Browse > Home / Poker News / Winning Poker Network Withdraws from US Regulated Markets

Winning Poker Network Withdraws from US Regulated Markets

May 18, 2014

With regulated online poker in its infancy in the US, unregulated sites must make the choice to stay in the market and compete with regulated sites and risk getting fined for it, or just withdraw their services from those states and stay out of it all together. The latter is exactly what Winning Poker Network (WPN) decided to do, announcing in an email sent out to active players in those states that effective immediately, they would be suspending real money play for Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware residents.

In the email, WPN cites the regulated sites as the reasoning for its abrupt departure from the market in these three states: “Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey have stepped up to allow their respective residents to play on licensed, local State poker sites. Accordingly, the Winning Poker Network has determined to decline offering services to residents seeking to play from those three States which have expressly legalized online poker, effective immediately.”

WPN is the third biggest network still serving online poker players in the US and houses America’s Cardroom, True Poker, Black Chip Poker, and other popular US-friendly sites.

Earlier this year, Merge Network, the second largest US serving network, announced it would no longer serve Delaware and New Jersey. However, the biggest US network, the Bodog/Bovada online poker network conglomerate, is still accepting players from states with regulations in place.

Some players have confirmed that they were contacted by customer support at affected poker rooms such as Black Chip Poker, and told that this would only affect new players and that existing players residing in these states would still be able to play once the site altered a small piece of info in the system—their location (e.g. from Nevada to California).

While these reports are deemed accurate, the email closed with the following statement: Players already accessing WPN who reside in those States will have access to their accounts to close out their balances. Real money play from residents in those states will no longer be permitted.

More details will undoubtedly arise once more players come forward with stories of a digital re-location by the sites, which just seems counterproductive and making more trouble for themselves in the future should the misrepresentation of player location come back to bite them.

Written by Bea · Filed Under Poker News 

Comments

Comments are closed.