It’s been a while since PocketFives management has come out and made a statement about the state of affairs in online poker. We, like many of you, have been closely watching the many developments in the industry over the last several months and trying to make sense of it all. We’ve made several conclusions regarding the direction of the website. One of those conclusions is something we’re taking action on right away: for the time being, we have decided to stop promoting any traditional (rake-based) U.S.-facing poker rooms on PocketFives.com.As many of you also know, the P5s website, which was acquired by Protos Marketing in 2007, was recently turned back over to its original owners, leaving the site in the hands of Cal, Riley, and myself once again. While it's been quite a shake up in our lives over the last few months, at the end of the day, we are very happy to have our site back and be able to once again work with all of you and hopefully make a positive contribution to your lives.
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 P5s Rankings.
I’d like to be clear that this should not be taken as a denouncement of any U.S.-facing room specifically, nor as a statement regarding the trustworthiness of the rooms that have decided to continue offering their services to U.S. players. We at P5s have a great deal of respect for a number of these companies and the individuals behind them. That said, after seeing all the issues Full Tilt and UB/AP have had returning player funds, combined with the current difficulty in payouts for the sites that continue to serve U.S. players, we can’t in good faith continue to recommend playing real money games.
We at P5s do believe that there will be positive change in the future for U.S. players. Of course, we can’t say what will happen or when it will happen, but we think U.S. players who hang tough through all this will be rewarded down the road. It’s been a long and brutal stretch for poker players the last few years, but we are still seeing light at the end of the tunnel. For those of you who don’t want to wait for clarification on the situation in the U.S., we’re also soon launching a service that will help you relocate to a country where you can continue to play online poker more freely and easily.
We thank you all from our hearts that you’ve stuck with the site over the years, and we look forward to providing our members with new and better content as the months go on to help make your day go by a little faster.
Best Regards,
Adam and the P5s Team
