[Ignignokt]

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Party's original success was attracting US players to their poker room. For the last two years they have been slowly exposing poker players to their casino games and integrating the casino site with the poker site. The line has blurred between casino games and poker at Party. For legal/moral issues requiring a distinction between poker and casino games, this is unfortunate.

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But completely planned - Party saw its poker revenues flattening, and as a publicly traded company it required increased revenues to help keep the stock price up. But they still haven't completely merged their poker and casino sites, so it's not irreversible, if they don't want it to be.

(BTW, my theory on the Party pull-out: prelude to a formal protest with an eye on stronger WTO action/sanctions.)

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Are sites that offer gaming in addition to poker in a more difficult position (Party)? Should these sites do more to segregate poker from other gaming?

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I think it has been shown that this is so (recent high-profile arrests of offshore gaming execs). Sports bookmaking in particular has clear legal precedent for arrest and prosecution. You can argue about the Wire Act's application to poker, but not about its application to sports books.

Yet this causes a dilemma - you-know-who's well-known rantings about China notwithstanding, the poker boom in most of the world can't last forever. It may have already peaked. In any case, it will ebb and flow in the future - not a good forecast for a business if it wants to go public at any point. The natural way to help bridge those peaks is to offer a variety of gaming.

So maintaining a poker-only site may be better for legal reasons, but not so good for profitability.