What is “Black Friday” for Online Gambling in the US?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 by admin

Land based casinos in the United States have seen a big spike in visitors since last week’s “Black Friday” crackdown on top online poker rooms Full Tilt and Pokerstars. Most observers feel that this was done by the U.S. government to level the playing field for when individual states start launching their own online gambling sites. Millions of players are now without a place to play poker online, and there are millions of dollars being withdrawn by the sites. The U.S. government reached an agreement with the online poker sites to allow players to withdraw all of their money.

Neither Full Tilt nor Pokerstars offered poker players casino games and their actions were clearly designed to send a message. To be clear, online gambling is absolutely legal for most people in the United States – it’s just that certain financial transactions by banks have been blocked. Also, Antigua has twice won in international courts that offering gambling services online to Americans is fully legal. The U.S. has chosen to ignore the ruling and are still trying to figure out what their next steps should be.