The good news for liquidity of United States online poker comes in a form of a deal that allows New Jersey to enter the cooperation with Nevada and Delaware. The three regulated states decided to share player pools in order to raise the appeal of the online poker across their territories. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced the agreement on Friday, October 13th.
Other than subscription-based online poker, only the states of Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey have successfully passed appropriate formalities to regulate the game on their lands. You don’t have to necessarily be a resident of one of those regulated states to play poker but simply present within their borders for the time when the game takes place. Once there, you can choose among plenty of legal poker websites for us players available across the internet, as well as casino entertainment in general. Some of the other US states may follow through with similar resolutions in not too distant future. The ones that have made the biggest progress in terms of paperwork or expressed strong willingness seem to be New York, Michigan, California and Pennsylvania. Authorities from the later state seem to be especially eager to focus on the issue in the upcoming months. Then there will be of course a matter of mutual cooperation between interested parties but there is no reason to assume they won’t be able to join the network in the making.
New Jersey and Delaware already had an agreement in that department, and up until now Nevada remained in isolation. New Jersey was very anxious to push the deal through as they take the development of online gaming quite seriously. It does reflect on the statistics. The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is happy to announce that their market of online gaming has reached in September over 20 million dollars for the seventh time in the row. This makes the total number of generated profit over 650 million accumulated over the time of almost four years of activity in the field, which truly shows the real potential in this business for the US market. While revenue numbers look extremely solid for NJ online gaming, they are pretty disappointing when it comes to poker alone. Profits from that sector are only a small percentage of the overall revenue and are decreasing consistently. The three-state cooperation, when enacted, should definitely improve the situation in the long run. The logistics of launching a network might however take some time.
Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement, signed by Governors Christie, Sandoval and Carney, has been highly applauded by WSOP.com, which is for now the only operator that serves both NJ and Nevada. Their reaction to the news is understandable, as WSOP/888 network will likely be the greatest beneficiary of the new deal, at least in the beginning, that is if no major changes in the market occur. This doesn’t mean that no other poker software providers cannot gain some significant improvements in their internet traffic.
Whatever the final reshuffles turn out to be, the new agreement will certainly increase online poker liquidity. Both, players and operators, will gain new possibilities. Smooth cooperation between three regulated states can only encourage newcomers and influence the future of online poker business in the United States.
