Question 1.

How much of this is political?

The White House is Dem, hence the DOJ will (by definition) actively pursue democratic issues. The dem's want online poker to be legal for tax revenue reasons. So to draw a quick conclusion, it looks like this is a way for the dem's to put pressure on the rep's to reverse their position on the UIGEA.

Question 2.

Will these sites file a request for a TRO, on the grounds that the UIGEA is not legal? What argument can they (or the PPA) make to show cause that the seizures are causing irreparable harm? eg. loss of income, restraint of trade.

Q1: Very little. These indictments hurt our case to make online poker legal because it makes the industry look shady. But the decisions to go forward were likely made by civil servants who are supposed to be non-partisan.

Q2: No

Has any NON US member made a withdrawl recently, I got a couple grand waiting... god dam.. I'll let you guys know if it goes thru.

Check in the Internet Poker forum, lots of discussion about cashing out there.

good thread. thanks for your effort.

so when UIGEA took effect, the banks needed to block transactions with gambling codes attached to them. why didn't the poker sites use a code that was specific to poker and not attached to gambling? who decides which category each of the codes falls under?

Poker is gambling as far as everyone who isn't a poker player is concerned. I'm not familiar with the details here, but if a "poker code" was created, the banks would have lumped it in with gambling.

i get what you're saying. but the poker community has always argued that poker is a skill game. it seems to me they would have to prove that to get a code that isn't linked to gambling. but prove it to who? the banks wouldn't care about having a poker specific code as long as they were in compliance with the law. so it's really up to those who make the codes to determine if the sites are for gambling or not.

seems like it would have been a good time to fight for poker to be classified differently, but i have no idea who gets to determine the categories for these codes.

bleh this is pretty much true for anyone playing 1/2 as a pro.

if they would have banned players from New York state, would the indictments still have happened?

Yes. By some interpretations, internet poker is illegal in 20ish states. They would also be liable for people who played there before the hypothetical ban.

Wynton, please don't feel the need to answer questions that I covered. I got Kevmath to link this thread in the main NVG sticky so there will be a lot of people coming by and I feel kind of guilty.

You don't have to keep $30k on a site to play 1/2. That's just silly.

Don't feel bad; maybe we'll get some new blood around here.

I am going out of town for the next six days, staying with in-laws in Florida. No idea whether they have internet access, or whether I'll risk nasty looks if I open up the computer, so you may have to carry an extra burden in answering questions anyway.

My eventual plan was to discuss possible factual and legal arguments, count-by-count. I'm not sure whether it is really possible to be that organized. And once we get to constitutional claims, I suspect that there are many here who are equally or more versed than I am. Years ago, I conducted fairly exhaustive review of laws pertaining to poker and on-line gambling, but a lot of time has passed since then.

Anyway, from this point on, I encourage people, when discussing defenses, constitutional arguments or likelihood of conviction, to try to be specific about which counts are under discussion. I think that will make the conversation easier to follow.

bleh i misread 6 for 5. my bad. 10k is probably a good minimum

If PokerStars and Fulltilt were closed by the Feds, why not Bodog or some of the other poker sites?

Because Bodog does a better job of hiding their transactions than Stars and Tilt. Of course, "better" is synonymous with "more illegal".