Lou Krieger

By Lou Krieger and Shari Geller

As the carnage mounts in the Department of Justice’s war on online poker, it’s becoming clear that some of the unintended consequences of this action are the winners and losers created as a by-product.  In the week since Black Friday, some fortunes have risen while others have fallen through no action of their own.

Let’s look first at the losers. There are more of them, and they’re more obvious.

By Shari Geller and Lou Krieger

With the announcement yesterday of an agreement with respect to the PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker domain names came assurances that the money that the U.S. government had seized would be available to pay back U.S. players. 

Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, claimed yesterday that players’ funds had not been seized and that there was no reason the online poker companies could not refund players’ deposits.  He was quoted as saying, “this office expects the companies to return the money that U.S. players entrusted to them, and we will work with the poker companies to facilitate the return of funds to players."

By Shari Geller and Lou Krieger

The Department of Justice has agreed to allow PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to reactivate their .com web sites, shut down last Friday by the Feds, so that U.S. players can have their deposited funds returned to them.  Under the just-announced five-page domain-name use agreement, the poker companies will be permitted to use these domain names to offer for-money online poker games to players outside the U.S.  However, the companies agreed not to permit for-money poker games for U.S. players and to allow independent verification of their compliance with the deal.

By Shari Geller and Lou Krieger

In the largest and most serious attack yet on online poker, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed a nine-count indictment last Friday against the three largest online poker companies.  Principals of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker and their payment processors have been charged with bank fraud, illegal gambling offenses and money laundering, and the Feds are seeking both money damages and forfeiture of their companies.

Just a few weeks ago, New Jersey seemed poised to become the first state to permit online, intrastate poker, but the Garden State’s governor Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have legalized online gambling within the state’s borders. In a press release, Christie called the bill “inconsistent” with his administration’s commitment of revitalizing Atlantic City’s tourism and gaming industries.”

World Series of Poker Announces 2011 Schedule. The 2011 World Series of Poker schedule has been released and is available at http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/.

Fifty-eight events comprise this year’s WSOP, with Event No. 58, the $10,000 buy-in, thirteen-day main event, set for July 7.

This is the time of year everyone makes predictions about what we might expect in 2011, and I guess I’m no different than anyone else when it comes to gazing into a crystal ball.

No UIGEA Repeal in 2011. Harry Reid’s bill that would have brought us regulated online poker suffered from less-than-all-out effort on the Senate Majority Leader’s part. His heart, soul, and influence-wielding were lacking and he never seemed truly invested in this bill’s passage.

 
The Holiday season always turns me inwardand I become even more introspective thanusual. It just seems natural to review the year, and once that’s done, it’s time to think about next year.
 

Winning the World Series of Poker’s main event informally anoints one as poker’s ambassador-at-large for the coming year. Some wear this mantle well, some struggle with it, while still others seem to ignore it completely.

Back in poker’s Pleistocene age, before television and the internet changed things forever, poker meant cash games. But when poker and television discovered each other, it was love at first sight. They were made for each other. Tournaments provide the viewing audience with winners and losers, heroes and villains, and the same sense of drama found in all sorts of sporting events.