If you’re an American player who plays on the Everleaf Poker room, you have probably noticed that you can no longer access your account. If you haven’t logged into the poker room this week, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you can no longer access your account.
Blame Washington State. Well, blame Everleaf too. It was their business to understand the poker laws where they offer the game and it wasn’t like anyone following online poker over the last couple of years didn’t have ample opportunity to see that Washington State was a different state altogether when it came to poker.
Here’s the difference. Most states don’t have specific laws regarding online poker. This doesn’t necessarily make the game legal in those states, it’s just that they’ve let the Feds handle the situation. This doesn’t apply to Washington State. There is actually a law on the books there that makes online poker a felony offense. And they have shown every indication that they plan to continue enforcing that law.
Now the good news is that they haven’t actually been arresting poker players. Throwing someone’s granddad or grandma into prison for play penny poker online would probably make for very, very bad press. Instead, Washington State goes after the payment processor and seizes their funds. The processors usually forfeit the funds in exchange for not being prosecuted and thrown in jail. You might say Washington State holds the high card in these cases.
Well, Everleaf Poker was accepting players from Washington State, and one of their payment processors had funds seized. As a result, the site is no longer accepting US players and they have been shut out of their account. All US players, not just those from Washington. We don’t know where the situation will go from there, and everyone is waiting for statements from the poker room. If you are a US player with funds tied up in Everleaf Poker, I recommend that you do a google search on Everleaf under the news section. This will let you set up an alert for Everleaf that will drop news directly into your email. Because if they do allow players back in to cash out, you want to be notified right away.
