IMPORTANT U.S.A NOTICE: Party Poker still does not accept US players for real money nor has a US license to operate in the US except in the state of New Jersey. The New Jersey-facing Party Poker USA launched in Nov. 25 and thus far is only available to players physically located in the state. If you want a similar type of site and are not in New Jersey we recommend IgnitionPoker.eu which accepts most US states and, in our opinion, is more legitimate than most offshore poker sites. See our homepage for more options but Ignition is one of the more attractive options and the software is at least somewhat similar to Party Poker.
Best PartyPoker Alternatives for US Online Poker Players
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Can I Play at PartyPoker in the USA?
PartyPoker, which is owned by the international GVC Holdings group, is en route to securing a Nevada and Delaware gaming license along with their NJ one. This will give them access to open their online poker room within those three state borders only. If a “State Compact” is signed within other US territories they will have access to let players from the three states to play with each other. This is known in the business as “shared liquidity” and is essential for offering good games. Only Delaware and Nevada have a compact at this time. Poker in NJ hasn’t been a particularly profitable venture for Party Poker so it would be easy to see them standing back and waiting for the big states like California and Florida to open up before they really start dumping money into their offers at the three states available. We will continue to update this page as anything comes out.
The Story of PartyPoker USA
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PartyPoker.com made their much-anticipated entry into the online poker market on August 1, 2001, with a fully operational online casino. At the time, poker players were already well familiar with PartyPoker due to hype that had been created on the popular poker message board Rec.Gambling.Poker (RGP). The hype was justified because PartyPoker was the first online site that offered a tournament that guaranteed $1 million to the winner and the only way to get a seat was to win a satellite online, which started at just $22 on PartyPoker.com. The tournament was called the PartyPoker Millions. At that time very few online poker sites were offering live events at all. The first three rounds of the tournament were played online, and the final 100 players battled it out live on a cruise ship traveling the Mexican Riviera.
It didn’t matter who you were at the time or what online poker site you had previously played at, if you were a poker player you were on PartyPoker in 2001, looking to ensure you were one of the hundred players that had a seat in the Party Million finals held Mar 16, 2002.
If you don’t believe us, the field of players winning their seat online included former World Champions Phil Hellmuth, Carlos Mortenson, Dan Harrington, Scotty Nguyen, Chris Ferguson, Tom McEvoy, Johnny Chan, and Huck Seed, as well as Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Men ‘The Master’ Nguyen, T.J. Cloutier, Barbara Enright, David Chiu, Barry Shulman, Eric Seidel and Layne Flack. The finals also included, of course, the event’s winner Kathy Liebert who pocketed the $1 million dollars in cash and made a name for herself, one she’d build upon in years to follow, by winning this event.
As a result of the hype surrounding Party Millions, and that it was offered the following year in an expanded format, near instantly upon their launch, Party Poker became the world’s largest online poker site with a multitude of different poker games including tournaments, Sit & Go’s and cash games.
History of PartyPoker USA
PartyPoker left the US market suddenly on October 2, 2006 due to Congress passing the Safe Port Act, which included unrelated anti-gambling language to the act, known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act or UIGEA for short. In doing so, Party Poker self-relinquished the title they held for four year as the largest online poker site, and eventually settled for a spot as the fourth largest global online poker site trailing leaders PokerStars.com, Full Tilt Poker and the iPoker network. Party Poker, however, has done everything correct to prepare to reenter the US market, starting with their decision to exit before UIGEA was signed into law. In fact, it would appear from an outsider’s perspective that they are gambling big money that US legal poker is coming soon, and they want to take advantage of it. In April 2009 PartyPoker agreed to pay the United States government $105 million in penalties, for processing transactions that were “contrary to certain US laws” in exchange for a “non-prosecution agreement”. While this doesn’t fully absolve PartyPoker, it does ensure they’ll never be prosecuted for any actions prior to the agreement.
Perhaps the biggest sign PartyPoker was preparing for entry into the US market came in July 2010 when they announced a planned merger with sports betting giant Bwin. The value of this merger exceeds $250 billion and instantly made the Party/Bwin combo (traded on London Stock Exchange) the largest publicly traded gambling company in the world. Under the terms of this agreement, PartyGaming share holders will own 48.4% and Bwin shareholders 51.6% and the company will operate with joint CEO’s Norbert Teufelberger and Jim Ryan. This is likely quite significant in Party Poker’s US strategy for reasons we’ll mention momentarily.
GVC Holdings Acquires Bwin.Party
The new Bwin.party was itself absorbed by massive online gaming group GVC Holdings in 2015 for $1.4 billion. GVC Holdings has a variety of different businesses in the gaming industry including sports betting, casino and more.
GVC Holdings, which is based on the Isle of Man, is also a publicly traded company with licenses in 18 different countries and a massive market cap. The company is uniquely positioned to take advantage of softening laws regarding online betting in the USA thanks to its massive gaming infrastructure.
It helps that PartyPoker very much played along with US authorities in 2006 and that should help give it a head start on some of its international competitors like PokerStars, which opted to stay in the US market after UIGEA. GVC Holdings could also open a number of doors for PartyPoker as the site attempts to expand in the USA in markets like Nevada and potentially Pennsylvania.
There’s also a good chance that some of the bigger land-based gaming entities in the USA will move to the online market when it becomes available and PartyPoker might very well provide some software for those organizations. GVC already has one such agreement with MGM Resorts.
When Will PartyPoker USA be Licensed?
At this point PartyPoker is already licensed in the USA — although only in New Jersey. PartyPoker’s entrance into the USA has been lukewarm thanks to the limited player pool available in NJ and the lack of shared liquidity across other states. Competing sites like Play WSOP and 888poker have had similar issues.
It’s worth mentioning that PartyPoker has made some huge strides to reinvigorate its brand over the last few years with revamped software, a new focus on recreational players, a broader online tournament schedule and partypoker LIVE, which offers big money live tournaments around the glove. The site has also been extremely generous with sign-up bonuses and promotions for new players.
Poker players are starting to notice and international players have been flocking to the site with the number of new deposits on the rise.
What does this mean for legal online poker in the United States? It’s not yet clear. It still appears that federally regulated online poker with shared player pools across states is a number of years away. PartyPoker has invested heavily in the US market but has thus far had middling returns so it may play this one cautiously until big states like California and New York get on board with legal online poker.
Fortunately there are still some online poker sites that are willing to take a gamble on the US market and offer their services to US-based players across the country. In the meantime, if you’d like to check out PartyPoker from the US, there is a practice version of their site open to US players that can be accessed at www.partypoker.net.
- by Sean ChaffinJanuary 7, 2020
- by Sean ChaffinDecember 30, 2019
- by Sean ChaffinDecember 13, 2019
- by Sean ChaffinDecember 11, 2019
- by Sean ChaffinDecember 2, 2019
Where can you currently play legal online poker in the US?
The following four states are the only ones to offer legal US online poker sites:
- Delaware
- Nevada
- New Jersey
There are some differences between the three regulated-poker states. Also, while Pennsylvania recently signed online poker into law, the state has yet to start running games. Pennsylvania is expected to launch in early 2019.
Nevadaonly permits online poker.
New Jersey and Delaware also spread casino games banked by the house. Read more about NJ online casino operators and soon to launch Pennsylvania online casinos.
Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania allow the state’s brick-and-mortar casinos to operate online sites. In Delaware, the state lottery is the sole operator.
Finally, Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware have entered into an interstate online poker agreement. Players from the three states can compete against each other only on WSOP.com.
Background for legal online poker in the US
Legal US online poker sites debuted on April 30, 2013.
Ultimate Poker was the site that made history. Nevada was the first state to host fully legal online poker. Texas Hold ’em was the only game spread at Ultimate Poker during its first six months in business.
WSOP.com joined the Nevada online poker market on Sept. 17, 2013. The World Series of Poker’s online site brought the first games of Omaha, Omaha High/Low, Seven Card Stud and Seven Card Stud High/Low to Nevada.
WSOP.com now controls 99 percent of the Nevada market. This near-monopoly was caused by the shuttering of Ultimate Poker in November 2014.
Delaware was the second state to launch legal online poker. There is one network powered by 888. The state’s three racinos – Delaware Park, Dover Downs and Harrington Raceway – are skins on the Delaware poker network. Nevada and Delaware began pooling poker players in April 2015.
WSOP.com and 888 were the sites responsible for creating the first legal interstate online poker pool.
New Jersey became the third state with legal online poker on Nov. 21, 2013. There are currently three poker networks in New Jersey. One hosts Borgata and partypoker, the other has WSOP.com and 888 on it, and the third is made up solely of PokerStars NJ. All networks are about equal in overall size at any given point in time.
There were three additional poker platforms in New Jersey when the state launched regulated poker sites. 888 was originally a standalone site before it merged player pools with WSOP.com. Ultimate Poker was unable to gain more than 3 percent of the market share.
The Ultimate Poker site was shuttered on Oct. 5, 2014. The associated UCasino was also closed at that time. Betfair failed to attract any players and closed its poker site on Dec. 1, 2014. Betfair still operates an online casino in New Jersey.
After a long legislative battle, Gov. Tom Wolf signed a bill into law that legalized and regulated online gambling in the state of Pennsylvania on Oct. 30, 2017, making it the fourth state to legalize online gaming. The bill legalized online poker, online table games, online slots and daily fantasy sports. It also allowed for a number of other gambling expansions such as online lottery, tablet gambling in airports, video gambling terminals at truck stops and 10 satellite casinos. Players can expect to be able to play online poker in PA in 2019.
What other states are considering legalizing online poker?
Several states are actively considering regulating online poker:
- New York
- California
- Michigan
- Massachusetts
Of the list above, most experts consider New York to have the greatest chance of passing a bill.
Why should I choose legal poker sites?
One of the biggest advantages to playing online poker at regulated sites in Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey is that all player funds are just as safe as they would be at a licensed land-based casino in any of those states.
This is in contrast to offshore sites where poker players have a long history of seeing their funds held hostage or stolen altogether.
There are also ample deposit and withdrawal methods that are safe and secure.
Players can use Visa, MasterCard, electronic checks, bank wires, Neteller, Skrill, PayNearMe, prepaid card and cash at the associated licensed casino. Withdrawals are processed by electronic check, paper check, Neteller, Skrill, prepaid debit card and cash at the associated licensed casino. The method available depends on the state and participating site.
Finally, regulated sites undergo far more rigorous checks to ensure that games are fair and secure than unregulated sites.
Will the federal government ban online poker?
Federal law allows states to legalize and regulate online poker. This is specifically exempted from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. A September 2011 Department of Justice opinion confirmed this and explicitly gives states the right to permit intrastate gaming.
There was an attempt in Congress to reverse this legal opinion. The effort was spearheaded by Sheldon Adelson, founder and CEO of Las Vegas Sands, the parent company of Venetian in Las Vegas.
Adelson’s lobbyists submitted the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA). The bill failed in 2016 and does not appear to have much support in this Congress. Libertarian groups, states’ rights activists, governors, state lotteries and most of the gaming industry have come out in opposition to RAWA.
Since then, Adelson and company have been working through other channels to head off online casino and online poker play. It is extremely likely that the group effected some degree of influence over the Department of Justice’s January 2019 opinion to reinterpret the Wire Act.
In that opinion, the DOJ essentially reversed its prior position on the statute to say that the law actually pertains to all gambling, not just sports betting. Needless to say, there were many parties in opposition to this opinion.
So far, the opinion has not found much success in court. A June 2019 ruling from a New Hampshire federal court dismissed the opinion from affecting that state’s lottery commission and an associated vendor. Only time will tell if the precedent will ripple out to other interested and/or affected parties.