However, in 2011, three major online poker sites, including Absolute Poker, Full Tilt Poker, and PokerStars were shut down. This momentous day in the history of online poker is now referred to as Black Friday which sent the online poker community into a downward spiral. Department shut down the three most trafficked online poker sites (Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, and the Cereus Network) charging them with both money laundering and fraud. 4 The US government contended. The Best Online Poker Sites for USA Players After many years of change, the setup for US based online poker fans has now become more settled. Banking restrictions mean that no poker sites are based in the United States, with the exception of smaller state-regulated rooms in Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware.

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The most high-profile attempt yet to draw the esports crowd into poker appears to be closing up shop.

According to a Poker Industry PRO report ($) earlier this week, PokerStars will be shutting down its Power Up game at some point in the near future.

While a link on the PokerStars website indicates the game is still live, a PokerStars rep confirmed the reporting to PRO.

“PokerStars has made the decision to remove [Power Up] game from the poker client,” they said.

Lifespan of Power Up

The first news of Power Up hit the wire in early 2017.

It was then deployed for real money in October of that year, setting it apart from other esports/hold'em hybrids. Games were essentially three-handed sit-n-gos, and stakes available were relatively low, topping out at $15 games, according to PRO.

Power Up was a Hearthstone-like game that had its base in traditional hold'em. Starting with that base, developers gave the players different powers and abilities like switching out hole cards, exposing opponent cards and peeking at future streets.

PokerNewsreviewed the game here.

After a little initial marketing and some support from PokerStars ambassadors, PokerStars didn't seem to push Power Up much, instead rolling out other novelty games like Split Hold'em and Showtime across 2018 and 2019.

Despite PRO quoting a PokerStars rep as saying Power Up had a 'strong and loyal following,' it doesn't seem the game ever caught on in a major way.

It wouldn't be alone in that sense among esports hybrids. Another title, HoldemX, became available in 2016 from Mediarex, the same company behind the Global Poker League. That game no longer appears to be available in the app stores, and its social media accounts have been dormant for more than three years.

Despite the apparent miss with Power Up, PRO did report that all of the money spent on development didn't turn out to be a waste for PokerStars, as the game engine built to power it is now behind all of PokerStars' online client.

More Games on Tap?

While users of Power Up may be unhappy to learn that it will soon be packed up and stored in PokerStars' attic somewhere, those looking for the next new game should soon be getting welcome news from the world's leading online poker operator.

Another report from PRO ($) indicated two new games are on the horizon: Tempest Hold'em and Deep Water Hold'em.

No details about the games leaked, other than that they'll be offered for 'a limited period.'

_{The Stars Group is a majority shareholder in iBus Media.}

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Gambling online just got significantly less convenient Friday when the U.S. Government shut down the three largest Internet gambling sites operating in the United States. Now it's time for a precedent-setting showdown, where courts will determine if this kind of gambling is legal or not.

Federal prosecutors accused the three founders of the gambling sites and eight others with illegal gambling, bank fraud and money laundering, according to the Financial Times [paywall].

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The government also filed a $3 billion civil suit to recover profits from the operations, the Financial Times reported. Full Tilt Poker (Update: which responded to the allegations here), PokerStars and Absolute Poker allegedly disguised billions of dollars of gambling payments as online store purchases of items such as golf balls, jewelry and flowers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

If you're in the U.S., when you point your browser to any of those three sites, you see a scary thing: The U.S. government has seized the domain names of the three sites, preventing gambling transactions and anything else:

The indictment says many of the banks that processed payments for these gambling companies were unaware they were handling gambling funds, which is against a 2006 law prohibiting gambling operations from accepting payments in the United States. In addition, it says the three companies found smaller, financially ailing banks to bribe, making investments in those banks that were willing to look the other way when processing gambling funds.

The problem gets a bit dicey when you realize that these three online organizations are not based in the U.S. For instance, PokerStars headquarters is on the Isle of Man, a self-governed British Crown Dependency located in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. One of our readers sent a picture of its headquarters to us today:

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Will the Isle of Man or other countries where these gambling organizations are based comply with U.S. extradition requests? So far, that's unknown.

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There's disagreement about whether online gambling is even a crime or not. Of course, the poker organizations don't think it should be. For example, former Senator Alphonse D'Amato of New York, who is now the chairman of a gambling group that calls itself the Poker Player's Alliance, told The New York Times, 'We are shocked at the action. Online poker is not a crime and should not be treated as such.'

Should the government be prosecuting online gambling sites? What do you think?

When Was Us Online Poker Shut Down 2017

Graphic courtesy Flickr/JohnSeb