Absolute Poker geo-targeting finally works

Last week it was reported by Pokerscout.com, a leading online gaming traffic monitoring portal that Absolute Poker seems to be still accepting US players for real money games.

Absolute Poker is part of Caesars Entertainment Corp. that also operates Ultimate Bet. Both brands had their dot.com domains seized by the FBI on Black Friday events last month and had the US Department of Justice bring indictment against their founders and owners.

In addition the Costa Rican offices of Absolute Poker were raided at the beginning of the month, apparently looking for the owners of Absolute Poker although there is no indication that this action was requested by US authorities.

Absolute Poker eventually reached an agreement with the Department of Justice for the release of its dot.com domain in order to facilitate the release of US players' funds that were held by the poker rooms.

There is no indication that Absolute Poker has commenced the process of returning US poker players' funds, but they are not the only poker room to yet do so. So far only PokerStars returned players' funds to the tune of $100 million.

Another important stipulation of the agreement with the Department of Justice was to not resume accepting US players once the dot.com domains are released, which is why the news of Absolute Poker still accepting real money play from US players came as a shock.

However it is now reported that players were allowed in on real money games probably due to the fact that the geo-filtering and geo-blocking mechanisms only blocked players trying to reach the Absolute Poker software after the 15th April. Any player who downloaded the software prior to that was still able to play.

Jerry Bernstein, a lawyer with Blank Rome LLP that represents the poker room assured that "all measures have been taken to prevent US players from playing with real money."

Now it appears that the poker room has finally got its geo-blockers working for all US players and no real money play by US players is taking place at Absolute Poker.