Hi,
There appears to be a variety of misunderstandings of our policies in regards to activity from the USA, so let us share some additional information that might be helpful here.
As players may be aware, on April 19, 2011, PokerStars agreed with the US Department of Justice to not allow players located in the United States to play online poker for real money. As part of that agreement, the DOJ appointed a Monitor to ensure that we did this. As a result of this agreement, PokerStars introduced a whole range of complementary measures to prevent players from accessing our services from the United States – and to take action against players who tried to circumvent those restrictions.
While that monitoring has concluded, PokerStars still enforces those restrictions very firmly. Those restrictions and policies, which were developed and implemented in conjunction with the Monitor appointed by the US Department of Justice, remain in place today – every single one of those restrictions remain in effect, and, in fact, we’ve expanded upon them. The same procedures and policies have also been implemented at Full Tilt.
In addition, earlier this year, we increased the severity of our punishments because it no longer credible for the vast majority of players to claim that they didn’t know that they can’t play from the US. Our previous policy was, by default, to only confiscate net winnings (except when we were convinced the player was malicious, in which case we would confiscate their whole balance). Over recent months, by default, we have been confiscating the whole balance (except when we are convinced that the player was non-malicious and had no knowledge of this restrictions, in which case we only confiscate net winnings). We made this decision earlier this year, and it this decision has no relationship to any other recent announcements.
These confiscations are still subject to our ordinary processes to ensure that this happens in a fair manner, and allows players the right to appeal any such decisions. A key part of this process, of course, is to ensure that such decisions are based upon actual facts and evidence, not merely hearsay on the internet.
If players have any evidence of people breaking our rules, then we would encourage them to send it to us so that we can investigate appropriately.
Sincerely,
Michael Josem
PokerStars Communications Team