Yeah I agree. USA is NOT the place to move these days. It was bad enough when they essentially killed online poker, but every single day the cost of everything rises. Most of us with legitimate businesses are being driven under and out of business. About ready to jump ship to Canada.

Ladbrokes is pulling out of Switzerland (technically illegal), Norway (state monopoly only) and Hungary (they issue national licences and blacklist the rest).

That's pretty much every type of grey market...

http://www.igamingbusiness.com/news/...ay-and-hungary

Why my region Pokerstars? many different countries in Africa which might not have internet connection can play, and I can't. this is absurd.
Somalia can play and Turkey and Malaysia can't.
Please explain your decision Pokerstars!

would gladly take living in the US without online poker than being in many other countries that do have it.

With that said, OH CANADA

No.

What about the southern part of Cyprus? is it legal to play there.

I'm trying to open many poker sites here but it is blocked already.

Can anyone confirm that it is perfectly fine to play on stars and fulltilt from southern Cyprus?

where were you when pokerstars was kill

"Kill ed"?
Funny you mention that.
I played both on PS and FTP obv, but a few months prior to BF, I stopped depositing on both. To be honest, I still believe that FTP had modified something in RNG at the lower limits to attempt to "improve" their financial situation. No proof, just a "sense" that something had changed.
I still played PS up to the end and feel it was and still is legit software.

It would be interesting if a third party did an audit of all versions of the FTP software prior to BF. I believe that this may have been done by the DOJ already and any anomalies would NOT have been made public as it was already deemed a "Ponzi".

The DoJ likely killed all the insiders who would have told about the 2NL rig, who pretty much lost their job after Tilt died. You are lucky they did not target all the people who had that special "sense" power as well!

You should dig further in this potential conspiracy.

All the best.

What doesn't add up for me regarding the DOJ and FTP is this:
If it was a PONZI like they said, why would they honor the current bankrolls as of 4-15-2011? To clean up a PONZI, such as Madoff, they attempted to make all "investors" whole again. This included those that had their accounts busted.
It would make sense if they un-wound all deposits and did equitable distributions based on those deposits with what money was left.
-----------------------------
Also, what didn't makes sense when Tom Dwan defended FTP as NOT a Ponzi on fox news after telling them he busted his account.
If he were smart, he would have agreed with DOJ Ponzi charge and demanded all of his deposits back as a duped player.
Unless........

do you think that will be the last set of pullouts? in other words if nothing happens in our country after nov.1 are we in the clear?

I have to be honest mate I am just speculating completely. I only know as much as you do. Richas and Hood would be far better placed to answer.

However I do believe that date is significant for current grey markets and if anything is going to happen it will most likely happen on that day/the day before.

There have been occasions in the past where some places have chosen to ignore the law even when it has passed until the point when they just cant. Pinnacle sports tried to serve the USA for a few months after UIGEA was passed but ended up just withdrawing. NETELLER continued to serve the USA as well, until it's founders were silly enough to land in North America and they got arrested.

That said I personally would feel a lot safer on Nov 2nd if I was living in Canada and real money play was still allowed on Stars on my account. It would seem fair enough to assume something got worked out behind the scenes if that was the case. I also think Canadian players do have a reasonable chance of beating this case and staying on PokerStars. Even if they were to get removed briefly I would speculate that efforts to get them legalised in some way would be ongoing and possibly successful.

If I was Russian or Australian at the moment however, I would be very worried. They have very clear online poker is illegal type laws. One of these new UK licences and operating in those countries appears to not be possible past Nov 1st. At least to me anyway.

This whole thing sucks. One thing that online poker does not need at the moment is yet more players being removed from the player pool. I am sincerely hoping something is worked out here otherwise these removals will be to the detriment of everyone connected to this industry. I have been playing online for over a decade and every time a country has been removed from the global pool it has hurt us all considerably.

Absolutely true.

Perhaps an additional + side to regulation would be the sites being able to advertise for real money on commercials. In Canada the gov't lotto can advertise freely but Stars can only advertise free to play.

With regulation would this change?

appreciate the response sooted pretty much what I've been speculating as well. trying to stay optimistic here but it's hard when you look at all the things amaya has done since taking over.

and with respect to regulation in canada I think amaya has been talking with lotto quebec for quite some time now but even if they do work out some kind of a deal it probably wouldn't apply outside of quebec anyway so the rest of us are still fked.

To let Amaya manage a 4,2 billion pursuit is mindblowing when you know all the shady things they done in the past

Good advice: short Amaya stocks

right on man, well said.

and I must say, the ignorance in this thread is painful.

love all the people who think they know about foreign countries from sitting on their asses and watching Fox News.....i'd be willing to bet that none of you have traveled to any of these countries.

using scary words like "terrorism" to try and rationalize these moves is just laughable....poverty is abundant in these parts of the world; its infinitely more likely that someone from these countries is playing poker to make more money than they could otherwise.

its ridiculous to even throw those words around in this discussion. the real reason is obvious....no need for the FoxNews-esque fear mongering.

they are not making enough profit from these players to justify the legal risks(mostly just the costs of any potential litigation) to continue operating in these jurisdictions.
its that simple.

This is true of course but I am a bit more optimistic over the medium term.

The way I see it developing is that we get two international player pools. There will be the legit main pool of countries where it is legal and or regulated and there will be the grey/black pool.

Sorting these two will take a little while and it may mean a short term hit on the .com pool but I know there are serious talks about reuniting the European pool (Italy, Spain, France) back in to the international pool and with POC tax going on. Having that pool not include Iran, North Korea and a few more - even the Vatican! makes this more likely not less. Similarly for the US market, the option of international pooling only becomes feasible if there is a relatively clean, legal, international pool.

As for the grey/black market..less my concern being UK based but one issue today is the terrible liquidity, if you add Aus, Russia and these tiny jurisdiction to that pool then it becomes if anything more sustainable.

In the longer term still countries like Aus and the US seeing that a viable and far cleaner (better player protection, less cheating, proper regulatory oversight and significant tax revenues) pool is ready and that their players are forced into the untaxed grey/black market with far lower consumer protection and social responsibility will face greater pressure to change their law ad move to the legit international pool.

I expect significant disruption and some pain as this pans out but it is a sign of a maturing market and some real progress not all doom and gloom. (Though I concede I say this from the UK not Aus, Russia, Canada, Norway, Turkey....)

Thanks for the response Richas, if I may ask a question (or two)...

Do you expect (speculation here I realise but your speculation is well informed) PokerStars to pullout from more countries in the run up to 1st Nov/On the 1st Nov? If so what countries?

Does the fact the tax regime of this new law is now being challenged separately have any possibility of delaying this further?

Cheers.

Tell that to Paradise Poker / Ultimate Bet / Absolute / FTP (kinda before it was bought by stars) and I'm sure others I can't remember atm, I played at all of these and they were destroyed by poor management / scandal caused by bad management. 2 of them I lost a lot of money in the downfall (UB / FTP)

Looking at the 5 day charts, everyone is taking your advice.

Also, what shady things?

Yes, more will go.

I see no way that Aus can stay in Stars pool given the 2001 Aus IGA for example if it wants to get a UK licence. This is of course, as you say, speculation though. The full list? Hmm hard to do but I'd add Russia to Aus and 60/40 Canada (60 stay).

The GBGA judicial review is dead in the water, they lost, they got shot down on everything and hit for costs (unsurprisingly). No hope of further delay. Crunch time is upon us, which may not seem big for most but having watched the legislation process and done the consultations for 2 years now it seems quite imminent.

Someone should ask in the pokerstars tv twitter feed for some pokerstars representive to comment on this. Are other markets threatened?

Don't think you will get a comment, although you can try I guess. I doubt PokerStars themselves have decided exactly what is going to happen on the 1st yet. Many things could change and there is no doubt some discussion behind the scenes between regulators and Stars.

Any market where online gambling/poker can be reasonably deemed to be illegal due to the local laws is threatened. This seems to be more markets than you might think.

Yesterday I asked ps support whether they have any plans to pull out of other gray markets(like India), their reply:

"Hello Anuj,

Thank you for your email.

Our management team and advisors regularly review our operations market-by-market to assess commercial opportunities and business risks for our brands. Following a recent review we have decided to stop offering real money games to players who are physically located in, or have a registered address in, a limited number of countries.

PokerStars services outside of these countries are not affected. We have no changes to announce at this time.

As you may be aware, earlier this year, PokerStars was purchased by Amaya, a company that is publicly listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in Canada.

Removing our real money services from these countries means that our policies are now aligned with Amaya’s global market policies."