Online Gambling

Real money online poker players that reside in the United States have fewer options for their online poker play since Black Friday of April 2011. As I am sure you are aware, many online poker rooms have left the United States market in light of the FBI’s actions on that day.

DoylesRoom.ag has decided to keeps its online poker room open to US players. They are even allowing new accounts to residents of the United States (except WA and MD residents). They have recently moved to the Yatahay Online Poker Network, joining a half dozen or so other online poker rooms on the network. In addition, they are offering a LIMITED TIME initial deposit bonus of 100% when you deposit between $50 and $1000.

Doyle’s Room deals Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, and 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo tournaments (both normal and turbo) and cash games in fixed limit (FL), pot limit (PL) and no limit (NL) formats. You can easily find your favorite game using the filters provided in the poker lobby.

The easiest way to make a deposit at Doyle’s Room is with your Visa card. Otherwise, you can deposit via a Bank Wire or a Person-to-Person transfer; however, these deposit options are obviously less convenient than depositing via your Visa credit card. There is a $50 minimum deposit — this is perfectly reasonable, in my opinion.

Your best withdraw option is probably a bank draft / check. Checks can be requested for between $25 and $2500 once per week and have no fee! You can also choose debit cards as your withdrawal method, but there is a $5 monthly fee, plus a load fee of $2 each time that you load the card. Debit cards usually also have a per-transaction fee when you use the debit card to make a purchase.

Your online poker options are limited if you live in the United States. Doyle’s Room is a solid online poker room that you should consider for your online poker play.

There a few choices these days for US-based real-money online poker players. There are less than a handful of online poker networks that are still accepting new player accounts from US citizens.

• Bodog Poker – 5-star rating due to continued, uninterrupted support for US players and provider of an all-in-one online gambling experience
• Cake Poker Network
• Everleaf Poker Network / Poker4Ever
• Yatahay / Doyle’s Room – Bars MD and WA residents

Sorry — this deal has expired. Check out the deals at Intertops, which is open to all players.

Bodog Poker offers fantastic value to players of all types. From sign up to cashout, experience the VIP treatment, Bodog style!

Sign Up with Bodog for a Huge Poker Bonus

Bodog Poker now has the best sign-up poker bonus in its history at 110%! Make any deposit and you’ll immediately receive an up front cash bonus of 10%. Then hit the tables and for every 10 poker points you earn you’ll receive an additional $1 bonus up to 100% match of your first deposit (up to a maximum of $500). You earn poker points in three different ways:

1. Rake: You earn up to 1 poker point per raked pot.
2. Tournament Fees: You earn 3 poker points per dollar in tournament fees.
3. Time Spent Player: You even earn an additional 1 poker point per hour of play!

Plus, based on thousands of hours of user interaction and feedback Bodog Poker has recently released a slick, new version of their poker software. Check it out today while taking advantage of this limited time offer.

Find out more about Bodog Poker’s 110% signup bonus.

The FBI has shut down Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, UltimateBet, and Absolute Poker. Visitors are shown a message saying, “This domain name has been seized by the F.B.I. pursuant to an Arrest Warrant.”. (Read the full article at the LA Times.)

Until all of this gets sorted out, here is a list of  the top 5 online poker sites that accept US players. (In case you are interested, here is the full list of all online poker sites that accept US players.)

Bodog Poker: 110% bonus
Create an account and download Bodog Poker for free with our Getting Started Guide. Play free online poker on our play money tables or head straight to the real money tables and earn Bodog Poker Points.

Sports Interaction Poker: 110% bonus
Bonus code: signup110. You can play for free, or at our 24/7 cash games and enter any of the tournaments of your choice. All you have to do is download, register, and play.

Poker4Ever: 100% bonus
POKER4EVER.com is a fast-growing cardroom offering your favorite poker games: Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi, Omaha Hi/Lo, and 7 Card Stud. POKER4EVER.com also offers the ultimate tournament experience with its multi-table tournaments

BetUS Poker: 110% bonus
We have an amazing new first time deposit bonus for all our new players. We offer you 110% bonus up to a fantastic $1000. Simply make a deposit, in the poker room click rewards, deposit bonus and enter the code POKER1000.

Doyles Room Poker: 100% bonus

You won’t be able to find another poker room where you can participate in tournaments, ring games and heads up matches with Doyle Brunson — author of SUPER SYSTEM (the bible of poker), winner of 10 WSOP Bracelets and player in every single WSOP.

As I warned readers in December 2008, Grand Prive Casinos are blacklisted at The Online Casino Gambling Directory. In my opinion, Grand Prive Casinos are, quite simply, thieves. Be warned — you are taking wildly unnecessary risk with your money if you play at any of the following blacklisted Microgaming casinos / poker rooms: Bella Vegas, Fortune Junction, Jackpot Wheel, Jupiter Club, Lake Palace, Road House Reels, Casino Grand Bay, Grand Bay Poker.

There are plenty of other reputable Microgaming online casinos and reputable Microgaming poker rooms, including these 5-star-rated sites:

Quatro Casino
$4444 FREE + 100% bonus on initial deposits between $20 and $200!
No-download version available!
Quattro Casino has for years been synonym with virtually unlimited game choice, fantastic Welcome Bonus Offers, uncompromised safety and privacy measures and exceptional support.

Casino AUS
$1776 FREE + 100% bonus on initial deposits between $30 and $284!
No-download version available!
G’Day Mate! Welcome to Casino Aus. This Australian themed Casino is your number first stop for true gaming pleasure Down Under and is definitely the place to be for any Aussie gaming enthusiast!

River Nile
$1500 FREE + 200% bonus on initial deposits of $25!
The River Nile online casino offers an impressive 300+ casino games. From slots to blackjack to roulette, we got it all! And yes, that includes 13 progressives – there is definitely something in there that you’ll love – guaranteed!!

PokerTime
100% bonus on initial deposits between $20 and $200!
No-download version available!
If you’re a poker fan, then there’s no better place to wager your stake than at PokerTime. Whether you are a beginner or pro, you’ll thoroughly enjoy the wide selection of games that this action-packed poker room has to offer.

(Additional tags: blacklist, grand prive blacklist, blacklisted grand prive, grand blacklist.)

I’ve just finished a long-overdue update to the online poker freeroll schedule that lists over 200 online poker freerolls across a dozen or so online poker rooms. The online poker freerolls schedule page displays all online poker freerolls for the current day in an easily filterable list. In addition, there is a PDF version of a full week’s worth of online poker freerolls.

Check out the schedule and use it to plan your attack on the many online poker freerolls that are available.

Let me know when you take down a online poker freeroll tournament. And please — tell your friends about this online poker freerolls schedule. They’ll appreciate it!

I’ve combined the online poker freeroll schedule from several online poker sites. You can filter the schedule by day of week, time of day, and game, etc. There’s a freeroll running 24-7, and nearly all of them are available to US players.

I’ve been playing poker online for several years now. Based on my experiences, feedback from others, and news reports (both good and bad), here is my list of the 4 best online poker sites for US players.

1. Doyle’s Room – Free and easy credit card and e-wallet deposits, fast and free e-wallet withdrawals (express check withdrawals are $50), and their unique bounty tournaments set this poker room apart from the others. Doyle’s Room operates on the Cake Poker network, the 4th-largest poker network open to US players in terms of number of players. They also have a pretty good casino, too. Accepting players from 47 states (KY, WA, LA are barred), Doyle’s Room is a great choice for playing poker online. Current online poker promotion for new players: Get a 110% bonus up to $550.
2. Full Tilt – There is always a lot of action at Full Tilt, the 2nd-largest poker network in terms of number of players. E-checks are free for depositing and withdrawing, so that’s a real bankroll saver. Also, thinking back to when I first opened an account with Full Tilt, their initial deposit bonus was generous and straightforward to clear. Current online poker promotion for new players: Get a 100% bonus up to $600.
3. PokerStars – The granddaddy of them all, PokerStars is the largest poker room in the world — it’s about twice as big as Full Tilt. The PokerStars lobby is full-featured, yet still easy-to-use; the tabbed interface and filtering options allow you to customize its display of just the cash games, tourneys, and poker variants that you want to see. Freerolls abound at PokerStars. E-checks are free for depositing and withdrawing. Current online poker promotion for new players: Get a 100% bonus up to $600.
4. OddsMaker.com Poker – This is one of 70+ rooms in the growing Merge Network. While I suppose that one room on the network is as good as any other, OddsMaker.com also has a sportsbook, racebook, and casino, which is convenient if you like to bet sports, play table games, and win at some video poker. Their initial signup offer is simpler than it sounds: $10 rake = 800 VIP points = $10 free money released to real money account. Current online poker promotion for new players: Get a 100% bonus up to $1000 + 14 days of entries into a daily $500 freeroll.

As reported in yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal, the House Financial Services Committee voted 41-22 to approve legislation that would regulate many forms of online gambling, including poker and bingo, while specifically banning betting on major US sports leagues like the MLB, NFL, NBA, and others.

Other news articles point out that the legislation also would deny licenses to any online site that has allowed, or currently does allow, US players to gamble online. Looking ahead, this would appear to effect PokerStars, FullTilt, and other online poker rooms that have continued to serve US players despite the UIGEA of 2006.

Other key elements of the legislation include player loss limits, rigorous age verification systems and frequent testing thereof, and allowing states to opt out of this legislation and ban its citizens from online gambling.

And the legislation that was passed does not cover how the industry is to be taxed — that’s covered in a separate bill that hasn’t made it out of the House Ways and Means Committee.

It is unlikely that this legislation will be voted on before the current Congressional Session expires in September. The scheduling is simply too tight. If it is not voted on, the process will need to start again next session. Perhaps it will be attached to some other legislation, as was the UIGEA of 2006. Even so, if the legislation is approved, it still would need to be signed by Obama.

We are still years away from any comprehensive online gambling policy in the United States. Need proof? The UIGEA of 2006 took nearly 4 years before it actually went into effect this past June 1 — and there are still plenty of loopholes in that legislation that allow US players to fund and withdraw money from their online gambling accounts… or so I’ve heard.