Ask Me Anything - spoonitnow

When do you think online poker will be regulated in California? What about the rest of the US?

Originally Posted by Eric

When do you think online poker will be regulated in California? What about the rest of the US?

I'm pretty pessimistic about these things, and even I was expecting 2014 to be the year for online poker (and other forms of gambling) in California after New Jersey really broke out and took the lead. As far as California goes specifically, the most recent attempt AB 9 is apparently going to make it a massive pain in the ass for players to get registered. Instead of just being able to sign up from their computer, they actually have to go to a business front to register their account. I believe the intent is to help provide protection against opponents who have issues over underage gambling, etc., but it would be a major obstacle to getting games going.

In the US right now, one of the major problems for online poker is that the people making these laws and even many groups running the games lack a sufficient understanding of how poker ecosystems work. In my opinion, the best thing that's happened for regulated US online poker so far is Delaware and Nevada making an agreement that allows them to share player pools. Ultimate Poker shutting down was a major setback, but the problems that caused them to be unprofitable were all about the player pool and the poker player ecosystem. Intrastate poker would provide the mechanism to fix that.

In short, 50 states running 50 different player pools will never work because the individual player pools are entirely too small.

Because you need a certain number of active players to get momentum going, I think it will take just as long for the first 10 states (give or take depending on which states they are) to come together for intrastate poker as it will take for the final 40 to come onboard.

I honestly don't think we're going to see regulated poker on a large scale (eg: in 25+ states) for several years to come because the first few states to enter are going to have to endure breaking even or losses for a few years before other states hop on. With that having been said, I wouldn't be surprised if another option came in to replace the Rational Group (PokerStars/FTP) as one of the top sites. Bovada isn't doing a bad job, but their marketing sucks lately.