Delaware’s Online Poker Off To Slow Start

Last Friday, Delaware launched its online casino games and poker product and in so doing became the second state in the US after Nevada to offer online gambling. Now people within the state’s borders can legally gamble on state-sanctioned games hosted on the website’s of Delaware’s three casinos, namely Delaware Park, Dover Downs and Harrington Raceway.
High-profile gambling websites operator 888 is behind the software, which offers games such as slots, roulette and blackjack, as well as online poker with cash game stakes up to $2-$4 and sit-and-gos as high as $100.
Less than a week later, however, and Delaware’s fledgling online poker offering is off to a slow start with PokerScout reporting a peak of just 36 cash game players since its launch. Granted, with a population of around 900,00 Delaware’s player pool is bound to be limited, but it’s still fair to assume that the state was expecting a lot more online poker players to make their way to the sites’ virtual felts.
Apparently, one of the reasons for the especially low turn out is due to geolocation problems whereby some Delaware residents are having their IP addresses improperly tracked and thus apparently being denied access to the online gambling sites. Nevertheless, early indications show that Delaware is seriously considering a partnership deal to combine player pools with Nevada and eventually New Jersey. As Delaware Lottery Director Vernon Kirk, explains:
“We have had conversations with both states, and it’s a little bit too early in the process to project how that is going to work out. My guess is that, certainly with Nevada, they are definitely anxious to compact with us, and us to them likewise. Once we get up and running we will be pursuing that more aggressively. Right now we are just concentrating on getting our site up. But that will be one of the very first steps we take after launch.”