Planet Poker just threw in the towel

[Insp. Clue!So?]

Just received this email from what was, once, the Party Poker of it's time:

"After 9 years in business, Planet Poker has made the difficult decision to cease real money operations. Management regrets this decision but the impact of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in the U.S. leaves no reasonable alternative.

During the past several months, Planet Poker explored every reasonable option to continue real money operations. This included working with other cardrooms and ecommerce processors to find solutions to the issues existing in the industry today. Unfortunately, no viable solution surfaced.

As always, your funds are safe and secure at Planet Poker. We are pleased to announce that we have made arrangements to allow players to transfer remaining funds from Planet Poker to another cardroom. Please sign into Planet Poker and select the "Transfer Now" button to start the transfer process. Alternatively, you may elect to cashout remaining funds via the Cashier page.

Real money tables and tournaments will continue at Planet Poker through to 31 March 2007, but effective immediately you can no longer make a deposit.

Please click here for complete information regarding this announcement.

Thank you for your support during the past 9 years. We recommend that you transfer your funds to another cardroom so you can continue to play for real money.

Planet Poker will continue to offer you the best "Play for fun" poker on the internet and hope to see you frequently at our tables. We hope to return to real money operations when the legal climate is clearer.

We wish you the best of luck and hope your online poker playing continues to be enjoyable.

Planet Poker Management"

[pokerchap]

whats planet poker?

[cardcounter0]

What will happen to my 9000 planet points?
[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]
Sad. Might make an interesting study in how not to let your business prosper.

[Death Valley]

My first poker site [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[RGL]

The 1st big poker site until someone hacked it and could read cards. They never recovered.

[Broke Rounder]

So no more real money for everyone, correct? Not just US players. This is really sad, seriously. I used to play at Planet Poker and Poker.com (the real poker.com that a lot of you dont remember) a lot. I'm gonna miss you Plantet. RIP

[KotOD]

<i>As always, your funds are safe and secure at Planet Poker. We are pleased to announce that we have made arrangements to allow players to transfer remaining funds from Planet Poker to another cardroom. Please sign into Planet Poker and select the "Transfer Now" button to start the transfer process. Alternatively, you may elect to cashout remaining funds via the Cashier page.</i>

It's Bodog and the transfer gets you a 10% bonus.

[TruePoker CEO]

I think that Randy Blum was a real pioneer in this industry. planet was one of two rooms open when I first played online .... The other was Paradise.

[Matt24]

a sad day for me. Planet Poker was huge in building my bankroll to what it is today. I crushed the 20/40 games when they were running 7-10 handed a lot back late 04 and early 05. I was earning 80% rakeback for most of it and then 60% for my latter days there. I sent many emails to mgt about improving the site but they didn't seem interested

[Cooling Heels]

I certainly miss Planet Poker as the games played 7 years ago. They were my second site, after Delta. I just checked my account page and saw that I registered in August, 1999, so they were around for a long time.

Planet had very good non Hold Em games 7 years ago, and a lucrative bonus promotion every Christmas season. It's too bad they never improved the lousy software, and too bad they quit promoting and advertising. If you ever checked out the games, it's always the same players. The recent fiasco with no method for players to cashout was the nail in the coffin.

They had a good run though, and who can forget that silly $25 Pot Limit Draw game....