April 15 – Online Poker Will Never Be the Same

There’s little doubt that the events of April 15 2011, known henceforth as “Black Friday” in poker circles, have forever altered the online poker industry. Quite frankly, a move such as this has long been in the books though. I’m not going to play it cool and tell you that I saw all this coming. I was just as surprised as the next guy when I saw the news. However, in hindsight I remember hearing (and even writing) about PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker being left out of a potential regulation process as operators who were in direct violation of US law, more precisely of the 2006 UIGEA’s provisions.

The allegations against the 11 online poker executives who were indicted were not about that fact that they facilitated online play, or better put: they weren’t mainly about that. Rather, they were accused of money laundering and bank fraud. They had allegedly set up phantom operations which dealt in pet food and golf balls, disguising their clients’ transactions through these operations. One doesn’t exactly have to be a legal mastermind to realize these are very serious and indeed quite brazen offenses.

What’s done is done though and there’s no use crying over spilt milk, so the question is where to now? Is there a silver lining in online poker’s Black Friday? Does this mean that online poker will lie down and die? Hardly. All this commotion is really about the re-arrangement and the re-mapping of the power-balance within the online poker industry. There are certain interest groups which have been looking to bring down these online poker giants for a while and these interests are currently having a field-day. Look for them to swing into action soon. I’m not a good a conspiracy theorists but it’s kind of easy to see a pattern emerge here. US companies could never really stomach the fact that they were beaten to the online poker pie by foreign interests. From their perspective, sites like Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars were pocketing revenue off their turf. It has been obvious for a while that they would not idly stand by and watch the monies of the American online poker players siphoned away into some offshore account. They want to stick their hands into the cookie-jar, and with Full Tilt and PokerStars out of the way, they’re on the verge of doing just that.

In the US there are close to 20 million online poker players, many of whom are professionals. These guys are not going to go away. As a matter of fact, they’re probably looking to alternatives (such as Bodog) as you’re reading this. These guys are also more than willing to play in a legal and regulated environment, paying taxes on their online poker revenues. This is where the above mentioned interest group comes into the picture. Your best clue to seeing them in action will be the hurried passing of federal-level online poker regulations and laws. Once that stage of the operation is out of the way, companies that will be conditioned by licenses clearly meant to give US operations an unbeatable edge over everyone else, will emerge and they will begin to assimilate the PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker player base, stepping in and claiming the laurels assisted by none other than good-old Uncle Sam. Equal opportunities for all comers? Come on, you don’t believe in such gibberish, do you?

The bottom line is though that massive online poker rooms will re-emerge and players may be better off than they ever were before. Affiliates may be better off too and the industry as a whole will certainly be better off. Uncle Sam will be pleased too, his hand elbow-deep in the online poker honey-jar. It will be the second coming of the online poker revolution, and this time, nothing will be able to stop it.
How will PokerStars and Full Tilt fare? If Party Poker’s woes are an indication: not too well. Party Poker shouldn’t celebrate either though. They may be allowed back into the US market, but something tells me they will never regain their industry-leading status…