Most people know that the online poker boom started many years ago when an online poker player won millions of dollars in the World Series of Poker, all from a cheap satellite tournament at Pokerstars. Online poker has years of growth in the USA but it has also had some major setbacks.
www.onlinepokerrealmoney.co is predicting that 2013 will be the start of the next big online poker boom in America and around the world. OnlinePokerRealMoney.co is a leading guide on real money poker. They claim that the next big poker boom started when Ultimate Poker because the first legal US poker site online. I will be exploring this and more in this post.
OnlinePokerRealMoney.co reports that Ultimate Poker is an Internet poker site based out of Nevada and they dealt the first ever legal hand of real money online poker on April 30th, 2013. To most industry insiders the grand opening of Ultimate Poker had more of a symbolic meaning than anything else. If Ultimate Poker was open to all Americans it would certainly be a huge deal but they are only open to Nevadans at the moment.
OnlinePokerRealMoney.co does point out that Ultimate Poker is paving the way for other US poker sites. Naturally, being the first was bound to be the hardest but pro-online poker proponents in other states will use Nevada as a template for their own poker rooms. OPRM suggests that Ultimate Poker is simply the first stepping stone on the path to full nation-wide legalization and regulation of online poker in the USA.
Ultimate Poker has had some major setbacks though. The platform has been somewhat buggy and there have been several instances of the same card being dealt twice in a hand. I joked that Ultimate Poker should setup a Suited Pair Jackpot of some kind. As America’s first legal real money poker web site they have been under a lot of scrutiny and there is a lot of pressure for them to succeed.
I suspect that opponents of online poker in the USA will cite Ultimate Poker’s failings as a reason to keep the ban in place. They will say that it just isn’t fair or safe, while probably pointing to the software glitches. It is certainly unfortunate that a newer start-up like Ultimate Poker is the one setting the bar. A powerhouse like Pokerstars could have done a much better job for several reasons:
- Their software has dealt over 100 billion hands of online poker. It has faced a trial by fire for years and has been proven to be flawless and perfectly safe.
- Their anti-cheating technologies are the most advanced in the world. Their specialized software can analyze and spot tens of millions of hands per day. It probably cost more than the entire Ultimate Poker development budget. Plus, Pokerstars has teams of professional online poker security experts to review players flagged by the anti-collusion software.
Pokerstars would not have given critics any ammo to use in their arguments against real money online poker in the USA. OnlinePokerRealMoney.co points out that problems like these are common at new poker companies using new software. I suppose we can give Ultimate Poker a chance to work the kinks out.