Thursday, October 30, 2008

Doyle doesn't like me anymore

Or at least he doesn't want me playing on his site. I got this email earlier today:

Dear Player,
We have received notice from our poker software provider
that as of Thursday, October 30th, they will begin blocking connections from 13
U.S. states based on IP address.
If your internet service provider is based
in one of the following 13 states, you may or may not be affected by this
change:
Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New York,
Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, Washington and Kentucky.
Blocked connections will receive an error message upon attempting to login
to the poker client. Please read the Common Concerns below and if you believe
your connection to the poker client is being blocked in error, please contact
customer service immediately at support@dbpn.com so that we may assist you in
logging into your account.


This is strange, because a year or so ago when Doyle's Room came back from oblivion, it used the 13-state ban. Then, without any announcement that I heard, they started allowing Nevada residents to play. And now they're going back to the 13-state restriction. Nothing about the Nevada legal landscape has changed. So what genius legal counsel decided that it was problematic a year ago, then fine, and now problematic again? It makes no sense.

The email also didn't tell me anything about how I might get my money back, since I can't use it to play any more. If the client won't even fire up for me, it's not clear how I'll file a withdrawal request.

One obvious question is how Doyle and Todd and Hoyt are going to continue playing on the site for their bounty tournaments. But they apparently managed it when they worked under the 13-state ban previously, so I suppose they will do so again. No public explanation of this was made back then, and I kind of doubt that one will be forthcoming now. But my guess is that they'll keep playing, while blocking everybody else in the Silver State from joining them.

It all stinks.

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