Poker Stars returning funds to US players

In a day that has been ironically referred to as Black Friday by the online poker community, the US Department of Justice seized the .com domain names of Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, thereby ending the era of legalized online poker playing within the United States. Almost a dozen executives at these companies have been indicted over the incidents of that day as well, creating a huge firestorm of controversy surrounding this issue yet again.

Poker Stars has managed to create a deal with the US government that will see them start processing payments back to their US customers through a bank that has been approved by the same government. Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker have not been so lucky to date and because of that players at those sites that live in the United States will likely still have to wait a while before they start to see any of the money that they have in their websites.

The poker community at large has been set aflame by the actions of the US government, an anger that has only been fuelled by the contrast between the actions of government agents and the willingness of all of the online poker sites to go to great lengths and expense in order to reimburse their loyal customers, something that they have done each and every time the government has started playing this particular tune.

An interesting aspect of this is that many professionals based in the United States have now decided to leave the country because of what happened on Black Friday. Although even emigration to nearby Canada is difficult for people not originally from that country, this could be the beginning of the end of the stranglehold on poker capitol of the world that Las Vegas has held to this point. The long-term ramifications of what that could mean are unknown as of yet, but it is quite possible that continuing current persecutory actions could result in the US government cutting off their nose to spite their face. Only time will tell if Black Friday earns its name or turns out in fact to be a good move on the government’s part.