Playersonly Poker and Sportsbook.com Shut US Operations

Following the withdrawal of PokerStars, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker from the USA, two of the biggest poker rooms still serving American players have also announced that they too would soon be exiting the USA online poker market.
Sportsbook and PlayersOnly are both located on the Merge Poker Network, which last week alone saw its traffic increase by 31% in the wake of ‘Black Friday.’
Click here for poker rooms still accesping US players.
Together, these two companies have been reaping the lion’s share of new US sign-ups since 15th April, but it may well be that the large volume of extra business is what has now persuaded the two poker rooms to refuse any new American players.
In actual fact, last week business was booming to such an extent that these companies even felt compelled to issue a message to their industry partners which stated:
“Affiliates and advertisers, please do not send us any more players, we can’t handle the traffic. I’ve never seen anything like this before, we literally can’t take on any more players at such a fast pace.”
All the extra traffic as well as any unwelcome attention from the Department Of Justice at a sensitive time in US online poker history may have combined to persuade Sportsbook and PlayersOnly to put a cap on their activities.
Consequently, from May 1st, 2011, Sportsbook and PlayersOnly have announced that no new US players will be accepted, although all indications so far is that US players already signed-up at the sites will be able to continue playing as usual.
This will all come as a further blow to US online poker as Sportsbook.com and PlayersOnly used to attract an inflow of fish at the low to mid stakes level. However, the dynamic of these poker room is now likely to change dramatically as the well runs dry of new, inexperienced players thus forcing grinders to try and eek out a living against each other.
In the meantime, there is just less than a week left now before Sportsbook.com or Playersonly.com finally reach their May 1st deadline.