The UIGEA applied exactly the same to every company in the world. Party Poker read it and decided to withdraw from the U.S. PokerStars read it and decided not to withdraw from the U.S.

PartyPoker deciding to stop offering its product/services to a large percentage of the market certainly helped PokerStars.


I do not see how passing laws that require sites to have segregated player pools based on country benefits PokerStars. As far as I know, all such laws that have been passed require all sites to segregate the player pools. I fail to see any way in which segregated player pools provide an inherent benefit to PokerStars.


The only thing I could possibly see as an advantage for PokerStars in this is that PokerStars has enough resources to pursue licenses in many countries whereas maybe some small site doesn't have enough resources to get licensed in all of the segregated markets. This is just a consequence of it taking resources to get into business and PokerStars being a big company that has a lot of resources. Other companies in the industry like Party Poker and Bodog/Bovada likely have the resources as well and a lot of companies that are not currently in the industry also have the resources.


Of course, the individual countries passing these laws are only thinking of their own country. I doubt they much care or think about that if all of the countries do this, then the poker sites need to use their resources to get a lot of licenses.




The exact same law applies to PokerStars. America's Cardroom is not allowed to offer online poker in New Jersey without a license. PokerStars is not allowed to offer online poker in New Jersey without a license. Neither currently have a license. Neither currently offer online poker in New Jersey. The exact same law also applies to every other company in the world.

There also is some provision in the law to the effect that (at least for the first number of years) in order to get a license to offer online gambling you have to own a casino in Atlantic City (or have some sort of arrangement with someone who does as their vendor or something).

How does the law benefit PokerStars?


Of course they wouldn't be able to successfully host a $1,000,000 GTD weekly in NJ. The player pool is not big enough. (assuming that by "successfully", you meant "profitably").

No one else could successfully host a $1,000,000 GTD weekly in NJ either.

WSOP NJ runs a weekly that has, I think a $25,000 GTD. For a couple of weeks it was $50,000.


I don't really understand your "they would struggle to find players" comment. They may struggle to find players. Ultimate Poker struggled to find players in NJ and they went out of business. That is a business issue. I don't see what it has to do with ringfencing laws. All of the companies who participate in the ringfenced market have the same access to players (customers) in that ringfenced market. Some companies may do well at getting customers and others may struggle.

I think the FBI picked up one of Party's CEOs at the airport. That's a far cry from "they read it and voluntarily left." I remember reading about that in 2006 and deciding to stay away from the game, as a result.

I didn't start playing again until 2009....on POKERSTARS.

UIGEA is the only reason Pokerstars ever got my money.





No, Party Poker had one of their CEOs arrested at the airport and then decided to stop doing business in the USA.

While Pokerstars had commercials on television every 10 minutes for 5 years after and made billions, as a result.


It benefits Pokerstars by restricting access to sites with larger player pools and more prize money. This has been explained numerous times already. It insures that they're the only viable option for internet poker in the world.


None of the sites who obtain licensing in America will be able to compete with sites who don't. The only thing they can do is get segregation laws passed that make it illegal for people to play on sites with licensing outside of America.








Right, but no other site can be successful under those laws. Pokerstars is the only site that can attract enough players to survive in a market like that. They're the only site with a known brand.

Hence, the reason the laws clearly benefit Pokerstars.







Some companies simply can't survive and function under that system of laws. Leaving Pokerstars as the only company that can make it work. This is how the laws benefit Pokerstars. It eliminates their competition completely.

If you want to think that America, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, UK, etc. are all passing laws that effectively segregate player pools for online poker for the purpose of benefitting PokerStars's business and hurting PokerStars's competitors' businesses, then you go ahead.

I think you are wrong.

Each of those countries have Casinos that benefit from the lack of popularity of internet poker and the availability of poker in Casinos. Having only ONE online poker option in existence makes online poker less appealing and land based, easily taxed Casino poker all the more appealing.

only skimmed the last page, so this may have been mentioned already, but this already happens. UK players only get 5 VPPs for every $ rake, whereas most of the ROW get 5.5, and this is (ostensibly) to counteract the additional tax liability.

So, UK players have access to the global player pool?

yes

Thank you for admitting it.

Not as much as it helped Scheinberg make billions.

Adelson/Vegas did nothing to cut into his profits.


I'd be saying that, too...after successfully torpedoing my biggest competitor and getting away with billions, as a result.



No, he doesn't. You just completely exaggerated and made that up. Venetian Hotels has a net worth of $1.5 billion.

Pokerstars was sold for $5 billion and that was a bargain.



A lot of that "stability" was circumstantial.


I agree and I believe that it will.

WPN has a $1 Million GTD starting in October...no shady business licensing required.

Pokerstars is going to be in trouble when players start heading to WPN in October. Why do you think they're trying to do business in a place like New Jersey, that makes it illegal for players to log on to a site like WPN?

Pokerstars NEEDS segregated player pools to stop bigger competitors from rising to the top and replacing them.

Cool, so it's gone from the "Poker is Rigged" debate to anti-Semitic conspiracy rambling.

There is nothing anti-Semitic about pointing out FACTUAL pro-Israeli agendas in the US government. Members of the US government openly advertise pro-Israeli sentiments all the time. I don't think it's a coincidence at all that a dual Israeli citizen benefits by making billions as a direct result of laws put in place by an openly pro-Israeli government.

Israel is a country like any other. Criticism of Israel doesn't in any way, form, or fashion constitute anti-antisemitism.

That had much more to do with Full Tilt stealing all their customers' money than it did UIGEA.

But of course those crafty Jews knew all along that FTP was going to end up stealing all their customers' money 5 years after UIGEA and the US government would let them take the company over after agreeing to repay the stolen money.

Adelson wouldn't be spending $1 billion to keep a site worth merely $5 billion out.

Poker websites possess the potential to dwarf Adelson's $30 billion and that's why he is willing to spend $1 billion.

I believe Full Tilt stole money because of UIGEA laws that were being used to eventually shut the site down. Had UIGEA never passed no money would've been stolen. For that matter, it wouldn't mattered if Full Tilt didn't have the money to pay their players because that only mattered AFTER the site shut down. Players were having no problem receiving their funds before Black Friday.

It's definitely possible given that the only reason Full Tilt stole money was to keep it from being seized because of UIGEA. I don't see why you think that reaction would be hard to predict.

6 months prior to Black Friday, Full Tilt was openly sponsoring the largest conspiracy website in the world...Godlikeproductions.

GLP has a lot of "anti-Israeli" information/posters on it. Full Tilt advertised all over it before Black Friday. They clearly knew something was about to happen and sponsored GLP as a kind "screw you" to the US government.

I've completely lost track of any sort of point.


Are you trying to make the claim that an unspecified number of Israelis (or pro-Israel Americans) successfully lobbied the U.S. government to pass UIGEA because they foresaw that passage of the UIGEA would cause PokerStars to become the leading, and very successful, company providing online poker thus allowing one particular Israeli family to become very rich and they continued to successfully lobby governments to pass laws to segregate player pools because they believed that this would further help PokerStars's business and they are continuing such lobbying efforts presently to help enrich the Canadian company that now owns PokerStars?

Lobbying? No. It wouldn't be necessary from behind the scenes.

Having only ONE option for poker players makes it easy for governments to funnel players into one easily taxable site. It allows governments to control what was previously an uncontrollable market.

The Israeli family made billions and got away without facing any consequences whatsoever. While the governments successfully gained control of the Internet poker market and created a source of tax revenue that didn't previously exist. Who owns the site now is irrelevant.

That is a pretty crazy conspiracy story. Especially since (1) governments could have regulated and taxed online poker companies with a much more direct and normal approach; and (2) there is no immediately apparent reason why everyone wanted that one particular Israeli family to receive all of this benefit.


Alrighty though.