Its not shutting down in 48 hours, that was just about how long the dns changes would take to propogate. Denial of access to all USA players and to pokerstars.com would take up to 48 hours.

can somebody in the know just certify that online poker is completly legal in the UK and is regulated? i think it is but im not certain

if so all money should be completely risk free from the FBI? from what i can tell they have only seized american banks which means our funds shouldnt have been involved anyway

Its a bit more risky than Nortern Rock but still seems very unlikely that we dont get our money back.

One thing I'm certain about is the lunatics in america aren't going to scare me into helping them by abandoning ship.

Cause its legal. We wouldn't have a Gambling Commission that regulates UK and remote gaming fro Uk players that includes poker.

Stars based on Isle of Man a UK Crown Dependency, FTP is regulated in Alderney. Now some funds could been temporarilyfrozen up in US accounts, depends where they're held but ultimately...

At end of the day DOJ can't go around seizing other sovereign nations citizen's legal assets. Think what a precedent this would set and how dangerous it is for global economic stability.

Look @ the UK and Nederlands vs Icelandic banking crisis.
if you act bad you get 'left out in the cold' and the US is last place that doesn't want to scare off foreign investors in it's Treasury debt.

You need 10k poker points to get VIP status which is get 30% rakeback but you can get a lot more than that from various leaderboards and promotions. I generally get about 40-50% but have had up to 75% in some months. 10k poker points is $1000 in rake. I think you still get 25% rakeback (again it would be higher in practice) with just 3k poker points which is $300 in rake or tournament fees.

you are incredibly naive if you actually think this will happen. the FBI does not rule the world. they cant stop a company from operating in other coutries. stars have already switched to a fully .eu operation, there is nothing the FBI or the US govt can do with regards to this as they have no jurisdiction in europe.

Yes the UK is legal and regulated but iirc none of the sites came to the uk to get the licence cos they wanted to tax them a ******ed amount. Stars is Isle of Man and FT maybe Ireland most of the other high streek bookmakers are regulated in Gibralter.

I dont know anything about the US legal system except for it being slow and expensive, but I doubt any of those charged are hopping on planes to the US anytime soon, so there would have to be an extradiition process which will take ages then months after that before any trial happens then an appeal, it could be years before anything happens. I just dont see any high risk to player funds at this point, but people love to run round panicing.

My suspicion is the motivation behind it is to lockout these "illegal" sites that have had US players as they move towards legalization. Seems a bit of a coincidence that this has happened just as the Washinton stuff happened as well.

It won't make the games any fishier. American players are on average a similar skill level to other countries but there is more of them, so there are obviously a lot more very good players and a lot more fish. Without them the games will be pretty similar to before but with a smaller player pool.

anyone play ladbrokes know what the plo traffic is like?

also is ptr down for everyone else?

im staying on stars for the time being...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkzMA...eature=related

+1 ... This. Move on and continue to crush even more on stars...! most strong competition is gone, sorry for them

agreed

gladiator rake race starting 1st may on PP might actually be achievable now...

Well it is having an affect on us uk players because when i tried to play full tilt today it would not update so i tried to reinstall it and now it only lets may play for fun money only so whats the deal with that. So basically no more new players.
****ing disgraceful iam English and i cant play real money poker because of the the yanks.
Anyone know how to get around this problem.

English poker for English players.

I'll continue playing on Stars as usual. I'm not planning on withdrawing any of my balance or changing my playing habits. It's inconceivable that US law enforcement agencies could stop an IOM company conducting perfectly legal business in the UK.

Just out of curiosity, if stars is found guilty would you still want to play there?

I reinstalled from fulltilt.co.uk and that worked fine.

Where are people considering playing? iPoker?

yeah,that's were i'm going to play.i guess you can't have any problems if there are no us players but who knows?you don't **** with the FBI lol.

Why would we leave Stars? At least see how the games are in the aftermath of this in any case...

Indeed. Our only worry is that Stars, as a business, folds.

The service they offer in the UK is perfectly legal; those upstanding gentleman from the theocratic FBI thankfully have no jurisdiction on our little island.

I've decided to stick with stars as well. I snap withdrew $10k last night, but I've since cancelled it, and just pulled out $7k. Stars still has 225k players at present, which is still going to eclipse any other feasible option for high volume players.

I just can't see them folding as a business when they can pull in 225k players on a Saturday night, just 24hrs after the worst day in the history of online poker. Cleary the rest of the world don't seem too bothered and are still playing on the site.

My view is they will just take their fines, do their time, but carry on as a hugely profitable business outside of the US.

wtf this crap has to do with UK player?? U are fine as long as u are living outside of US.