At present, playing legal online poker on a regulated New Jersey site can be a frustrating ordeal. Games do not run round the clock, tournament guarantees are on the low side (and dipping), and low-to-mid stakes No Limit Hold’em games dominate cash game lobbies. But with online poker at the forefront of the legislative conversation in both New York and Pennsylvania, that could change in relatively swift fashion. Admittedly, there are still a lot of pieces that need to fall into place. But should NY/PA pull the trigger, then a liquidity sharing compact between NJ and its neighbors to the…

Just like last year, it appears a bid to legalize New York online poker via the state budget is not in the cards. But that does not mean online poker legislation is dead for 2017. The Senate had included online poker in its version of the state budget. But it had not appeared in the Assembly version. Just last week, Assemblymember J. Gary Pretlow told Online Poker Report that online poker was not likely to make the cut in the final joint legislative budget. Online poker faced the same dynamic last year, as the Senate included online poker in its…

New York’s fight to legalize online poker likely won’t face its true make-or-break test until June, according to poker’s prime mover in the state Assembly. New York’s state Senate included online poker language in its budget proposal last week, but the Assembly opted not to include poker in its spending plan. According to Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, the exclusion was due to unidentified powerful figures in the Assembly who remain on the fence regarding online poker’s merits. Pretlow, who introduced an online poker bill in the Assembly in February and who later claimed he didn’t see “too much opposition” to passing…

Amaya-owned PokerStars has revealed that it has begun testing of new poker game ‘PokerStars Power Up’. In a blog post, the company said that the title is mainly based on the traditional No Limit Hold’em game, with the addition of various power cards that enable the player to influence hands and change gameplay. Power cards include ‘Clone’, where the layer will receive a copy of the last power played in the hand; ‘Engineer’, which will enable the player to select the deck’s next card from three options; and ‘X-Ray’, which forces all players to show one hole card. Severin Rasset,…

Six months after PokerStars ended all of their live tours and replaced them with PokerStars Championships and Festivals, they have created a new low buy-in tour in London. PokerStars has taken the rather unusual step of partnering with the Hippodrome Casino in London to present the new PokerStars Live London Series. I use the word ‘unusual’ because in August 2016 the largest online poker room in the solar system decided to make complicated things simple by starting their live events with a fresh slate creating the PokerStars Championships and Festivals brands. The axe came down on the European Poker Tour…

888poker has agreed a deal to continue as lead sponsor of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) for the 2017 series. The online operator’s logo will appear at all events in the WSOP 2017 season, which is due to begin in May. The extended agreement also includes exclusive television sponsorship rights. International players hoping to gain a seat at the WSOP 2017 season will have to win it on the 888poker website. More at iGaming Business

The founder of what had been one of the largest online poker websites agreed on Thursday to confront U.S. charges stemming from a long-running criminal case targeting internet firms like his operating illegally in the United States. Scott Tom, who founded Costa Rica-based Absolute Poker, pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court to charges he violated a federal internet gambling law and engaged in a money-laundering conspiracy. Tom, a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis who lived in Antigua, arrived in the United States voluntarily from Barbados on Thursday to face the charges, prosecutors said. He was released on a…

Online poker legislation has become a perennial event in California, with efforts stretching back some 10 years. Despite a decade of debate, the state still seems far away from getting a bill across the finish line. But that doesn’t mean lawmakers won’t try. California Assemblymember Reginald Jones-Sawyer introduced the state’s latest online poker legislative effort, the Internet Poker Consumer Protection Act, which seeks to legalize and regulate online poker in the Golden State. Jones-Sawyer’s bill (AB 1677) would allow approved tribes and card rooms to offer online poker to anyone over the age of 21 located in the state of…