The first hand of legal online poker in the United States was dealt on April 30, 2013. I worked in the industry at the time. It ended up being a waste of time. The people who were given the reigns to get it to the finish line squandered the opportunity.
Ultimate Poker made history in Nevada
Ultimate Poker was the first legal US poker site. It was only available in Nevada at first before expanding to New Jersey later that year. The company I worked for at the time got a tip that it was launching. There was no public announcement before opening day.
I went to a 24-hour tavern with my laptop to get the content for our online poker portals ready for the launch. I stayed up all night.
The software was among the worst available, even going back to the late 1990s when online poker first launched. Ultimate Poker hired many great poker ambassadors. The company could not do much with its poor product.
WSOP.com became the second legal poker site
WSOP.com launched in Nevada in September 2013. Its software was poor, but miles ahead of the one Ultimate Poker used. WSOP.com quickly took the lead in the Nevada online poker industry.
Real Gaming opened in Nevada in 2014. Its software was even worse than Ultimate Poker’s platform and never should have made it out of the testing lab. Ultimate Poker and Real Gaming failed quickly, leaving WSOP.com a monopoly in Nevada ever since.
In November 2013, Delaware and New Jersey launched legal online poker. Each state had its own player pool. Interstate online poker was just a dream. Four poker sites opened in New Jersey. 888, operator of WSOP.com, had the Delaware monopoly.
Nearly every site had major issues. The software was poor. Support was often clueless. The management of two sites had no idea what they were doing. I had the feeling at the time that online poker would never truly get off the ground due to all this. I was right.
Online poker was legalized in four more states since 2013: Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. No sites ever opened in Connecticut or West Virginia.
WSOP.com and 888 combining player pools in Delaware, Nevada, and New Jersey did little to expand the game. PokerStars has since networked Michigan and New Jersey, which also did little for the industry.
What went wrong?
The biggest mistake was poor site management. I played at WSOP.com when it opened. I constantly ran into what seemed like simple support issues that were never resolved. Going to management did not help the cause.
It is obvious to me that the people Caesars hired to manage its poker site had no idea what they were doing, or were exceptionally lazy. The site manager should have been dismissed quickly. He left in 2019 after running the site into the ground for six years, and WSOP has done nothing to improve it since. The same poor software is still used nearly 10 years later.
It does not seem like anyone at WSOP is interested in making the product better. The new manager hides and fails to address even the most basic public complaints. Its social media accounts don’t help unhappy players. To the best of my knowledge, the only public speaking she has done in the four years in her position is to lobby against Nevada creating a database of online poker cheaters from WSOP.com.
The Nevada monopoly is good enough for them, it seems. This attitude resonates in its other markets.
One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing at WSOP.com
A WSOP.com rep contacted me earlier this year to buy advertising at Vegas Advantage and Atlantic City Advantage. We rank high in search engines for the site but have refused to advertise it since I was banned from it for such ridiculous reasons.
I asked them to reinstate my account and we could let the past go with the previous management. The site denied my request. I was told my account was suspended for responsible gaming procedures.
In fact, I was banned after the site tried to make me play longer than I wanted, which is the opposite of their assertion. In reality, the site manager at the time could not handle the slightest criticism and banned me for going public with bad management decisions related to my account.
I tried escalating it to the current site manager and never received a response. Then, I asked for a media contact for this article. I also did not receive a response to that request.
I must wonder why the site would ask me to promote them while at the same time refusing to let me play there or answer why. It defies logic. It just proves that the site is in total disarray. I feel strongly that I can make a good case that it should lose its gaming license for all its violations.
What can be done?
It seems impossible that legal online poker can be salvaged at this point. WSOP.com has shown that it has no interest in operating in a reputable way. I wrote an op-ed at the Nevada Independent with several ideas on how to resolve that attitude. Nothing ever happened.
If Caesars cared about online poker, it would have cleaned house years ago and found a better software provider, one that does not have massive regulatory fines for responsible gambling misconduct in other countries. It does not seem like an accident after how the site banned me after publicly discussing similar failures in Nevada.
BetMGM Poker opening in Nevada seems like the best way to expand the industry. The site just renewed its online poker license again. That shows it wants to be in Nevada one day. However, it has yet to network its Michigan and New Jersey sites, which is possible today.
As long as WSOP.com has a monopoly, continues to partner with a company that was first rogued by the biggest online casino watchdog way back in 2006, and does not replace its poor management, Nevada will not have a legitimate poker site.
BetMGM, Partypoker, or some other site coming to Nevada seems like the only way for that dream I had 10 years ago today to ever come true. Considering online poker has gone almost nowhere in the country while sports betting exploded, it makes me feel like that day will never come.
Vegas Advantage probably never exists if online poker does not flop
I left my last online poker job in March 2018. A month later, I published the first blog post at Vegas Advantage. Five years later, my wife and I own a website that is an authority on Las Vegas and four others.
That probably never happens without online poker flopping so badly. In a way, it was a blessing in disguise.
I don’t play poker in Las Vegas these days. I usually play video poker. Even then, it is only a time or two a month. I enjoy it more than I ever liked online poker.
