The Big News
**Updates Here**
Black Friday, D-day, the day Stars and FTP died, whatever you want to call it, yesterday was a mess.
It's too soon to tell all the implications of what happened. It's also too soon to form any confident opinion of what this will mean. For example, cashouts might be available for US players in a week, in a month, in a year, in two years or never. Each scenario is a legitimate possibility. And that's just the start of it. Similar wide ranging scenarios are open right now for poker legislation in the US, for the ability of US players to play and so on.
So instead of becoming yet another blog post short on facts and long on opinions (or opinions presented as facts), I will just link you to some of the stories I've been reading about this issue, with a few comments where appropriate.
We'll have some sort of official announcement and/or news on the main page at some point later today. The hesitation thus far is simply that facts are short and speculation is wide. What you're reading on major forums such as 2p2 or major news sites such as pokernews are the same things we're reading. Husng.com will certainly be OK though. We help players worldwide improve their poker decision making skills and will continue to do that. More details on that front later today.
Yesterday the United States Department of Justice indicted some of the top officials and owners of the two major US-facing poker rooms (PokerStars and Full Tilt) as well as Absolute Poker (perhaps known as Cereus now). A copy of the official indictement is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/53107543/Indictment-DOJ-vs-Scheinberg-Bitar-To...
This is a good summary of what has happened (Note: Full Tilt has stopped allowing US players to play on their site as of Saturday morning): http://www.pokernews.com/news/2011/04/a-closer-look-at-online-poker-blac...
In the last few weeks major momentum was happening for possible US online poker legislation to push through, both stateside (Nevada, Washington DC and to a lesser extent Iowa and Florida). Included in that momentum was a major announcement that Steve Wynn (Founder of the Bellagio and Mirrage hotels in Las Vegas, and owner of Wynn and Encore) had partnered with PokerStars. Full Tilt had announced a similar partnership with the Station Casinos of Nevada. Both of those partnerships have now, predictably, been severed in light of the indictement.
I'll post more later, but here are some other relevant details:
- PokerStars has stopped allowing cashouts, transfers or playing on their site for all US players, including those outside of the US. You cannot currently change your address as a US player, even if you are outside of the country.
- Full Tilt has stopped allowing US players to play on their site.
- There has been no word from the third, smaller site on this matter, Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker (Cereus Network).
- This story should cover a lot of the up to date information that I have not mentioned yet in this post.
More to come soon.
- RyPac13's blog
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Comments
Just to give this something
Just to give this something to compare to. For all of you that remember the Reid Bill I did a little blog writeup on, this is similar to that in the amount of possibilities that could happen before the dust clears. Except probably multiply the possibilities here by 2, 3, 4 or 5 and that's the ballpark estimate of how much is currently up in the air (or unknown to a majority of the poker world).
I'll update as things become likely and potential outcomes become more clear.
Are we likely to see new
Are we likely to see new coaches come in?
i have enough interesting
i have enough interesting hh's saved to make a ton more videos. just played joe cada in a bunch of 2/5ks the other day, so that will be next vid prob. i plan on finding a way to play quite soon as well. i don't plan on going anywhere.
Positive comments from Hokie,
Positive comments from Hokie, nice!
By the way guys, this is the best "summary" thread of major news and news outlet stories regarding the news. Unsurprisingly, it's located on the largest poker forum in the world's largest section (2p2's news section): http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/us-doj-indicts-ft...
The author (Kevmath) is very respected in the poker news world.
There are a lot of "opinions" being posted now. Be weary of taking them for fact from any source. There's a reason why myself and many others with much more knowledge than I in this industry have not posted their opinions, it has to do with opinions effectively meaning very little (similar to putting a player on a hand first hand when they open shove, a good player would just never do that).
And a lot of the "good" opinion pieces that I've read have mostly just been combating a lot of the false speculation on forums right now, which is good, but doesn't help us much (so I didn't link them as of now).
When things start to clear up you'll likely see more opinion pieces to go along with news stories linked in this post (or a future post which I will link to here in the comment section and/or title).
Do you think this will affect
Do you think this will affect US players on other sites like Cake and Merge anytime in the near future? Just wandering how much work they're willing to put into cracking down on the smaller sites.
Nobody seems to know for
Nobody seems to know for sure, but I would guess the only way this will likely impact them would be how they pay people out.
Again, I can't stress enough that this is just my opinion from reading news stories and forum views from those in the industry.
But, the thing about Bodog especially, but also Merge and Cake, is that they are more likely to react with a UB/AP type of "ignoring authorities" stance, whereas FTP and Stars have always said they believe what they are doing is legal, have legal opinions of some of the top law firms in the US telling them that, and that they will fight that in court if they have to. That remains to be seen, but their actions (not offering less likely "legal" games worldwide such as sportsbetting, blackjack, table games, etc.) have backed up their stance historically. We'll see though, that's just speculation (what I was trying to avoid in the actual blog post), so treat it as such.
Thanks!, ya I'll treat it as
Thanks!, ya I'll treat it as speculation. I was just curious what your thoughts were.
Time to start thinking
Time to start thinking creatively gents. Without trying to sound too mersenneary(what), coaches and members could pontentially have euro contacts that will be more than willing to hook up with a usa counterpart via a teamviewer/skype combo or whatever and ghost - what i mean is usa players still to play giving instruction via skype, and euros get to view sessions and/or % of earnings(major trust aspect i appreciate). Also you could hijack the moshman train ie offer coaching for profit share(there are thousands of breakeven microstakes donks who can play 100 games a week if you get them to the $10s and above on a 50/50) . Videos can still be conducted via teamviewer perhaps with usernames blocked out and commentary overdubbed or perhaps live sweat sessions. i'm not trying to devalue coaching rates as i reckon you guys are worth every penny but just read posts by itriedtowarnyou this morning on another forum and thought how bad it must be if your livelihood depended upon poker as im sure many of you do. I realise all of the above hurts your income but earning potential still exists.
gl guys and genuinely hope it gets resolved v soon( i play plo now but always felt the husng community was stronger/than any of the other communities in poker) f me too much red wine.
Hi Anthony, I just want to
Hi Anthony,
I just want to point out that some of what you suggest may be violating the poker site's terms and conditions (or perhaps even laws, I don't know) so just make sure you don't mistakenly get anybody into any trouble.
I like your attitude as far as being positive goes.
Making videos should not be any sort of problem at all. The wealth of knowledge the coaches have, from the US or else ware, can be demonstrated in videos outside of a few major online poker sites. Concept/theory videos, leakfinders and many other options do exist and will end up being put to use more frequently if the time comes.
Not going anywhere either.
Not going anywhere either. Excited to devote even more attention to videomaking and coaching.
If US players cannot play on
If US players cannot play on sites then it is likely that we will add some non US players.
We will also likely continue to add leakfinders and theory videos. If this is going to end up being prolonged (and there's a real chance that it will) we will probably consider some sort of system where users can have videos from their own games reviewed by pros on this site.
We'll be posting videos regularly, as always, starting with my 3rd and final leakfinder from my recent rematch series tonight.
When the dust settles and the picture is more clear we'll let you know our plans, but for now they aren't set in stone because the ramifications of the two largest poker sites in the world being indicted by the most powerful government in the world are not yet specific or likely enough (good or bad or other).