No More Fast Cash Poker in the US?
April 19, 2011
I know that I haven’t been updating as often as I should; I haven’t made a post since before Christmas. But that was because of external factors that couldn’t be avoided. However, I feel like I need to freshen things up here since four of the largest poker sites had the hammer come down on them by the United States Government.
By now I’m sure that you have heard that Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet had their domains seized by the Feds and charges were levied against several of the executives of these online poker sites. Since then, Full Tilt and PokerStars will not allow players from the U.S. to play at any of their poker tables. Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet will not allow deposits or withdrawals from America players; however they will allow those with a balance in their account to play the “real money” games.
You might be asking yourself, “Is there any places left to go to play online poker?” The answer is Yes as I will explain below. The other question you may ask is “What’s to stop the government from shutting those sites down as well?” And I will try to clarify that issue as well.
Where to Play Online Poker
I don’t believe that you will see a lot of the casual online poker players come back for a little while after “Black Friday”. But some people are bound to be curious and still want to play. It is just like smoking pot – Illegal or not, I need my fix!
One of the places that I have been playing at for a while is Bovada Poker, which was not affected by the decision levied against the online poker giants. Take a look at this previous post about Bovada’s Poker bonus.
Normally, I would see about 300 to 500 players online at any one time. This made them one of the smallest poker rooms before and kept them under the radar. Currently, that number has started to rise as refugees from PokerStars and Full Tilt start to find other places to play. I have seen the number of players jump to an average of 700 to 1000 poker players online.
Another popular poker site that is still allowing US players is Carbon Poker. I briefly played at that site a year ago when I did this review of Carbon Poker. You will find that the number of poker players on this site is comparable to Bovada. One thing I do like about Carbon Poker is that there are several different side games that you can bet on while you wait for the next hand to be dealt.
The final place I would suggest give a try is Doyle’s Room, which recently changed poker networks before all of this went down. Before the software change, I did not particularly like Doyle’s Room; but since the change there have been many improvements overall. You can take a look this Doyle’s Room review here.
PlayersOnly Poker
PlayersOnly is another website that is similar to Bovada. They offer more than just poker, including a casino and sportsbook. The poker software is hosted by PlayAces, which is a poker network that includes several other sites like PlayersOnly. Please visit Players Only Poker Bonus if you would like more information about Players Only, their poker room and the bonus money that you can receive for playing at this site.
