Your check would of bounced, the accounts used by PS are frozen

I realise that this smacks of self-interest; but I bet many other players would like to know....................Are there any "safe" sights that US based players can play on?? I have no problem waiting out the political machinations; but I need a viable source of "poker" income SOON...............

Any help would be appreciated!! Leso Varen

but the US has been attempting to block these transactions for years, with little success. What changed about that yesterday?

Perhaps the sites have about the same freedom to process transactions as before, but have been hit by a monumental wave of requests. They're also in a period of considerable uncertainty and probably want to know what's happening next before they make bold moves like releasing half their deposits.

These seizures don't happen on Friday by accident. No doubt people are working through the weekend and having food brought in while they reorganize a lot.

No the only newsworthy happening on the IoM is sheep sh*gs man.

I live in Apex, outside Raleigh. I'm also interested in some action around here if you find some. Not really the right place for this but.

I am lucky that I don't play poker as a profession, but I am still outraged by this action. If there is anything of value that I can do to help the cause, I am willing to work towards that.

I recieved this e-mail from stars support via the .EU site this morning, and I didnt ask for this email it was just sent from them. It states clearly I should still be able to cashout. So the fact that they offered this information on their own to me means I am going to go ahead and withdraw now.

"Hello ******,

Thank you for contacting us.

We regret to inform you that in light of recent developments, PokerStars is no longer offering real money play to US residents.

We are currently assessing the situation, and will communicate with all of our players as soon as possible.

Please be informed that you should be able to request a cashout.
We apologize for the inconvenience this is causing.

Regards,

Yhonnathan
PokerStars Support Team"

I'm not a big player so only have $500ish online, but after reading this, I did request a withdrawal via paper check this morning and can only wait to see what happens now. My bigger concern is whether the check issued will still be good 7-15 days after issue. My hope is the banks who were seized in the initial sweep are gonna be the only ones for the time being, and some money will flow from others. I am nearly certain the banks frozen were only a fraction of there actual banks. Will keep you posted of anything interesting along the way if you want.

It's our U.S. Govt at work once again letting us know "they know what's best for us" Until we vote out ALL (dems and GOP) senators and congresspeople and vote in people not ruled by politics, lobbyists, right wing nut jobs and the media will the American people really get what we want.

I mean come on, they would benefit and so would we.

They would
a) Have more control over poker tax revenue, while also creating more
b) Have a large share of rake
c) Have control over peoples accounts, knowing where the money is going to
d) Keep the money within the USA, and not have all the fish deposit thousands and loose it all to a foreign country.

For us this would
a) Make it easier to play online, more fishes would join the tables.
b) Could possibly have a very lower rake, ex like we could get 60% rakeback.
c) Could possibly open up to foreign country's, and charge a higher rake to them.
Prob more reasons, but why would they not do this yet !!

Lol do you think if there were anyone would tell you? Or that you'd be able to make your 'poker income' with all the US regs flocking to the site?

I'm from the UK and am with Andy on this - compelled to write my first post to express my sympathy and bewilderment. Surely other issues (terrorism, drugs, illegal immigration etc etc) are far more important and worthy of FBI effort?

Hopefully time will show that although this is a dark, dark day it lead to improvements in regulation that made online poker better in the long run.

I feel for everyone affected by this right now though

I attempted a wire xfer from PS. It is currently pending. We'll see.

I just logged into PS and got a notice stating US players can't play right now but our money is safe.

many of thoese players are in their play-money games fyi...the games will not be as good without the us market but I do beleive it will be back one day..could be this monday, could be 1-2 years

No doubt many US players who base their livelihood on playing online poker are outraged by what happened yesterday. And while it may not feel this way now, you have just got luckier than you ever though possible while playing the game itself. You have been given a true opportunity ... to go out into the world and apply your obvious talent and instincts and use it to build real value in the world .. and for yourself.

At the end of the day nothing is sadder than devoting your life's work to seeking out situations where you are sitting around a table with five-eight people stupider than yourself. No matter how smart you occur to yourself, this is not what real "smart people" do in this tough old world.

So while I'm sure there may be various froms of alienating hate speeches generated by this perspective ... just know it comes from a place that I'm sure you will arrive at later in your lives ... and say what you will .... what can't be argued is that there is always a "gift" in anything that happens that occurs at first blush as a "bad thing". Smart people look for that gift, and embrace it, everything else is just pointless ill will.

The gift here is both obvious and powerful .... you will have no choice now but to use what happened yesterday as your first step to taking your skills and talents and putting them to work to make the world a tiny bit better. And because you are talented enough to beat poker in the current climate, you will find that along the way you will become far wealthier than you ever would have been playing poker ... and over time you will look back on what happened here as the biggest suck out of your life.

I did an echeck and will let you know.

OMG, ****! That's what I do all day - although we call them 'meetings'.

Yeah online pros will all become day-traders :/

I'm assumint the .net software is still usable, no?

If your like me, yest morn you signed on pokerstars in my case and clicked right to withdraw for both wire trans and paper check. If you are like me, you later in the day cancelled all withdraw requests. here is why;

1) they have all records needed to prosecute you currently for money laundering. when the DOJ seized the payment processors, they seized ALL RECORDS. if you did any financial transaction; they have your name, address and social. Wait a week or two for the DOJ to make a statement regarding prosecution of players!!!!

2) I pay and follow all tax laws for us americans so this is of no concern to me, but now that the DOJ has all financial records it will only be a few months before many players receive a lovely letter from the IRS. It will be simple for the irs to build a case against u, im sure there are tons of players who failed to report taxes on deposit bonuses, FPP and ect.. its an easy case for example if u only ever deposited 500 bucks and the day the sites got seized you requested a withdraw of say 10k and u never paid taxes ever; u have no shot at not being prosecuted eventually for tax fraud

3) many ppl have recently tried to withdraw funds from there account on the news fri; here's the problem the processors where all seized! no one has stated they requested a wire after news hit and received it yet! id confidently say the banks that process deposits/withdraws are frozen!

the other side of this is, an out of control train is flying down the tracks, why jump in front of it or on it; wait for the train to stop! if pokerstars was a stock it would have done an enron on friday.

USA is a huge portion of all real money online poker; one has to think how much longer they will all survive before the desperate actions of mergers start.

for the time being, the only/best option is to wait it out for a short period of time until more information comes out!

In VA and still playing FTP. When are they gonna shut it down??

Don't log out

Theory: The Feds have shut down the sites to cause mass withdrawals, which will allow them to easily find the accounts that Stars & Tilt use for conducting "illegal" bank transfers.

For the same reason they don t sell TV's, the're not interested in it. Better and easier to license it.

You think they can charge a higher rake to non US players?

in the end, no because it would just create problems to charge higher rake.

And QuantFund is a fed shill!