Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 22 April 2011 / Leave a Comment

Hello from America, land of the free! Free money games, anyway.

It has been a memorable week here in the U.S., where the ongoing struggle to play online poker has taken yet another dramatic turn.

It was early afternoon on Friday, April 15, 2011 -- a.k.a. "Black Friday" -- that we all learned that the U.S. Department of Justice had unsealed indictments against the chief executives of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet plus a few others, as well as a civil complaint against the companies. Charges listed in the indictments included conspiracy to violate and violation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), operation of an illegal gambling business, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The DOJ is seeking $3 billion from the companies and as much as 65 years of jail time for some of the defendants.

Soon after the indictments were unsealed, the domains on which the sites reside were seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Earlier this week both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker reached an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York to use their domains in order to facilitate player withdrawals; meanwhile, Absolute/UB have yet to reach such an agreement.

Much as happened back on Friday, October 13, 2006 -- that other "Black Friday" when then-President George W. Bush signed the UIGEA into law -- U.S. players' favorite online poker sites suddenly have become unavailable to them. Then numerous sites, including PartyPoker (the most popular site both in the U.S. and the world at the time), stopped serving U.S. players. Now PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have closed their doors to Americans. AP and UB have apparently done so as well, although as I write some players are reporting they are still able to play despite pop-up messages indicating otherwise.

Unlike was the case following that previous "Black Friday," when many options remained for U.S. players wanting to keep playing online poker, this time around our choices are severely limited, with only a few small sites left among the rubble and many players now understandably trigger-shy when it comes to depositing funds and opening new accounts.

The 2011 World Series of Poker is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, May 31, a little over five weeks from now. Intended or not, the timing of the DOJ's action is such that it will likely exert significant influence on both the events themselves and how the Series will be covered.

My colleague Matthew Pitt has already weighed in on the subject of how last Friday's indictments and the sites' leaving the U.S. might affect the WSOP this summer. I thought I'd add my two cents, too.

Player Participation

The game of forecasting player turnout, especially for the Main Event, is one many of us already play every summer, with a myriad of variables often tending to make such predictions difficult to estimate. The abrupt shutting out of U.S. players from the world's largest online poker sites has made this guessing game even more challenging.

Ever since the 2007 WSOP (the first post-UIGEA), the Series has formally disassociated itself from the U.S.-facing online poker sites -- for example, by no longer allowing players to qualify for WSOP ME seats via satellite tournaments on sites like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. That said, those sites have nonetheless continued to have significant influence when it comes to sending players to the WSOP, with many paying their entry fees for both preliminary events and the ME from bankrolls built on those very sites.

Last night, WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla (whom I interviewed here last summer) appeared on Lou Krieger's "Keep Flopping Aces" podcast. (Krieger has also made an appearance here on Betfair.) Krieger asked Dalla to comment on the extent to which last Friday's events will affect player turnout at this year's WSOP.

"We are going to open our doors at the end of May, and we are going to expect a very enthusiastic, large crowd of people to come from all over the world," responded Dalla. "I guarantee we will have people lined up at the door, ready to play poker in what is the most prestigious event in the world."

Some are suggesting the loss of online games may in fact encourage many players who exclusively play online to attempt the transition into the live arena, with the upcoming WSOP providing a ready opportunity to make the switch. The ease with which many of those players will make the move will depend somewhat on how quickly they are able to reclaim their funds from the sites -- a matter that remains up in the air at present.

Thus do some observers believe that numbers may remain fairly steady from 2010. However, others are less optimistic. When asked earlier this week to predict a total for this year's Main Event, 2004 WSOP ME champion Greg Raymer told USA Today that he'd set the line at 5,250 -- a drop of more than 28% from last year's 7,319. (On Krieger's show, Dalla said he thought Raymer's "number is just flat-out wrong.")

My sense is that these various factors will combine to create an overall decline in player participation, both in the prelims and the ME, although perhaps not of the magnitude some are envisioning.

Sponsorships and Logos

While we haven't seen the PokerStars and Full Tilt banners hanging since the pre-UIGEA era, the brands have nonetheless been ubiquitous at the Rio every summer, with sponsored players displaying them prominently while at the tables. At the Main Event in particular, nearly all of those who survive to the final days of the event in July and who make the November Nine strike deals with these very sites to wear their patches. Thus when many think of the "imagery" of the WSOP, their minds are filled with cards, chips, green felt, and logos for PokerStars and Full Tilt.

We will certainly still be seeing non-U.S. players sporting online sites' patches this summer, including for PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, and perhaps even for Absolute and UB. And of course other non-U.S. facing sites will continue to sponsor players as before, perhaps in greater numbers.

In any event, this is an area so fraught with legal and economic issues it is very hard to say what may happen, particularly with regard to how the targeted sites approach the matter of sponsorships and patching this year. It is safe to say, however, that the "imagery" of the scene in the Amazon Room will be different from what we've seen in summers past.

Media Coverage

Despite early rumors about ESPN perhaps pulling out of its agreement with the WSOP (which currently lasts through 2016), the network has no plans at present to deviate from its plan to cover the 2011 WSOP in much the same fashion as it has covered the Series during recent years. As before, the network will concentrate mostly on the Main Event, to which it will again be devoting dozens of hours covering action from the Day 1s through the November Nine.

Meanwhile, many other outlets covering the WSOP will necessarily be affected given their dependence on advertising, sponsorships, and affiliate agreements with the sites targeted by the indictments and the civil complaint. Indeed, much media coverage of the WSOP over the last several years has been made possible -- directly and indirectly -- thanks to these very sites.

I would suggest that preliminary events will likely receive less attention than in previous years. That is, we'll see fewer outlets providing the kind of minutely-detailed reporting from these events that we've grown accustomed to in recent years. For the average poker fan, this change probably will have relatively little significance, since for most general summaries of final table action is satisfactory. But within the "community," such a reduction in coverage will be noticed.

When it comes to the Main Event, however, I think the coverage will probably be as comprehensive as before, partly because some outlets will reorient their focus away from preliminary events to concentrate their limited resources more on the ME. And in fact, we may even see more mainstream attention given to the ME this year than in the past as a direct result of the "Black Friday" indictments. Of course, the focus there will be less on the poker being played and more on other angles -- political, legal, cultural -- via which one could report on the world's most famous poker tournament.

Such irony. Once more this summer, the world will be traveling to America to play poker, that most American of pastimes, to play in the WSOP. Meanwhile, as far as the online game is concerned, the U.S. appears to have become the most difficult place in the world from which to play.

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