GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 27 - February 2014

- 3:45 p.m. - The podcast ended and I went back to the laptop. This time, I was unable to get verified by any of the sites. I wasn’t even able to access Ultimate Casino’s server, much less enter the playing lobby. In fact, I couldn’t even get back into Ultimate Casino for the rest of the weekend. - 4 p.m. - I called it a day. At this point, I didn’t even know what to make of New Jersey’s online casinos. I had about $30 in profit but had been kicked out of three tourna- ments. My presence in New Jersey was confirmed by the geolocators, and then they suddenly weren’t able to confirm my location. It was as if my IP had been changing periodically throughout the day. If I had never been allowed access, it would have made more sense. This was just troubling. Thursday, Nov. 28, 11:30 a.m. I woke up and spent Thanksgiving with my family like a normal person. I didn’t even bother to check how the sites were doing. Even degenerates like me need days off. Friday, Nov. 29, 8 a.m. I came out of my food coma and gave it another shot. I decided to try Party, Ultimate and Caesars again to see if their issues had been fixed. Party, like clock- work, verified and unverified me all day long. Caesars was unable to verify my lo- cation and Ultimate’s servers were down. I then made accounts at 888 Casino and TropicanaCasino.com, but the geoloca- tion process was unable to confirm that I was in New Jersey. - 11 a.m. - The only site that let me play all morn- ing was PartyPoker, and even they were sporadic. I busted my $30 roll by mess- ing around in $0.25/$0.50 pot-limit Omaha and decided enough was enough for the weekend. I drove back to Boston the next morning. Tuesday, Dec. 3 According to the Press of Atlantic City , roughly 12 percent of people attempting to gamble online in New Jersey during the first week were wrongly blocked from play. I’m glad I was not alone, I guess. Tuesday, Dec. 10 Online Poker Report’s Steve Ruddock published an article about some of the geolocation issues going on in New Jersey during the state’s first two weeks in busi- ness. He interviewed Matthew Katz, the CEO of CAMS, a player verification firm conducting geolocation for the Trump and the Borgata’s websites. In the article, Katz explained that the New Jersey Department of Gaming Enforcement’s (DGE) preference for the online casinos to have Wi-Fi plug-ins is a matter of liability for the casinos. “There are calculated decisions being made to mitigate liability for our clients against people illegally accessing their sites by people outside of New Jersey (such as New York or Pennsylvania),” Katz told Ruddock. Katz noted that it was intentional for play- ers near the border, like me, to experi- ence geolocation issues during the initial launch, but assured Ruddock that CAMS was working to improve their system. Friday, Dec. 27 My wife and I returned to my parents’ house to celebrate the winter holidays. It had been a month since I was last in New Jersey, and last attempted to gamble on- line, and I was eager to see if anything had changed on the geolocation front. To my surprise, I had zero issues all weekend. I was able to seamlessly log on and get verified by both PartyPoker and Ultimate Casino. It happened quickly and painlessly, and I was able to play un- interrupted all weekend. Apparently, the online casinos have been able to work out most of the kinks with their geolocation issues. And let me tell you: Playing online poker again, safely and securely, is one of the greatest feel- ings a guy could ask for. I’m eager to see what lies ahead in the coming months and years. Will New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware, or two of the three, begin to share liquidity? Will New Jersey’s players join with the mas- sive international player pools? At this point, it seems that online gam- bling for the people of New Jersey can only get better. Monday, Jan. 6 The total number of accounts made since New Jersey launched regulated online gambling has reached 148,487, accord- ing to the DGE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dan Podheiser is the Associate Editor of the GPWA. He has fol- lowed the online poker industry closely for the past 10 years, and played consistently on U.S.-friendly sites prior to Black Friday. 27 Online gaming in the USA: In New Jersey is all about location – geolocation