After Failed Legislation, What is Next for Online Poker?

With the surprise of the online poker industry over the possibility of legalized poker in the United States over, I thought I would take a look at where legislative efforts will go from here, and what online poker players can expect going forward.

Many people are under the assumption that online poker will just return to the status quo –which it never actually left—and this is true to a certain extent. The real problem is that the online poker industry in the US was moving in the wrong direction prior to Harry Reid’s attempts at regulating the industry, so much so that groups like the PPA and even online poker sites were willing to face a 15-month blackout period in order to get the legislation passed.

The downfall of online poker began in 2006 with the passage of UIGEA legislation, and contrary to what you may think the poker community in the US could have dealt with Party Poker, the Cryptologic Network, and other poker sites leaving the market; what really started the descent into darkness was the loss of Neteller.

Neteller made it easy for players to shuffle funds between their bank accounts and the online poker sites, and without Neteller the waiting period for a withdrawal went from hours to days, and even weeks! This was the first blow to the industry, as the instant gratification of winning at the tables disappeared, and with it went a lot of the casual players: AKA the fish.

If 2006 was the descent, then June 2010 –when UIGEA was officially enacted—was the coup de grace, as the Department of Justice started tightening the noose around the necks of other payment processors servicing the US online gaming market. Almost weekly we here of a payment processor being shut-down, prosecuted, or both; and more and more online poker players are seeing checks bounce, withdrawal times grow longer, and deposit and withdrawal options dwindle.

If the status quo is what we have to look forward this is not a good sign for online poker players in the US. It was already difficult to deposit and withdraw from online poker rooms, but if it continues there will only be two groups of players that will continue to bother –top-notch pros who can wait weeks for withdrawals or have other ‘foreign’ options to use, and absolute degenerates which is a very small segment of the online poker population. Even small stakes winners will likely throw their hands up in frustration.