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Pennsylvania’s gaming industry is marching ambitiously into a new era. About six months after the state approved a sweeping expansion package, the first regulated platforms are beginning to come to market.

The PA Lottery launched Keno this week, making the electronic game available in hundreds of bars and retail outlets. It’s also prepared to add virtual sports betting and an online lottery app in the coming months. Online casino games will follow shortly thereafter, and sports betting might even be available soon.

Daily fantasy sports is newly regulated in Pennsylvania, as well. Sites like DraftKings and FanDuel have been serving the state for years, but operations are now under the oversight of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB).

Specifics of PA DFS regulation

Last week, the PGCB published temporary DFS regulations to establish an early framework for oversight. Though not final, they are comprehensive.

Some of the specifics include:

• Requirement to maintain know-your-customer controls
• Restrictions on participation for certain employees and excluded gamblers
• Stipulation to offer beginner contests which exclude highly experienced players
• Prohibition on contests based on amateur sports
• Enforcement against the use of software scripts
• Requirements for maintaining records

The regulations define a “highly experienced player” as one who has entered more than 1,000 contests or won $1,000 or more at least three times.

Applicants pay $50,000 for a five-year license, and renewal costs $10,000. Unless otherwise prohibited, operators with pending applications are permitted to offer their products in the meantime. Revenue generated by PA players will be taxed at a rate of 15 percent.

The minimum age for Pennsylvania DFS players is 18 for online play and 21 for brick-and-mortar contests.

Pennsylvania DFS licensees

So far there are eight DFS outfits that have applied for PA licenses:

• Boom Fantasy
• DRAFT
• DraftKings
• FanDuel
• FantasyDraft
• Fantasy Football Players Championship
• FastPick
• Sports Hub

Some of these applications are already on file, and some are included based on confirmation from industry sources.

Yahoo DFS is not on the list yet, but it’d be a surprise if that remains the case for long. The same can be said for EagleStrike, which operates a large network of DFS kiosks in the region. While some states have prohibited these kiosks, PA will welcome EagleStrike if it decides to swoop in.

FastPick is on the list, and it’s an interesting inclusion. The in-house product of Resorts Atlantic City is set to cross state lines to serve the PA market.

DRAFT is now a division of Paddy Power Betfair, which has a presence in nearly every gaming market and vertical. The group already offers DFS in Pennsylvania, and it intends to explore online gambling and sports betting in due time. Both DRAFT and NY-based Boom Fantasy offer newer, non-traditional variants of DFS.

Fantasy Football Players Championship (FFPC) and Sports Hub are the wildcards, both relatively unknown in the space. FFPC is a paid, season-long product that offers contests across a tall range of stakes. It’s actually been around since 2008, based on an idea formulated several years earlier. Sports Hub is brand new, apparently close to debuting its proprietary platform.

And, of course, it’s no surprise to see industry leaders DraftKings and FanDuel at the front of the line.

What changes for PA DFS?

From the players’ standpoint, not much will change in the DFS landscape. The major sites already serve the state, customers already play the games, and both of those things will continue as before. Now, though, there are additional safeguards in place to protect customers and their funds.

Operators have a long list of new rules they must adhere to, but that won’t really change much, either. Proposed regulations fall in line with those in many other states, and sites have been complying with those for years. They will, however, have to file tax returns with the state of Pennsylvania going forward.

That’s really the only change. The state will now receive a direct share of the revenue generated from paid-entry fantasy sports contests. Some analysts estimate that about 65,000 Pennsylvanians will participate, projecting $7.5 million in annual revenue for the state.

It’s not a ton of money, mind you, but it is essentially free money found between the couch cushions.

The post Eight Platforms Apply For New PA DFS Licenses, Including FanDuel And DraftKings appeared first on Play Pennsylvania.

For the first time in what seems like a long time, big-time poker players had a big-time choice when it came to where to play this week.

For the most part, major poker tours around the world have steered clear of one another in what has been a decade of unprecedented growth. Each clearly saw the benefits of scheduling events around, rather than against, each other. Each knew they were ultimately trying to attract the same group of players.

They knew forcing those players to choose between them would only hurt them all. They knew competing for space on the calendar would only result in smaller fields and smaller prize pools. The kind of things that can have a major effect on an event and tour’s overall marketability.

The smaller, more intimate poker tournament is a tough sell in a community where everyone is trying to maximize personal earning potential.

Giving the WSOP its due

As they grew into the powerful entities they are today, the World Poker Tour and PokerStars’ European Poker Tour always left the end of May to the middle of July to the World Series of Poker. With much of the poker world descending upon Las Vegas, Nevada for the six-week duration of the series, it’s a move that made sense for all sorts of reasons. Not the least of which was the fact any event running at the same time as the WSOP outside of Vegas is bound to be an epic failure.

However, the cease-fire in the war for poker tour supremacy extended to the rest of the year as well. The WPT, EPT, and smaller upstart tours looking to compete with them often visit the same locations around the world. Obviously, they do so on different dates. Most also make stops in places that appear to be their exclusive domain. However, they always seemed to make sure to schedule these events in weeks where the other tours were dark. It was an effort to maximize potential attendance at each and it worked.

Tour and event organizers may not have sat down and figured it all out on the calendar together. It was always more of an informal thing. However, they always seemed to respect one another enough to play nice and figure out a way to split up the poker pie in a fair an equitable manner for all involved.

Good for players?

Players certainly benefited from this understanding between them. The calendar was filled with high-stakes poker action around the globe. The tours didn’t seem to be competing with one another on that calendar very often. So, players could be assured events were maximizing attendance. In turn, this maximized each players’ earning potential no matter where they went.

Players had choices. However, the choice was to go or not to go, rather than to play here or there.

Unfortunately, all that went out the window this week.

As the calendar turned from April to May, the WPT kicked off its $10,000 Bellagio Elite Poker Championship event at Bellagio Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, the EPT was in the middle of its 2018 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo Casino EPT €5,300 Main Event in Monaco.

Plus, the 2018 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS North America $5,300 Main Event was going on at the Playground Poker Club in Montreal, Canada.

All for one and one for all

Running these events against one another had to hurt them all. The partypoker event in Montreal drew 1,954 entries, the most of all three tournaments. However, it wasn’t enough to cover the event’s ambitious $10 million guarantee without dipping into the fees.

The EPT in Monte Carlo drew 777 entries, creating a €3,768,450 prize pool. That was a bit more than the 727 entries and €3,525,950 prize pool the 2017 PokerStars Championship Monte Carlo event posted last year. However, it pales in comparison to the 1,098 entries and €5,325,300 prize pool put together the last time the EPT was in Monaco in 2016.

Finally, the WPT drew just 126 entries to it’s Las Vegas event, creating a $1,222,200 prize pool. In comparison, the last time the WPT held a $10,000 buy-in event in Las Vegas was its WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic in December 2017. It was held at a time when there was little else going on in the world of high-stakes tournament poker and drew 812 players, creating a $7,876,400 prize pool.

A new era for the poker tour

A new era has been ushered in for poker tours around the globe. EPT founder John Duthie is now running the show at partypoker. He criticizes PokerStars every chance he gets. Plus, he seems hell-bent on ending that organization’s dominance of the live tournament circuit. Even if that means going heads-up with them on the tournament calendar.

In the meantime, it seems PokerStars and the WPT have spent the past couple of seasons throwing every marketing idea they’ve ever had at the wall to see what sticks. It smacks of a desperate effort to hold on to market share. Unfortunately, several of these ideas haven’t worked out as planned. Particularly the ones that have involved competing on the calendar with other tours.

Clearly, the cease-fire in the war for poker tour supremacy has ended. The tours are going up against each other in a way they rarely have before. Now, players have new choices. The battle is back is on. And it will ultimately be up to those same players to decide who wins it.

The post The Poker Tour War For Superiority Is Hurting, Not Helping appeared first on Play USA.

It is that time of year when poker players around the world start planning for their yearly pilgrimage to the Las Vegas, Nevada desert.

This year the World Series of Poker is bigger and better than ever.

It has more events (78), bigger buy-ins (the $1 million One Drop is back), and it has more online opportunities for gold (four).

With so much poker scheduled, players are looking for ways to make their bankroll go farther.

USPoker.com and WSOP.com are here to help.

Turn $2 into a gold bracelet

USPoker.com has teamed up with the WSOP to offer a $2 buy-in satellite tournament that can end with a player sporting a new bracelet.

The winner will earn a tournament ticket to WSOP Event #10: $365 Online No-Limit Hold’em.

Event #10 is just one of four online events scheduled throughout the summer. This year, players in Nevada and New Jersey can battle each other on the virtual felt for a place in the WSOP record books.

The $2 satellite tournament is open only to players in Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware. This password-protected event kicks off on May 26, 2018, at 3:30 p.m. (PST). Enter the password USP365 to join the fun.

Shared liquidity is here – finally

On May 1, regulated online poker in the U.S. took a huge step forward. Online poker players from Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware are now part of a unified player pool.

Six online poker rooms make up the combined network of WSOP and 888poker sites across the three sites. Players in Nevada and Delaware will need to download the new software and create a new account for access to the combined player pool. Players can access current accounts through July 31.

To encourage players to sign-up and login, WSOP.com is promoting the following:

• Sunday tournament guarantees of $250,000
• At least $10,000 worth of tournament guarantees daily
• Daily freerolls into the Sunday $100,000 guaranteed tournament
• WSOP Satellites (May 1 – July 13)
• BLAST Poker – play for up to 10,000x your buy-in
• A new and Improved Loyalty Program

Counting down the days to the 2018 WSOP

May 29 is the happiest day of the year for many poker players. It’s the day the WSOP opens its doors.

Nothing compares to walking through the doors into the massive Pavilion room to sounds of chips shuffling for the first time.

It will be an even more exciting summer now that players in New Jersey will have the opportunity to play for gold – even if they can’t make it to Las Vegas.

Knowing that money is tight, WSOP is making it easier for online poker players to play their way to gold. Beginning May 1, depositing or re-depositing on WSOP.com can provide a significant boost to a player’s bankroll.

Make an initial deposit or reload your account up to $1,000 using the code MAY1000 and WSOP.com will match it. You can find the fine print and all the details at WSOP.com.

Before you head over there, mark your calendar for May 26 at 3:30 p.m. Buy in for $2 and enter the password USP365 to put a gold bracelet within your reach!

The post Turn $2 Into A WSOP Gold Bracelet In This Exclusive USPoker Satellite appeared first on .

The newly merged WSOP.com NJ is celebrating the shared player pools by guaranteeing $15 million in online poker tournament prizes, free WSOP seats, and much more this summer.

The post With A Bigger Pool To Play In, WSOP.com Goes Cash Crazy With $15M Giveaway appeared first on Play NJ.

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