USA Online Poker | US Poker Sites

The U.S. has faced some troubling times for online poker players with the craze of the 2006 UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) legislation. The troubling times were more of a big hassle and headache for online poker sites and U.S. online poker players than anything else. The U.S. legislators came up with this brilliant idea that online gambling was creating problems for citizens because they were being irresponsible. In reality, the government saw that most online gambling sites were based outside of the U.S. and therefore, U.S. currency was being sent out of the country. In addition, the government could not tax the online gambling boom and it was taking away from the multi-billion dollar brick and mortar casino industry in the country. The biggest misunderstanding within U.S. citizens is the widespread belief that online gambling somehow now illegal as a result of the 2006 legislation.

Online Poker as a U.S. Player

The legislation in 2006 was a part of the Port Security Act and it only placed restrictions on financial institutions, not players or any individual for that matter. As a result of the legislation, financial institutions could no longer legally process any financial transaction that was in any way, shape or form related to online gambling. This is where the major headache began. Online poker players frantically started to wonder if they were going to be able to continue playing online poker and how they handle their financial transactions. Well in the midst of the madness, some online poker sites decided to just flat out refuse U.S. players from that point forward. One of the big names that chose to do so was Party Poker, which was the largest online poker site at the time and by far, had the most U.S. players of any site.

Most U.S. online poker players at the time decided to shift over to Pokerstars or Full Tilt Poker and as a result, 4 years later in 2010, these two poker sites are regularly competing with one another to be the number one site in the world. Online poker sites that decided to continue allowing U.S. players have primarily all switched to using third-party payment processors that have been tested to ensure successful processing of the large majority of U.S. credit/debit cards and bank transfers. Players that find they are continually running into an issue using either of these methods also have the option of using a third-party account, such as an e-wallet. Every online poker site uses different payment processors, so players also have the option of trying another U.S. accepted online poker site if they are running into problems.

Visa and MasterCard seem to have extremely high approval ratings in terms of online poker deposits for U.S. players. The players that are unsuccessful are typically due to the issuing bank of the credit/debit card or the bank being used to conduct a transfer. Again, these problems seem to be few and far between nowadays with the changes that have been made by online poker sites.