President Bush Signs SAFE Port Act

With little fan fare, and absolutely no mention of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), President George W. Bush signed the SAFE Port Act into law at 10:00 EST on Friday, October 13.

In an eight minute ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Bush made it illegal for financial institutions to process transactions to and from online gambling companies. The law does not criminalize individual citizens if they play poker online, nor does it make online gambling illegal in states where it already was not. What it attempts to do, although many think it will be unenforceable, is cut off funds flowing out of the U.S. and into the online gambling sites.

Because the UIGEA is now officially law, several online poker rooms have made themselves off limits to Americans. Below is a brief summary of the major casualties.

• Party Poker
• Paradise Poker (will still allow U.S. customers to play until November 13)
• iPoker Network (Titan Poker, Noble Poker, CD Poker)
• Pacific Poker
• Cryptologic rooms (Sun Poker, InterPoker)
• PokerRoom.com

Out of the other rooms and networks that has closed to U.S. customers, perhaps the strangest development was with JetSet Poker, which announced at 11:55pm Thursday night that it would be ceasing operations completely at midnight. Fortunately, all players will be sent checks covering their funds on deposit.

Many poker rooms have said, however, that it’s business as usual, and Neteller announced that it will not be shutting down to the U.S., so there will still be many opportunities to play poker online.

Originally published October 13, 2006