Absolute Poker Still Accepting Some U.S. Players
Thursday, May 19th, 2011When the Department of Justice launched their raid on internet poker, part of their goal was to shut down the site’s provision for American players. To that end, they seized the domain names of PokerStars, Full Tilt, Absolute and UB. PS and FT have both seen their .com addresses returned as part of a deal to ensure that U.S. players are refunded.
Blanca Games, parent company of Absolute and UB, recently announced a similar deal, although that did not include a provision to unlock their domain names. As part of the treaty, Absolute made a very clear statement about ending their service to U.S. players.
Their May 4th press release read: “Absolute Poker agrees that for the duration of the agreement, it will not allow for, facilitate, or provide the ability for players located in the United States to engage in playing poker for “real money” or any other thing of value.” This quote has been widely circulated on news and poker forum sites.
However, a report from traffic monitoring site PokerScout seems to indicate that some Americans are still slipping through the net. Their data shows that players from a number of different states have been playing for…