Following their indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice, Full Tilt, PokerStars, and UB all stopped cash play for their American customers. The owners and operators of Absolute Poker were also named as defendants by the FBI, but kept their site open and active as normal for a couple of days.
Absolute has now joined their compatriots in officially barring U.S. players from all real money games. Users logging in to the Absolute Poker client are greeted with the following announcement:
As with all the affected sites, the FBI has seized their U.S. facing domain name. In this case AbsolutePoker.com. As the message notes, their website can still be accessed as normal from AbsolutePoker.eu.
The missive also indicates that players outside the States should be able to access the client and play as normal. However, from here in the UK, the Absolute Poker client failed to connect when I tried to open it and attempting to download a new version from AbsolutePoker.eu led only to a broken link.
The much maligned site occupies the CEREUS network alongside UB. Both sites were implicated in a superuser conspiracy scandal that severely tarnished their reputation.
Scott Tom, founder of Absolute Poker is remembered by many as a key player in that ordeal. He is one of the two Absolute staff indicted by the DoJ, alongside former Director of Payments and Risk Management, Brent Beckley – another figure accused by forum investigators at the time of the cheating scandal.