PocketFives.com, one of the most popular destinations for poker players on the internet, announced on Tuesday that it would no longer promote online poker rooms that still accept customers from the United States.
In a statement post on the site, PocketFives co-founder Adam Small wrote, in part:
“We’re planning a lot of positive changes to the community, and our plan is to bring more interesting offers and content than ever before for both our U.S. and non-U.S. visitors. However, that content will not in any way be geared towards promoting play on poker sites that offer real money, rake-based play to people in the United States. We will still, of course, continue to cover industry developments and news that’s relevant to our members regarding those sites, and players’ results will continue to be counted in the PocketFives.com Rankings.”
He continued:
“I’d like to be clear that this should not be taken as a denouncement of the U.S.-facing rooms nor as a statement regarding the safety and/or trustworthiness of the rooms that have decided to continue offering their services to U.S. players. Our decision is much more based on the state of the industry and the developments we’ve seen since April. We simply do not feel comfortable continuing to recommend real money online poker to our U.S.-based members based on what we perceive to be a heightened level of risk.”
In an interesting development, Small revealed that his site is getting ready to launch a service that will aid U.S. poker players in establishing residence in an online poker-friendly country so that they can continue to play.
PocketFives was founded in early 2005 by the trio of Small, Cal Spears, and Riley Bryant, putting its stamp on the poker industry by developing its closely followed online tournament rankings. The industry’s go-to rankings combine a sliding points scale bases on tourney results with peer-based voting to determine the world’s best online tournament players. Many of today’s young televised tournament stars first became known in internet circles in part because of their standing in the PocketFives rankings. The site is also home to one of the most trafficked poker forums on the internet.
In 2007, PocketFives joined up with Protos Marketing, parent company of such industry leaders as PokerSource.com, TheNuts.com, and PokerBonuses.com, and former owner of PokerNewsDaily.com. In May of this year, the two companies decided to separate. On the split, Small said, “I came to Protos Marketing as a result of this partnership, and I have nothing but great things to say about the professionalism the company has shown toward PocketFives.com throughout the relationship.”
Small had been serving both as CEO of Protos Marketing and as one of the heads of PocketFives, but will now step down from his post at Protos in order to devote his full efforts to the site he co-founded. Co-founder Cal Spears, who had been out of the online poker industry for a few years, has also returned to PocketFives.