Online Poker Could Have a U.S. Renaissance

[CommanderFrank]

In a deal worth approximately $4.9 Billion, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have been sold to Canada’s Amaya Gaming Group, which now makes Amaya the largest online gambling company in the world.

Amaya believes the Transaction will expedite the entry of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker into regulated markets in which Amaya already holds a footprint, particularly the U.S.A.

 

[poconopc]

I thought those two were nearly run out of business , esp the scam artist players on one of them.

 

[viscountalpha]

Online gambling seems like it would be far too easy to cheat or bot. It's just a way to lose money and the fact that you lose out on the real reason to play poker with friends. It's to bs and do sweet FA.

 

[song414]

I thought those two were nearly run out of business , esp the scam artist players on one of them.

Quite the opposite. Those so called "scam artists" had poor money management and did not follow regulated practices of segregating player funds and as a result the poker site in question (full tilt) went under and pokerstars bought them out and repaid the players. Pokerstars was run competently and paid all players back. I know this because I had large sums on both sites and was made whole earlier this year thanks to pokerstars.

Online gambling seems like it would be far too easy to cheat or bot. It's just a way to lose money and the fact that you lose out on the real reason to play poker with friends. It's to bs and do sweet FA.

These sites spend a lot of resources to circumvent cheaters and bots. I could care less about bots right now as they can only play microstakes and break even with the rake and thats a well optimized bot. Cheating is what I am more concerned about and a well-run site like pokerstars has a considerably small chance of having something like that happen.

 

[McFry]

What's really important about this is that Pokerstars was struggling to get a license to operate in the USA, and Amaya already has one. Aside from Pokerstars not being on the DOJ's good side after having circumvented the UIGEA for so long with all those fake intermediary bank transfers, there was so much cronyism and lobbying against them it was just going to be a losing battle forever. Amaya kinda ducked and weaved and just swooped in to save the day here having not been on anybody's radar as a potential candidate to enter the US market. This should be pretty interesting going forward as Vegas suddenly shifts their focus to tell the gov't how evil this new company also is.