Does anyone have any insight on why the entry into launching an online poker site that allows us players is so difficult to achieve? With all of the ACR issues and the lack of sites that allow US players, it would seem to be a very lucrative business to launch just by operating a fair play site and easily becoming exceptional against the competition, so why aren't there new poker room sites opening up to get in on this? I understand US Federal Laws make it pretty much impossible to launch within the US, but Bovada/Ignition and ACR was able to do it outside the US yet nobody else seems to come close in competition to them for US based players. What barriers am I missing that's detracting new potential poker sites? How did Ignition/Bovada, ACR get into the market?

Um, the virtual impossibility of processing payments for online gaming (aka deposits and payouts) for US players... one must be at peace with placing a mission critical business function, their personal and professional reputation, livelihood, and in many cases their freedom in the hands of some very unsavory characters, unreliable payment processors, or playing musical chairs with a new processor every 45 days or less... each time playing Russian roulette where the bullet fks ur business, rep, while all of 2p2 calls you a scam outfit.

Crypto you say? Regs on bovada and acr are basically keeping the crypto markets alive. Regular people don’t understand crypto and wanna be able to put their visa number in and play. Why hasn’t coinpoker, NoLimitHoldEthereum, LOLalt-coin0maha made it? Read the above.

You answered your own question. It is unlawful to run a nationwide poker room at this point in time. Setting up banking institutions is a mess, having reliable programmers in third world countries im sure is somewhat difficult. They can't really advertise that much to get the word out. Even with all that, if a site got large enough, im sure the Justice Department would go after it, so the risk is probably not worth the reward.

I wish I had the capital and I would start my own for sure. Just accept BTC!

i understand the barriers with launching in the US, but I’m wondering why it’s so difficult to launch one outside of the us that accepts us players like acr and bovada? How are they able to do it? Especially ACR, everyone believes they’re completely incompetent, so how can they do it while keeping new offshore sites accepting us players from popping up?

If the site is not in the US and the payments are not processed in the US, there is nothing for the DOJ to shutdown.

Maybe I am incorrect, but did fulltilt and pokerstars have their payments and site in the U.S.? We used to be able to get payments in the U.S., IE Neteller before UIGEA 2006. After that, as far as I thought, payments were not processed in the U.S. So as for black Friday, we woke up and the sites were just simply down, with a big DOJ patch across the screen. It wasn't that they were not able to process payments, the site (for Americans at least) was literally shut down.

Payments aren’t processed by the poker rooms guys. As you allude to here w your neteller reference, pre-black-Friday they were processed by global payment processors, intermediaries, and financial institutions. Generally, these were/are entities that have, or had, domestic operations in the USA. So, the likes of Visa, Fire Pay, neteller, etc would be risking asset forfeiture, a litany if federal charges/litigation against the corporation and its principal officers, and other consequences that would have a negative effect on shareholder value, all for what amounted to less than 1% (guess) of these big processors’ revenue?

Nah


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Accept any bank that colludes with the site to process payments. That is the rub, that is the noose that the Obama DOJ has put around the neck of US poker.

UIGEA was enacted by the 109th US Congress in 2006.

Senate Majority: Republican.
House Majority: Republican

Signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 13, 2006

"Under section 5364, Federal regulators have 270 days from the date this bill is signed into law to come up with regulations to identify and block money transactions to gambling sites."

Taking us into 2007.

Thanks Obama!

All true. Also true is that enforcement is at the discretion of the executive branch.

I want to put focus back onto my question regarding new sites outside of the US that allows US Players. I think we've extensively covered that launching within the US has clear and difficult barriers. But what about outside the US? How can ACR and Bovada/Ignition keep new sites from outside the us that allow us players from competing?

got em

I think people (including myself) have laid out the reasons. Either you are not reading the responses or you just don't believe them. Lets say you have the funding to start a site and you are in some Caribbean country. Ok, how are you going to process payments? As mentioned earlier, ACR and others are constantly changing processors to stay one step ahead of regulators. Back in the day, sites like fulltilt had this problem as well. I believe it was published in one of the post black friday reports or with the Howard Lederer interview, that fulltilt lost millions of dollars because it couldnt process payments. The idea that crypto currency can fill the void (at least at this time) is just not realistic. You are not going to get large amounts of people buying and selling crypto so they can deposit $100 on a site. Now maybe in the distant future, when (and if) these things are mainstream, it could happen.

Second, as I stated before, if my recollection is correct, on black friday, the main poker sites were just simply shut down. The DoJ worked with ISP's (I believe) and blocked these sites in the United States. So any site that gets large again, would be risking this same scenario, so the risk may not be large enough for the reward.

Third, you need (for the most part) your entire operation to be located in this Caribbean country. So all your security people, programmers, software engineers, etc. I don't have any idea how many people it takes to run a site like party or pokerstars, but I imagine it is more than just a few people.

Fourth, the marketing aspect. Back in the day sites like party, fulltilt, and pokerstars, were constantly advertising to build their brands. They were in all the poker magazines, all over TV, had large social media presences (when that became a thing). When is the last time you saw an advertisement for ACR? I am pretty positive that their media spend is a small fraction of what these other sites did. Now I don't know exactly why they don't spend more. Not sure if media outlets won't accept their advertising because it is technically "illegal" to operate a site for Americans. Maybe ACR is just cheap, i'm really not sure. But the other sites spent tens of millions of dollars to get their name out there.

Finally, in your response, you say you understand it is difficult to launch inside the U.S., but not outside of the country. You do realize that all the poker sites from back in the day were launched outside of the U.S. correct? I think fulltilt had some kind of operations in the U.S., but their servers and all that stuff were outside. There really haven't been any sites that have actually launched in the U.S. (outside maybe the regulated ones in the U.S. now)

If it is such a lucrative business opportunity, how much would you pay for real answers to your questions ?

It could be done with crypto currency. The government would be powerless to stop it and they could never shut it down.

2 major problems with crypto though:

1.) extremely volatile price
2.) high bar to entry for average player

The first problem, can be solved by using a stable coin: Tether (TUSD) or TrueUSD, or something similar.

The second is the much larger problem. People have heard of bitcoin, but it's far too much trouble for the average person to figure out how to use it.
They need to learn how to use wallets, btc addresses etc. They have to find a safe place to buy it, and if they want a large amount, usually they need to upload a photo of their passport! (who wants to have to do that? nobody.). On top of that they need to know how to exchange btc for tether, or whichever stable currency it would be.

People find it much easier to just use a credit card, and given the option, they do that instead.
They go to an ordinary well known poker site that takes credit cards.


But yeah it could be done, it would need just two things. 1.) A Poker site that runs on a stable coin like Tether, and 2.) a seperate website that makes it as easy as pie for anyone or their grandmother, to be able to buy the stable crypto coin, at the click of a button. Without having to upload a passport / give a blood sample etc.

Also it would probably have to be decentralized, so that we are all truely in control of our own money. So then the site can never take your money because they don't hold any of the customers money. The DOJ can't shut it down, because there is no bank. Then it would unstoppable.

I just don't understand what you are saying. On black friday, is it not true that the DoJ worked with the ISP's to completely shutdown the access to the sites for Americans. It had nothing directly to do with banking. So when you keep saying that the DoJ couldn't do anything, that is IMO false.

I did say decentralized, they can't shut down p2p software.
As far as I know, the DoJ only took over the "website" dot com address anyway, not the client/server access. I'm pretty sure the reason any US people could not play back then, was because the poker companies themselves would have been complying with US law and the demands of the DoJ, not because of any technological reason.

In any case, there are plenty of options to allow access to all, be it a VPN, onion routing, a decentralized system etc.

Ya they took the site away. I totally admit I am not technological that much, so I don't know what a decentralized system exactly means. All I know is that the government can seize the domain name if it wants. If you have to jump through all these hoops (kind of like we have to now) then you are not going to get the masses to join.

Yeah they can seize domain names, but those dot com names are just for advertising the business.

That is fair enough if you are not up on the technological I have to admit I'm not 100% sure of the exact legal reasoning behind the DoJ actions on Full Tilt & Black Friday.
Whatever their "reason" was, whether it's money laundering, ponzi scheme, unpaid tax - whatever they say it is: these are all things that relate to the US Dollar and banks. I'm sure the DoJ may be able to freeze bank accounts.

So my main point was that, the DoJ only have authority to act on things related to their own currency: the US Dollar.
And crypto currency, is not connected to any particular country, and it definately doesn't have a 'bank'.
Also, whether they are capable of any technological shut down may be a moot point, if they actually have no reason (or authority) to start doing anything in the first place.

A decentralized system would be ideal, because it means you hold your own digital wallet (rather than the poker site holding it), so in any event you can always access your own money, even if the poker site shuts itself down forever!

The idea I put in my original post was that if we had a stable coin poker site, then the company that owns it needs to do all the hoop jumping for the customer to make it as simple as possible for the average user (so that the masses can join).

Paging Nooseknot

lol.

Nobody I've ever met on LocalBitcoins to trade with has ever asked me for a photo of my passport, or any identifications of any kind. People need to stop being so afraid of meeting someone who has good feedback in a public place. Once you develop a trusted local network, you won't even need LocalBitcoins anymore, as you have the contacts numbers saved.

As for a site based on USD tether, whatever drugs you're on, can you please pass some this way?

I though SWC Sealswithclubs poker was already crypto based. There is a Discord group and referral bonuses, et al. They spread every interesting variant, even OFC with candyland, or whatever its called.

Re: localbits - is too complicated & risky for most people. You think everyone should travel to meet a random stranger to buy it?
This is all too much just to play a game online, especially when people can just use cards on normal sites.
Glad it works for you, but read plenty in the localbits forum, about people getting scammed in all sorts of ways.
Needs to literally be as easy as clicking a button, without leaving home. (for mass adoption)

Doesn't have to be Tether. Would you prefer TrueUSD, or a different stable coin?
Please explain your reasoning against all of these.
My explaination for using it, is that bitcoin and crypto are obviously way too volatile to use.