Surely, lots of people were given a wish for the year 2007 not to play a lousy trick on them. I don’t know whether somebody addressed the same wishes to the online gambling industry… But apparently, no one can say that the year turned out to be particularly successful. Let us have a look at what happened to online casinos and online poker the past year.
The problems started even earlier, in 2006, when the USA passed the law forbidding online casinos and online poker rooms accept gamblers from the USA, as well as financial institutes to serve gambling transactions of American citizens. A lot of casinos and poker rooms closed their doors to American players at once, but as long as there were establishments where Americans were allowed in, it didn’t seem to be a crucial problem. In fact, serious troubles started in February, 2007, when two former senior managers and principal shareholders of Neteller Company were arrested in the USA. Soon afterwards the accounts of Neteller with 55 million dollars were arrested, and the company had to refuse to work with Americans. “What does it have to do with poker”, you might ask. The matter is that...