The Ongame owned and powered Poker Room.com site is to close its
virtual doors to American players with effect from November 6 according
to an announcement this week. Industry observers have been expecting
the announcement as Ongame was acquired earlier this year by Austrian
public company Bwin, which has already announced its withdrawal from
the US market.
In a company statement, Poker Room says that in response to the Unlawful
Internet Gambling Act, it has decided to stop accepting new US player
accounts on October 25, and on November 6, it will no longer accept
bets from current US customers.
"We regret that the U.S. has taken this step to make it
virtually impossible to offer real money entertainment to U.S. customers.
It is doubtful that the U.S. authorities will achieve their stated
goals by introducing such legislation. We believe that a properly
monitored forward-looking regulation would be much more effective
than this general ban," the statement comments.
Entirely due to this new law, we are disappointed to announce the
following restrictions for all customers within the U.S.:
Depositing Restrictions
We have been working on a technical solution to restrict all customers
within the U.S. from depositing new funds at PokerRoom.com. This solution
will be implemented on October 25th.
Real Money Restrictions
We will have implemented the technical solution to restrict all customers
within the U.S. from accessing our real money games starting Monday,
November 6th. After that time you will still be able to login to PokerRoom.com,
enjoy all of our play money games and withdraw funds from your account
at your convenience.
Cash-Outs
Your funds will continue to be safe, secure and yours, and will be
transferred to you at your request. The option to cash-out will remain
available to you.
Unused Tournament Tickets
Valid tournament tickets are as good as cash and will be refunded
to your account once the U.S. restrictions are implemented on November
6th. It may take some days for all tickets to be processed into cash,
and only valid tickets (not expired) at the time of the U.S. restriction
will be refunded.
Player Points / Loyalty Points
Player points and loyalty points will be inaccessible to all U.S.
customers once the changes go live; but this does not mean that your
points will expire. Your hard earned points will be stored indefinitely,
in the event of real money play becoming available again. Until the
U.S. restrictions are in place on November 6th you are free to use
your points in our loyalty program.
Pending Bonuses
Pending bonus tasks will be void after the U.S. restrictions come
into effect on November 6th, as it will not be possible to collect
player points via our real money games. Until the Real Money restriction
is in place you can continue to collect points to clear bonuses in
your account."
The statement ends on a note of regret: "At PokerRoom.com,
we are of course very sorry for this development and we hope that
we get the chance to meet all our U.S. players again in real money
games, as we are aiming to offer these as soon as the legislation
allows us to. We will do our utmost to continuously keep you up to
date with future developments."
The statement is primarily intended to keep players informed and does
not deal with the business aspects such as the cost to the company
of the decision to block its many US players. Those numbers will surface
later in business communications.