The latest on the potential reopening of live poker rooms; launch of new online platforms

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) meeting from August 5 yielded no new information on a couple of burning topics for Pennsylvania poker players. Those issues include the intended date for live poker rooms to reopen in Pennsylvania.

After a four-month shutdown, Rivers Casino Philadelphia reopened for business July 17, making it the last of Pennsylvania’s 12 major casinos to resume operations. While most of the casino gaming floor is back in the action, the Rivers Philadelphia poker room remains closed.

In mid-May, the PGCB issued guidelines for casinos to reopen. Conditions for state casinos to reopen included limiting capacity to 25 percent, requiring masks for all patrons, and enforcing social distancing.

An online poker bill for legal Internet poker introduced in April by PA Rep. Tina Pickett, the Chairman of the House Committee on Gaming Oversight, appeared to be gaining some headway in the gambling committee, but Pickett herself said that she did not expect the lawful real money poker websites bill to move forward before its session expired at the end of 2014. The latest on the potential reopening of live poker rooms; launch of new online platforms The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) meeting from August 5 yielded no new information on a couple of burning topics for Pennsylvania poker players. Those issues include the intended date for live poker rooms to reopen in Pennsylvania. That’s part of the reason why Pennsylvania online gamblers are out of luck for the World Series of Poker online events unless they travel to New Jersey or Nevada. That could soon be changing, however. Party Poker, WSOP.com and 888 have all made inroads recently in terms of opening up their doors in the state.

Online poker in PA Online poker in PA arrived in November 2019. Since then, PokerStars has been the lone operator in the state; however, it looks like it will get some competition from partypoker in the fall. Play Pennsylvania monitored poker traffic, which reached 3,616 seats filled on March 22.

The protocols laid out by the PGCB explicitly stated that live poker rooms can’t operate until further notice, however.

“Poker rooms are not authorized to operate due to players handling cards and chips. Poker room operations will be re-examined based upon changing CDC and PA DOH guidance,” stated the PGCB in the Casino Reopening Protocols.

Table games open, but poker remains closed

Other table games at Rivers Philadelphia went back in action when the casino reopened, but players saw a much different setup in the midst of the COVID-19 era. Blackjack tables can only seat three players maximum, for example.

Slots and table games all now operate with plexiglass in place, partitioning the players from the dealers, as well as each other. Similar plexiglass partitions are currently in use at many US live poker rooms that have reopened.

For now, however, players in Pennsylvania still await the return of live poker rooms. Pennsylvania isn’t the only state facing a poker shutdown. Casinos in New Jersey and Michigan have kept live poker rooms closed, while opening the rest of their casino floors.

“As conditions throughout the Commonwealth improve and the reopening of casinos is authorized, the PGCB desires to assure that re-openings occur in a manner which promote the safety of casino patrons and employees alike as well as assure an environment conducive to proper regulatory oversight,” said PGCB Executive Director Kevin O’Toole in a press release announcing the Casino Reopening Protocols.

Pa Online Poker Updates

Launch of partypoker PA, WSOP.com still TBA

The shutdown of live poker coincides with record-setting numbers for PokerStars PA, the lone legal online poker option in Pennsylvania. PokerStars PA set all-time revenue records for legal US poker rooms in April, and followed up with strong numbers in May and June.

Pennsylvania players will eventually enjoy access to at least two more online poker platforms. Both WSOP.com and partypoker are on their way to the Keystone State with Pennsylvania-only clients, which could launch as early as August or September.

PGCB Chief Enforcement Counsel Cyrus Pitre announced at a July 8 board meeting that partypoker PA was expected to be approved in the August 5 PGCB meeting. The August monthly board meeting came and went without that official announcement, however.

Pa Online Poker Bill Update

The audio-only version of the August 5 PGCB meeting can be accessed here.

Even with so much going on in the world, poker news keeps coming fast and furious. It helps that the World Series of Poker online edition is in full effect, offering all kinds of tales both ridiculous and sublime. But there have been some other developments in the poker world, online and offline, this past week that bear noting as well.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at all that went down.

Negreanu in the News

Poker fans have to be thankful for Daniel Negreanu for keeping us entertained these past few months. Most of the big names in the poker world have been out of the news cycle, which is what you would expect during this time. But Negreanu seems to be a lightning rod for attention.

This week has been a particularly newsworthy one for Negreanu. And, in both cases, what happened to him is actually relevant to most poker players.

First came his complaints on Wednesday that Bank of America was shutting down his account. While Bank of America didn’t give a specific reason in the verbiage that Negreanu tweeted out to his followers, you can guess that there was some sort of red flag that came up due to large sums of his money going to gambling.

Of course, the odd thing about this is that the sums that Negreanu is spending to get involved with the World Series of Poker are perfectly legal. But by the same token, Bank of America is completely within its eights to terminate any accounts that they see fit. It’s all right there in the documents that you sign when you open an account.

The lesson here is similar to the one learned the hard way by online casino players who don’t look at the funding options available to them when they sign up for a particular gambling website. It doesn’t seem to be a problem until it becomes one.

It’s doubtful that Negreanu will have a hard time finding a bank willing to accept his business going forward. But the incident does point to a disconnect between the way banks and poker players view the pastime.

Later on in the week, Negreanu suffered another headache when he was booted out of a hand in one of the WSOP events due to a computer glitch. Because everything that happens with him tends to go viral, a video of Negreanu’s explosive reaction to this made the rounds.

Of course, were any of us in the same seat, we likely would have had the same reaction. And it does highlight a bit of an issue that can crop up at any time in online play.

Even as everyone is quick to praise online tournaments as an alternative to the real thing, the chance of some sort of malfunction is a shadow hanging over the proceedings. We can only hope that an ill-timed breakdown doesn’t mar one of these events if it happens on a crucial, tournament-deciding hand.

Pennsylvania Poker Beefs Up

Pennsylvania is a somewhat underrated state when it comes to the gambling world. In fact, it was one of the first states to take the leap into casino gambling that had previously only been the dominion of Nevada and New Jersey for decades. On top of that, the success of Pennsylvania’s casinos is one of the main reasons to which experts point when they try to elucidate the decline of Atlantic City.

The odd thing about it is that all this has occurred in a state which has been generally slow to get gambling matters squared away on the regulatory front. That’s part of the reason why Pennsylvania online gamblers are out of luck for the World Series of Poker online events unless they travel to New Jersey or Nevada.

That could soon be changing, however. Party Poker, WSOP.com and 888 have all made inroads recently in terms of opening up their doors in the state. They would join PokerStars, which is the entrenched poker entity in the Keystone State.

With news coming out this week from several of the above organizations that soft launches could be coming up in the months to come, it seems a matter of time before there will be much more competition for the poker player’s action in the state real soon. More competition is always good for the player, since it means that you can pick and choose your game instead of being forced into one.

It also means, if the World Series of Poker continues to have an online presence next year, Pennsylvania could be one of the hubs of that activity. Casinos within the state could also become more of a destination, assuming we can get back to the point where crowds of people can gather without worry.

The Big, Big Blind

Online Poker In Pa Update

Pro poker players are usually the types who know how to deal with the loss of their buy-in money. Some Australian poker players got way more than they bargained for this past week, however, in terms of their losses.

Pa Online Poker Gambling Update

It seems that Victoria, one of the states in Australia, instituted a crackdown on those violating any lockdown regulations. Caught within this sweeping takedown was a poker game inside a home that included 13 players. Each of these players were fined $1,652 in Australian dollars, which comes to about $1,150 USD.

Obviously, no such fines are being handed out in the United States. But it is still a good idea to practice common sense when it comes to large social gatherings nonetheless. These folks didn’t and paid the price.

Pa Online Poker Update

One wonders if the pot was big enough the ultimate winner of that home game was able to offset their losses. As for the also-rans, well, they dealt with a serious double whammy—what they lost at the table and what they lost to the law.