There is already one HUGE winner at the WSOP
 

POKERSTARS. The guys and girls at Pokerstars central must be dancing in the aisles. They have 4 players at the final table with the two chip leaders. This is a bigger story than last year's rise of Moneymaker, a Pokerstars player.

However, it shouldn't be that surprising because so many good/great players play online now and even pros try to qualify in advance of coming to LV via the internet. Why shouldn't they?

Re: There is already one HUGE winner at the WSOP
 

Hopefully Pokerstars will start advertising on TV after this (especially if fossilman wins) to attract new players. This would be a great advertising campaign to go off of.

Re: There is already one HUGE winner at the WSOP
 

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Hopefully Pokerstars will start advertising on TV after this (especially if fossilman wins) to attract new players. This would be a great advertising campaign to go off of.

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The lack of TV advertising lately has been because of US Dept. of Justice pressure on broadcasters about advertising "illegal" internet gambling. PartyPoker.com just started advertising again by setting up a separate subsidiary called partypoker.net, which offers poker lessons and no money games (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). By coincidence, the .net site uses the same software download as the .com site. I'm sure we haven't heard the last from Stars or Party. I'd bet there is going to be a lot of ads about poker schools and such on the ESPN broadcasts.

Re: There is already one HUGE winner at the WSOP
 

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Hopefully Pokerstars will start advertising on TV after this (especially if fossilman wins) to attract new players. This would be a great advertising campaign to go off of.

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Unfortunately the U.S. Justice Department has told TV stations that there may be criminal liability for advertising "illegal" online gambling. That is why they edited one of the recent WPT tournaments sponsored by PokerStars so that the logo was not visibile on the table and you no longer see PartyPoker commercials during the games.

Re: There is already one HUGE winner at the WSOP
 

The WB 11 in New York, a broadcast WB affiliate broadcasts Party Poker ads during Mets games quite frequently. I think they are for partypoker.com and for games, I did not see anything about lessons or Partypoker.net.

Re: Gotta love the US Dept of Justice
 

Rather than just legalize and license it which they should do (all of the big sites would gladly pay a very nice license fee!), they plod along in murky waters instead of getting off their ass and making some concrete legislation. The Wire Act (exact name?) was written so long ago and really was aimed at the mob using phone lines to take sports bets. It has little to no application to current betting climates, internet, cable, and so on. So our government in their infinite wisdom decides to put the old 800 pound gorilla lean on the advertisers. What an absolute joke! There is virtually no shot that the government would prove their case but how many media outlets really want to take that shot. If someone did, we could at least get some sort of legal precident in motion. And at least we would know one way or the other what is legal or not legal, regardless of how dumb the ruling may be. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Re: There is already one HUGE winner at the WSOP
 

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The lack of TV advertising lately has been because of US Dept. of Justice pressure on broadcasters about advertising "illegal" internet gambling. PartyPoker.com just started advertising again by setting up a separate subsidiary called partypoker.net, which offers poker lessons and no money games (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). By coincidence, the .net site uses the same software download as the .com site. I'm sure we haven't heard the last from Stars or Party. I'd bet there is going to be a lot of ads about poker schools and such on the ESPN broadcasts.

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I also noticed that my last Ultimate Bet cashout came from CardPlayer Poker Room.

By the way, will this mean that Poker Stars limit games will become more profitable? I can't seem to ever find a decent limit game there.

It isn\'t just the DOJ
 

In addition to the efforts of the Feds the New York Attorney General has pressured the banks to quit allowing credit card use for off-shore gambling sites including poker sites. He threatened prosecution. That is why you have to use a third party provider to send money to a site.

Ragnar

Re: The gov\'t legislating morality
 

Yes nothing like the state trying to legislate morality. Isn't it wonderful? The same states that run lotteries but they don't want you to use a credit card to send some money offshore. Ughh, I could have a Dennis Miller rant that would last 6 hours on the topic, but I will stop now.

Re: There is already one HUGE winner at the WSOP
 

I also saw ads for PokerStars on GSN, during the World Series of Blackjack. Can't quite recall, but I'm pretty sure Moneymaker was featured in that ad.