Home / Poker News April 2011 / PlayersOnly Poker and Sportsbook.com to leave US market?
PlayersOnly Poker and Sportsbook.com to leave US market?
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2011-04-27 04:40
Rumors have it - and mind you: this is not verified news – that after three of the biggest online poker operations: Full Tilt Poker,
PokerStars and Absolute Poker have been ejected from the US market, several other companies, including PlayersOnly Poker and sportsbook.com are now considering a strategic withdrawal too, in order to avoid the wrath of US law. Again: this is by no means verified news, but according to certain sources, the two sites, which generate more than 7 times the traffic that the entire Merge Network does, will stop accepting new player registrations originating from the US on May 1st. What this also means is that US players who already have real money accounts at the sites will be allowed to continue playing, but no new registrations will be accepted.
The Merge Network, one of the few entities unaffected by the Black Friday events, does not currently have any plans of withdrawing from the US. This may come as news to many of our readers, but the combined player bases of
PlayersOnly Poker and Sportsbook.com formed the third largest congregation of US based online poker players after PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.
The projected withdrawal would leave the Merge Network (spearheaded by Carbon Poker) and
Bodog Poker as the main destinations for US poker players.
The decision on the part of PlayersOnly Poker and Sportsbook.com comes after the two sites were allegedly flooded with new player sign-ups and deposits to the point of overwhelming their payment-handling systems. The sudden unexpected exposure was probably also quite unwanted at a time when online poker in the US faces a more dire period than ever before.
The fact that US players will be allowed to play after the May 1 deadline will probably prompt another flurry of new sign-ups at the two sites as more and more US-based players will rush to secure a spot to play at in the future.
