I love your passion, but did this effect your livelihood in anyway, other than railing online cash games?

This really only effects a small fraction of the online players in the US, in regards to the ones who play for a living.

who the hell is the guy who sounds like Big Smoke from GTA?

it doesn't bother anyone that you have no legal recourse,
and that the gov't probably views your money as the assets of a fraudulent ,money laundering criminal??

does anyone remember the S&L scandals?
the ppl who got robbed had no recourse, and their $ wan't online.

If the US wins this case the sites are out of business. A) there is no way they can pay a $3B fine. B) who will do business with a company convicted of fraud in a US court? Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran?

That is if they can stay online long enough to hear the verdict. Where do they get their money for day-to-day operations? Overnight bank loans? New player deposits? Once their cash reserves run out how do they stay in business?

This is the same thing that happened to Bear, Stearns, the brokerage company. The gov't indicted them for fraud which was enough to isolate them from their funding and their customers. A week late they were out of business.

Dan Fleyshman asked the Cake Network to block US players and they agreed. The only logical move he could have made to not jeopardize himself and his business.

man what BS. GL america, may this ****e soon pass and we can all get back to trading abuse at the tables

you make some very good points

however, rather than focus on the fact that the poker sites were using backdoor tactics to process deposits/withdraws...I think we should key on the fact that our own government is intent on making it illegal to operate these sites in the first place (unless they get a cut)

We are only in this position to begin with because our own elected officials are too incompetent to take the bull by the horns and regulate the industry.

That level of hypocrisy pisses me off more than having to send cash to Maria Conchita Alonzo in San Jose, Costa Rica.

In fact, I applaud the sites for giving the U.S. government a big fat middle finger for this long.

lol @ 'land of the free'

how ironic looking through the registered entries in the Sunday Million that the United States is absent

that speaks volumes for just how sideways we are in this country that we are the only citizens in the world that are barred from a recreational activity as harmless as poker.

With the Libyan crisis, tsunami in Japan, growing discontent in the Middle East, not to mention insurmountable national debt and a host of other global crises, I will certainly sleep more soundly knowing that we are safe from the perils of playing poker on the internet

It is also a question of pragmatism.

If they want to set up a taxable, viable, regulated online system for US players....taking money from millions of players is a HORRIBLE first step.

I for one probably would never deposit again..or at least it would be a lot less and take a lot longer for me to buy into the notion of profitable online play after this if they simply grab my money without cause.

As for the millions who havent been involved with online poker since 2006, lol, you would NEVER get most of their business after they heard horror stories about how people lost their whole rolls online.

It actually makes a lot of sense that the DoJ will use this opportunity to basically punish those who committed fraud and de facto strip them of their US player bases, have a cooling off period to set up a new regulated taxable system....then return money and allow people to deposit it in a a system that has the US govt's seal of approval.

Im not saying that is what will happen....it just makes the most sense longterm imho.

You are incorrect, sir. My job requires frequent background checks and a high security clearance. I have disclosed my online poker playing in every background check with the FBI, DHS, DSS, etc. In no circumstances was it considered any kind of barrier or red-flag, and if it was determined that such activity were illegal, I would definitely not be eligible to retain my clearance. Instead, I was only asked follow up questions about whether I had any gambling debt or compulsion to gamble, and had my clearance renewed when my answers checked out.

While this does not exactly constitute a federal endorsement, it is pretty clear evidence that the neither players nor federal agencies believed playing poker online to be illegal.

FTP and the other sites better have a solid statement to give us on Monday.

I second this!

DanFleyshman

Asked the Cake Network to BLOCK US players from the Victory Poker site. They are supportive of my decision. Hope it gets regulated 1 day!

17 minutes ago via web

If it was General Motors online poker players would be in line for bail out money.

Dan is on the webcast right now:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/day-2-qj-live-show

Confirmed Cake is pulling out of US and probably Merge too

we may have cameras but at least we dont have capital punishment

There are what, 9 counts in the indictment? For an intelligent discussion among lawyers about how many of the counts are dependent on the assumption that running an online poker site is illegal, see the relevent thread in the Legislation forum. I believe that you will find that the consensus is 7 or 8. 7 or 8 out of 9 is most, for those of you who are mathematically challenged Micro_Donks

Yes, one of the nine charges, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud. doesn't depend on online poker being illegal. You forgot to quote this:

There are two different flavors of bank fraud. One requires that the bank suffered damage. There is a strong defence to that flavor, and I do not believe that is the type of bank fraud the indictment alleges. The other flavor of bank fraud does not actually require that the banks be defrauded of funds, but there is discussion of a possible defence should the fund transfers accomplished through tricking the banks be justifiable transfers.

As I type this, there are 261,000+ players playiing online at Pokerstars. I think they'll do just fine without their US customers. This may come as something of a surprise to you, but there are more people living outside the US than within it.

Our concern should not be with the poker companies, but with those poker players who have just seen their livelihood evaporate overnight.

Very true.

so...any chance of getting russ hamilton prosecuted at this point?

I dont think this is about defrauding the banks. Its more about tricking the governement. Its not like the poker sites were lying to the banks about where the money was coming from. As far as ive read they asked small banks to process payments in exchange for investment so the banks were aware of the money source. The smokescreen tricked the government but now they figured out where and how the money was flowing.

Funny...I've always thought the US was build on a capitalistic principle. I guess, if not the right pockets get filled with monies all bets are off.

Anyway, PS and FTP could go partners (at least for the time being) with Doyles Room and transfer all players accounts for cash out or playing happily ever after. Although, their software pretty much sucks, DR is up and running as always.

Still playin in the USA. Havent closed the client since thursday. :-)

I wasn't talking about the CEO and leadership who was the cause of the mess. I was more talking about the real workers putting in 8 - 9 hours a day in crappy conditions for the same wages for years and years.