PKR, PokerStrategy: Tilt, Stars will operate in regulated US market

EUROPEAN OPERATORS SHOULD be prepared to compete in a regulated US poker market against sites that continued to take US players in defiance of the US egaming ban such as Full Tilt and PokerStars, the bosses of PKR and PokerStrategy.com have both predicted.

The chief executives of the two companies were answering questions from the floor on the panel of the ‘Any Questions?’ final session of eGaming Review‘s EGR Live conference and exhibition in London last week.

Dominik Kofert (pictured), chief executive of non-US poker affiliate and community PokerStrategy.com, said: “The shareholders and executives of Full Tilt Poker continue to live openly in the US, which does not align with widespread predictions within the industry that action will be taken against US-facing operators. There has been a freeze on their payment channels, yes, but a surprising lack of action against the US-facing sites themselves. The rest of the poker industry should not be confident any action will be taken.”

PKR chief executive Malcolm Graham agreed that European operators could not be expected to be “rewarded for their virtue” by complying with restrictions on taking US players under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) 2006.

Graham said: “I agree [with Kofert]. If the US opens, the operators which stayed out of the market cannot be confident that PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker will be censured, and it is also not clear that those sites will be precluded from operating if the US opens. They will probably be asked to pay a fine, and be allowed to operate in the US. And as long as the playing field is level, PKR would be happy to go in and compete with them in that market.”

For more from Dominik Kofert, read today’s blog post: The Real Reason for Poker Decline.