[jrz1972]

[ QUOTE ]
So let's review people's possible views on this topic:

a) There's got to be a way and I just know that somebody will step forward with a plan.

b) If there's a way around this then let's hear it but until then I'm going to assume that the funding picture for online poker sites looks pretty bleak.

Which one has any sense of logic to it?

[/ QUOTE ]

Both do.

I'll admit that I did not see the ACH thing coming. Knowing everything that's happened in the past couple of weeks, I'd now say there's something like a 10%-15% chance that Stars/FT come up empty and US players are left with no particularly great way to fund their accounts or cash out. (I agree that phone cards and the like don't qualify as a good money management system). After UIGEA was passed, I would have put that probability at more like ~1%, so I agree that things look bleaker than they did.

But on the other hand, Stars and FT stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars from Americans. It seems to me that Lee Jones et al are prefectly happy to live the rest of their lives without setting foot on American soil ever again. As long as they're careful, I'm still willing to bet that they can find some like-minded folks that have access to the financial system who are happy to pick up a piece of this action. Unfortunately for Americans, those "like-minded folks" aren't going to be publicly-traded, regulated firms like Neteller. They're going to be shady and semi-anonymous, like if Neteller were run by Prima. But still it will be workable.