On April 15, 2011, the U.S. attorney charged 11 managers of the three largest online poker companies in the United States, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and the Cereus Network (consisting of UB.com (formerly known as Ultimate Bet) and Absolute Poker) with
- bank fraud
- illegal gambling offenses
- laundering of billions of US-$ in illegal gambling proceeds
At the same time, the FBI seized the domain names PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com and three other domains. While some of us were hoping that online poker will soon become legal in the U.S., right now the opposite has happened. For U.S. players, it is not possible anymore to play real money poker games on Stars, Full Tilt, Absolute and UB. So where should U.S. players do now? There are alternatives to PokerStars and Full Tilt, which were not effected by this measure by the FBI. However, it is unclear if these alternative sites will face the same fate as Stars and Full Tilt. And as these two poker sites were by far the largest ones in the world (PokerStars had a 40% global market share and Full Tilt 20%), the alternatives we present are only for low to medium stakes players. Poker professionals from the U.S. who were used to playing 20 tables simultaneously, or who were playing on high stakes tables, will find that these alternatives are no “real” options for them, as the traffic on the higher stakes is just too low to continue their job as if nothing would have happened. For those high stakes professionals, it is probably best to either just wait and make a break or to move to a country outside the U.S. to play online poker there.
Best PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker Alternatives for U.S. Players
At the time of writing, it was still possible to sign up and play on the following two websites, which for recreational poker players from the U.S. are the best alternatives to Stars and Full Tilt:
Alternative 1: Cake Poker
Cake Poker was already founded in 2004 and is part of the Cake Network with over 30 independent skins like Power Poker and Players Only Poker. Thanks to this network effect, there are enough players online during day and nighttime. Another advantage compared to Full Tilt or PokerStars are the juicy games. There are far less professionals playing at Cake Poker, making it much easier to make a profit from playing online poker there. Furthermore, the bonus of 600$ can be cleared in simple 5$ steps, and you have 90 days for clearing it.
Click here to sign-up at Cake Poker now! And get the VIP bonus of 600$ by entering the bonus code SNGPOKER!
Alternative 2: Carbon Poker
As a part of the Merge Gaming network, Carbon Poker is another good alternative for U.S. players who used to play at PokerStars or Full Tilt. That network consists of over 60 different poker sites. Even though the number of players is still lower than at Full Tilt Poker, you will find enough games there to multitable up to the medium stakes.
The conditions to clear the bonus are also fair, as the bonus is released small 5$ increments.
Click here to sign-up at Carbon Poker now! – no bonus code necessary to get the maximum bonus of 600$!
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It seems they switched the main sites to fulltilpoker.co.uk and pokerstars.eu, the software also has been updated to block deposits from US players temporarily.
Yes, Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars temporarily switched to domains as their .com domains were not accessible anymore. In the meantime, the have received their .com domains back in order to enable their US players to cashout their money.