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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

April 10, 2004

File corrected 4/26/04

Just Who Owns Online Poker Anyhow?

Reading an industry-type newsletter recently, I saw something that hinted the newsletter owners might have some financial interest in an online poker room -- not as in affiliation but as in ownership. The wording of the ad prompted me to wonder if this company does own a piece of an online poker room. More than that, the wording caused me wonder who the heck owns these cyber rooms anyhow!

So I took one example -- the one that aroused my interest to begin with -- and checked the page for ownership information. The search led me to just one option, the "about us" link, which I followed. This link did not reveal the name of the site owner but it did provide four additional links that would, it stated, prove their commitment to excellence.

I started at the bottom of the list, a hyperlink to http://www.kahnawake.com/gamingcommission/, where it states, "The Commission is empowered to regulate and control gaming and gaming related activities conducted within and from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake in accordance with the highest principles of honesty and integrity."

So does this mean the company is owned by the Mohawk tribe?

Following the Mohawk trail, we had to skim past the language barrier to find a phone number and email contact, both of which indicate the site come to the Web from Canada. But that doesn't mean this poker room we're looking at belongs to the Mohawks. It simply means they endorse it -- and numerous others that can be found in their drop-down menu -- with some kind of license.

Next stop Thawte. Neither an owner nor a vested interest, Thawte is simply a body that verifies a Web site's security system. The amount of information available here is the organization name and country the organization claims as home ground (in this case Costa Rica). Not that it matters but Thawte's corporate office is located in Cape Town, South Africa.

On to BMM, the next banner, the actual site being http://www.bmm.com.au/index.htm. Before checking out the information under this URL, I read the pop-up, which shows that BMM "conducted an evaluation of the cards dealt by the Internet poker room software developed by (site name)" -- a year and a month ago. The pop-up provided a link that said I could view the statistics at the BMM site but the link didn't connect to anything. I did not have to search further to uncover the fact that BMM is located in Australia (AU).

Finally, the site lists a 24-hour support link that can be contacted via email.

So the trail starts where? Canada? Costa Rica? Australia? South Africa? Hungary? (Oh, yes, I did discover a significant Hungarian connection during the search.) But where it starts doesn't matter. Where does it end? That matters. Who does own this particular poker site where people from all over the world, including several well-known poker names, are paying to play and getting paid to shill?

Domain registration, by the way, does not list an individual but a company with a post office box in one of the countries already listed here.

Now I trust many of my friends in the poker industry -- players I've known personally for years. But I'm not even sure these people know who they are dealing with when they agree to a paycheck for hyping a site or how reliable they are.

Let's say you are going to the Luxor in Las Vegas tonight to play some poker. You are buying checks that can be converted to cash as long as the Luxor is in business, and beyond that in some cases. These checks can also be sold or traded (collectibles) so they have tangible value. When you are finished playing, you go straight to the cage and cash in. Now you have good old folding money -- legal tender that you can spend anywhere and anyhow you like. You're not going to worry about who provides the checks in the first place because owners of the Luxor are available almost instantly. It's public record. And the casino/hotel's Web site lists phone numbers and email addresses. And you know they are governed by some extremely strict rules and regulations.

I know who owns the bank where I do business. Their "contact us" link lists names, addresses and phone numbers. We know the exact location of Gambler's Book Shop -- their address, phone and fax numbers appear on practically every page of their site. Even the magazine cited in the opening of this article prominently lists ownership and live-person contact information.

Skeptics with a long memory might recall that a sports book in Las Vegas was closed by some agency without so much as a warning, even to the point that folks were sending money across the counters to ticket writers while the agency was in the backroom counting down the cash before locking the doors. Few of the people who had money on account ever saw any of it when the dust settled. But the land-based segment of the gambling industry at least lets everyone know who owns what. If that sports book owner tried to get back into business after leaving his customers high and dry, he'd be laughed out of town.

If this same cyber card room, which in one recent 24-hour period had part of $44 million in action, decided to take a hike, who would ensure players they'd get their deposit money back? And as unrealistic it is to assume that positive result could happen, even worse, who could guarantee that this same individual, group of individuals, or company or company offshoot wouldn't just move across the water to country and set up shop again?

So maybe this is overreaching for something to write about. Probably everything is just peachy. We certainly hope it is ... but hope aside, we'd still like to know who owns online poker.

The search will continue.