It’s June 1st, 2010, and today the final hurdle for the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) has officially been cleared. After years of talk, delays, petitions, committees, open letters, and veiled threats, the UIGEA is now not only officially US law, but US payment processors must now be in full compliance with it.
So what does this mean to the average US player? Well speaking as an American who just threw a hundred bucks on PokerStars, so far I’d say very little.
The UIGEA has certainly created significant fear and confusion over the years since it was first quietly slipped into a port security bill back in the early 2000s, and it’s immediate effect when many online poker sites and popular payment processors first started dropping US players, was clearly disastrous for the industry, but as for today’s compliance deadline little seems changed.
Over 90,000 players- at the time of this writing- are currently playing on the popular US serving site Full Tilt Poker; and PokerStars, the largest of the online poker sites, shows more than 200,000.
Both these site’s “Cashiers” tabs appear to look exactly as they did yesterday, with no major warning labels listed or apologies offered, and both appear as eager as always to allow players to buy chips (something I can attest to first hand).
The UIGEA of course, most experts agreed, was never meant to change the legality of playing for individuals, or their ability to cash out from the major sites, however how it would ultimately effect deposits has been the big question as the June 1st deadline approached, and one that caused what is now appearing to be much needless concern.
Of course despite numerous reports online (besides my own) of players depositing funds as usual thus far today, certainly future significant depositing issues may soon become apparent as banks and credit card companies do their best to interpret what Congressman Barney Frank is often quoted as calling the “the stupidest law ever passed.”
However, for the moment at least, things appear to be basically business as usual across the US facing sites, which is pretty much exactly what many poker advocates were praying would happen, in order to ultimately show the futility of passing such a convoluted law in the first place.
For more information on the UIGEA and the current legal landscape for US online poker players visit the Poker Players Alliance website (www.theppa.org)- poker’s over 1 Million member strong, largest grassroots advocacy group.