ESPN drops Poker ads from their lineup

ESPN has decided to stop airing poker on their network after the primary sponsors, Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, were issued indictments for Federal crimes including money laundering and bank fraud. That means no more new poker ads shows will be aired on ESPN for now.

Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars had always been able to get away with the TV commercials in the past because they advertised the “Free Money” version of the poker room, which was hosted on each website’s .net domain. But, anyone with half a brain realized that they could play for “Real Money” by simply going to the online poker giants .com domain instead.

How it all went wrong

Since 2006, online poker’s legal status has been in debate after the US government passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act. This is because Internet Gambling is defined as being any bet that is made on a game of chance. When you bet on your favorite football team, you are making an illegal gambling bet because you can’t control who wins the game. When you bet on a slot machine or a hand of blackjack, the same thing applies if you are doing so outside of a designated gambling area.

The stance that many people took is that Poker is a game of skill and not a game of chance. Therefore, this game does not apply to the definition of “Internet Gambling” in the law passed in 2006. The skill part comes in because unlike blackjack, slots and sports betting, a professional poker player will be able to out-compete a beginner poker player 9 times out of 10.

For several years after 2006, nothing was done by the government except that they told the banks that they would have to police these transactions for themselves. A lot of times, this was ignored in favor of making more money. Then, the federal government made the banks police these transactions more efficiently and that is where Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars got into trouble.

Instead of trying to label a deposit into the poker player’s account properly and risk the transaction getting denied, they started to mislabel the transaction so the banks and credit card companies would allow the transaction to go through. So instead of making a deposit of $100 to play poker, you were buying $100 with of Golf balls from PStars.

The person that set up this banking scheme was eventually arrested in the United States and spilled the beans about how these two poker giants were using this system. That was bad timing for Full Tilt and PokerStars, as each one was setting up talks to merge with one of the successful casinos in Las Vegas.

What going to happen to Poker on TV?

Without the big sponsors spending money on advertisements, you will probably see a lot of the poker TV shows on cable go belly up. Many of the shows on various networks were directly created by either Full Tilt or PokerStars with all of their own sponsored professional poker players. The rest, like the World Poker Tour (WPT), are going to have a struggle to find new sponsors.

The one problem is that any poker site that wants to advertise in the US, even those that offer Free Poker, aren’t going to be keen to pick up the place that Full Tilt and PokerStars resided.

The World Series of Poker should be able to find a TV network that will at least show highlights from the Main Event. But the fact is that the WSOP peaked a couple of years ago and this move by the US government will damper things a little bit more then usual.

One of the effects that you will see is a drop in the number of entries to the WSOP Main Event. Many of the people playing online won automatic seats into the World Series of Poker from either Full Tilt Poker or PokerStars. If you were ever wondering why so many people were wearing the gear of these two poker sites, now you know.

Still want to play online poker in the United States?

There is nothing illegal about playing online poker for money. The ambiguity with the current laws means that these companies weren’t being punished for letting people play poker, but for setting up a scheme to circumvent the laws placed on banks and credit card companies to prevent payment processes from getting through.

If you don’t believe me, then you obviously haven’t heard that Washington D.C. has recently passed a law that makes online poker legal within the borders of the district. There are also several states that have passed their own laws making online poker legal to play as long you played in poker rooms that did not include players from other states.

The states know that the Federal law is not clearly defined; but they cannot create a law that would allow interstate poker games because that is the jurisdiction of the Federal government.
Two of the poker companies that were affected on Friday were Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. These poker sites are continuing service to US poker players that still have money in their player account. They have set up a rule that no deposits and no withdrawals may be made because of the current US laws.

With that being said, I would suggest that you take a look at a couple of articles that may direct you to a site that still offers online poker services to American customers:

Change of Landscape for Online Poker in the US – pokernewsvine.com
Online Poker Networks that still Accept US Players – getpokernetwork.com
USA Online Poker News – gambling-poker-news.com