Legal Roundup – Bovada Cuts Ties in Four States and GBT Deal With Full Tilt Nearly Done

In today’s legal roundup, Bovada decides to cut ties with players in four states. In addition, Groupe Bernard Tapie claims that the long awaited deal with Full Tilt Poker may close next week.

Bovada Bans Players in Four States

Yesterday, John Mehaffey reported on his blog that Bovada announced that players in the state of Maryland were no longer allowed to play on the website. This comes a couple of weeks after Bodog was indicted on charges in connection with their sports betting operations. Customers were informed of the decision via email and told that their accounts were closed and to contact customer support.

Today, it appears that the US serving site has added the states of New York, Utah, and Washington State to their bank. These states either have laws on the books or about to pass laws that explicitly bans online gambling. The bans of the additional three states was done without any type of announcement to players but when they attempted to login, they found that their accounts had been banned.

The actions of banning players from specific sites is not new. Sites such as the now defunct DoylesRoom.com banned players from 13 US states due to their stances in regards to online gaming. Should Bovada take this path, additional states could be added to the list soon.

Full Tilt Deal to Close Next Week?

Coming from the “I will believe it when I see it” category, eGaming Review published an article earlier today claiming that Laurent Tapie has begun the process of recruiting new personnel to re-launch Full Tilt Poker. Furthermore, the deal is reportedly expected to close sometime next week.

Should this report hold true, Tapie claims that it will take about four weeks to relaunch the former poker site. PocketFives.com was in contact with GBT lawyer Behn Dayanim earlier in the day and they were informed that when a deal is finalized a public announcement would be made.

Dayanim nor the eGaming Review article mention anything about when and how players would be repaid their form account balances. At this point, players and media members are sitting back and waiting to see if this will indeed happen or if this is just another in a long line of delays and hype surrounding the site.

Should the site reopen, it will be interesting to see how many players make a return considering the issues surrounding the site. Some feel the site will be in top three within three months of reopening while others feel it will struggle much like the now defunct UltimateBet did after the superuser scandal. Time will tell on this one.