As the year closes, we can see a number of poker news stories made attention-grabbing headlines in 2018. However, just like we did last year, US Poker has boiled it down to an easily digestible top five, aimed at pleasing your poker palate. Here’s US Poker’s Top 5 Biggest Poker Stories of 2018, starting with number five,the launch of shared liquidity. Considering May 1, 2018 marked the biggest day for online poker since Black Friday, this story should have been higher up on this list. It was the day tri-state shared liquidity launched. The day the pooling of players from…

Year after year, New York online poker keeps getting pushed back. The state’s inability to pass an online gaming bill has been vexing. Legislation has breezed through the NY Senate on multiple occasions, only to run into an invisible brick wall in the lower chamber. Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, the key lawmaker on gaming issues, has offered a carousel of excuses to explain the Assembly’s inaction. With the state poised to take on sports betting in 2019, online poker will almost certainly get another look. Just don’t expect the two issues to commingle. That’s something Pretlow is not a fan of…

The Stars Group has entered into an agreement with Reno-headquartered casino operator Eldorado Resorts to gain access to 11 US states. That means PokerStars US expansion could hit 13 states in total when coupled with it’s operation in New Jersey and pending launch in the Pennsylvania online poker market. The agreement grants PokerStars operator, The Stars Group, the option to launch online sports betting, poker and casino in states where Eldorado currently owns or operates casino properties. This provides the operator with a route into Nevada, Mississippi and West Virginia, three states in which sports betting regulations have already been…

New York Assemblyman Gary Pretlow says he was eight Democrats away from getting the online poker bill put to a vote last week at the end of the state’s legislative session. While admitting that “we didn’t really look at it” in the final weeks as New York online poker took a back seat to a more urgent sports betting bill that also didn’t pass, Pretlow attested that he had a commitment from 68 Democrats that they would support A 5250. Officially, the bill finished with 51 Assembly members signed on as supporters, including 47 Democrats and four Republicans. Another assertion…

Online poker in New York is turning into the legislative version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s literary masterpiece, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. After a couple of close calls in each of the last two years, Albany lawmakers don’t seem to know if they’re coming or going in 2018. And depending on who you ask, online poker efforts have either taken a step forward or a step backward in 2018. On the one hand you have first-term Assemblyman Clyde Vanel, who appears to be spearheading the current online poker effort in the Assembly. “The budget effort didn’t…

It took Chris Ferguson about seven years to issue a 42-second video apology for the Full Tilt Poker fiasco. Hopefully he wasn’t working on writing it the entire time. Regardless of his motivations, the poker community responded harshly to his attempt at reconciliation. This summer will mark Ferguson’s third year back at the World Series of Poker, after he took several summers off after the Full Tilt scandal. The government said that Ferguson allocated himself $85 million in distributions for his work at the poker site, while about $160 million in U.S. player deposits went missing after the platform shut…