Being a resident of the United States, it makes me cringe every time another major poker network or room takes their services away from US players; pretty soon there may not be a whole lot of places where US people can play online poker. And since the deal happened where Kentucky has seized 141 domain names, the process has only sped up.
The Microgaming Network is the latest poker entity to be spooked by the actions of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear and other government officials from the state. That’s because Microgaming has announced that it will be pulling its services from 13 different states and Washington D.C. The 13 states that will no longer be able to use Microgaming software include: Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Louisiana, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Nevada, and Washington.
In being from Ohio, I don’t have to worry about this mess – yet! It’s only a matter of time before other major poker networks start to fall in line with the ridiculous demands set forth by Kentucky; then more states will start to see their online poker freedoms revoked. The 13 previously mentioned states will already be barred from using the popular Doyle’s Room.
After the UIGEA, things seemed to get pretty quiet as far as the online gaming crackdown. Unfortuantely, those days seem to be over with the inception of Steve Beshear’s campaign to rid Kentucky of the right to play online poker. I just wonder how many more states will be affected in the future.
The mess was the forfeiture of the internet domain assets. As far as I understand, the rest of the online poker providers were issued the same ‘threat’
and have just not responded yet. Microgaming obviously had partial IP blocking already. Lets see what happens…