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US Online Poker Rooms
The US online poker market once upon a time was the biggest and fastest growing market online. Since the introduction of UIEGA, the situation has changed significantly. Online poker in the US was where the game first started to take shape, especially with the World Series of Poker televised events and most importantly, the World Poker Tour (WPT) events. At that stage, online poker in the US was flourishing and it was around the same time when online poker rooms such as Party Poker listed on the london stock exchange. A mere 2 years later, president Bush signed the UIEGA law banning onling gambling in the US and with it online poker. Most major US online poker rooms pretty much closed down their sites for US players. This left a significant void in the US poker market and only a handful of some very good poker rooms remained and continued to service US poker players. The aspect of the new US online poker law was that banks and financial institutions were longer able to facilitate transactions with online poker websites. Things became much more difficult for for US based poker players and the rules of the online poker world changed as we know it.
Nowadays, there are only a handful of good online poker rooms that still continue to service USA based poker players. We have listed a few of them on this page and these ones represent the major rooms that can process players transactions efficiently and actually have enough player luiquidity to satisfy players. Dont be mistaken, the online poker sites represented here have significant traffic levels, especially poker rooms such as Pokerstars. Pokerstars was one of the major US online poker rooms that decided to stay in the market and continue with accepting US poker players. They did however block a few US states as per the US gaming legislation on a state level.
A couple years later and the US online poker market seems set to change yet again. The big players in Vegas and Atlantic city also want in on the lucrative online poker market and there are a number of lobby groups and associations in the US senate that are pushing hard for the legalisation of online poker in the United States. We predict that this will actually happen in 2011 or possibly 2012. Once this will happen, the US online poker market will change forever and new laws and tax structures will be implemented. Most importantly is the tax, the US government will be able to make approximately $2billion a year in tax income generated from legal US based online poker rooms. As a US online poker player this change will effect players particularly on a state level as it seems the laws will apply to individual states. Logistically, we are not sure how this will exactly work for a US poker player sitting in California but wanting to play on a US online poker website is New York. Time will tell but in the meanwhile, the US online poker rooms listed on this page will be around no matter what changes take place with the US legislation. In fact, the US government and casino associations may even partner with this US online poker rooms and try and capture their piece of this highly lucrative market. |