Legal US Poker Sites

Let’s take a look at the major moments of legal history in the evolution of the world of online poker in the United States.

Online gambling is nearly as old as the internet itself, and many of today’s leading players played an early form of online poker of very early computer networks in the late 1980s, including Chris Ferguson. When the World Wide Web was born in the early 1990s, online sports betting appeared almost immediately to take advantage of the legal gray area of gambling with real money over a computer network. Shortly thereafter, online casinos began popping up during the mid 1990s, and the first poker channels appeared on IRC in the years to come, which was followed by the first online poker rooms at Planet Poker. Famous poker player and writer Mike Caro was the spokesman for Planet Poker, and the first official hand of a cash game was dealt online on January 1, 1998.

Online poker is under the legal microscope and many online poker sites do not accept American players. However, we have compiled a list of legal US poker sites that are open to the American public. All of the poker rooms you see below accept real money bets from all US players.

Click To Join!	Poker Room	Bonus Code	Bonus Description
	Full Tilt Poker	MAXBONUS600	100% Initial Deposit Up to $600, Plus $800 in monthly tournaments!
	PokerStars	STARS600	100% Initial Deposit Up to $600, Plus $1,000 in monthly tournaments!
	UB	FTR111	111% Initial Deposit Up to $1100
	Players Only Poker	FTRPOPPK	100% Initial Deposit Up to $1000, Plus Additional 10% Immediate Deposit Bonus
	Absolute Poker	FTRAP	150% up to $500
	Bodog Poker	Automatic	110% Initial Deposit Bonus up to $1100, 10% can be immediately wagered, Entry to the FTR333
	Sportsbook Poker	FTR	100% Initial Deposit Up to $1000, Plus Additional 10% Immediate Deposit Bonus
	DoylesRoom	FTR110B	110% Initial Deposit Up to $660

Players and poker room areas knew that they were entering into a murky area of the law but plowed ahead. Due to the fact that online a small number of poker players were playing for real cash at this time, the only serious legal issues arose when small poker sites disappeared with players money. The largest such problem occurred in 2000 when Poker Spot claimed they were unable to process credit card transactions and stopped processing payouts to their players. Due to the legal gray area over online poker, player’s in the United States realized that they had no legal recourse in the matter and simply had to accept their losses. Thanks to the creation of various third part payment processing firms, there has never been a similar problem since Poker Spot where players lost their funds in this manner.

The evolution of poker continued while law makers in the United States seemed hesitant to address the legal implications of the growing trend of playing poker for real money online. Party Poker and PokerStars were the first mega-poker servers to appear in 2001, and the gaming industry earned some $82 million dollars that year in online poker revenue. In 2002, the United States Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that found the Federal Wire Act clearly outlawed online sports betting, but this act did not apply to other forms of gambling, including online poker. In March 2003, an assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice spoke before the Senate Banking Committee regarding the concerns the DOJ had of the relationship between online gambling and money laundering.

Later that year, amateur poker player rode a $40 buy-in a satellite game at PokerStars to make it to the final table of the main event of the World Series of Poker, and the golden era of online poker truly begun.

By 2005, the revenue from online poker rose to $2.4 billion dollars, and law makers could no longer ignore the elephant in the room. In order to distance themselves from any legal issues, Google and Yahoo severed all ties with online poker advertising in 2004, followed by credit card companies, American banks and PayPal. In February 2005, a federal district court dismissed a lawsuit from the gambling portal site Casino City claiming that promoting online poker was protected by the First Amendment on the grounds that they were promoting an illegal activity. Law makers in North Dakota immediately reacted by passing a bill in the house to legalize regulated online poker in the state, but the state senate refused to pass the bill in recognition that the federal court had indicated online gambling violated federal law, a decision that was influenced by a letter from the DOJ to the state senate on the matter.

Definitive legislation pertaining to online poker was officially signed into law by George W. Bush on October 13, 2006 as a provision of the Safe Port Act known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA. The UIGEA made it clearly illegal for players or site operators to “place, receive or transmit a bet or wage” over the internet in any state where gambling is prohibited by law. Within months, most of the major publicly traded online poker rooms shut down operations in the United States, while others began to only offer poker rooms based on play money to American poker online players. A handful of sites set up operations in countries without extradition treaties with the United States and continue to allow players to play online poker for real money from the United States. A number organizations have been founded to overturn the UIGEA, most notably the Poker Players Alliance.

In 2010, a couple of bills are in the works to repeal the UIGEA, and provide clear legalization and regulation of online poker in the US. Industry experts believe that online poker will be clearly legal by the end of 2010.