News

Thursday, 26 May 2011 05:18

It was announced on Friday that PokerStars have returned an incredible $100 million in player deposits to US customers following legal action from the Department of Justice.

While this is quite a staggering amount being returned to those customers of PokerStars based in the US, it pales into insignificance when you consider that this amount is only the tip of the gigantic iceberg of cash in circulation every day. The $100 million only represents the amount of US customers' unused deposits for one poker site. US lawmakers ought to take very careful note that this is how much just one company had floating, unused in US player accounts. It is not the actual amount that was being gambled every day at PokerStars. Multiply that figure by all the other casinos and poker rooms still operating in the US, albeit illegally and the numbers get very big indeed.

Both Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, the other two operators involved in the highly publicised DOJ legal action against the three online poker companies, have yet to announce figures relating to the return of deposits for their US based customers. They each have brokered separate deals with the DOJ over refunding player deposits. While Full Tilt have already begun the process of US Customer deposit returns, Absolute are still awaiting confirmation from their lawyers that they can go ahead.

The PokerStars players who were left in limbo when the Black Friday of the online poker world saw the three main poker sites taken down by a federal investigation into alleged illegal activity, can now breathe a sigh of relief at getting their deposits back. Unfortunately, many of those players will seek out new places to play poker online. They will find plenty of them to choose from and end up putting the money they just got back into accounts set up with less stable and trusted sites as PokerStars.

All this time, the Federal Government has rejected calls for the legalization of online poker in the United States, but at what cost? Taking down the most prominent and trustworthy poker sites will not protect anyone. Those poker players who enjoy playing online will still play online poker one way or another.

History appears to have taught politicians nothing. They are making the same mistakes now over gambling as their predecessors did in the 1930s when they prohibited alcohol. All they accomplished back them was to drive drinkers underground and place them in danger form organized criminals and unregulated, unsafe moonshine liquor. Today the product may be different but the result is the same.