In an interview with eGaming Review that was published on Friday, South Point CEO Michael Gaughan said his casino will have a leg up on the competition when it comes to launching a real money online poker room in Nevada. The state, which is busy doling out licenses for real money online poker operators, will reportedly grant South Point's license in August.According to EGR, if South Point's license is approved next month, it could be just a matter of weeks before the casino launches a real money online poker room: "South Point's gaming system has already been approved by an independent testing laboratory, meaning it can go live as soon as it is licensed to do so." Its target date is sometime in September.
EGR added that Gaughan is still working on several facets of the site, including payment processing, but he told the U.K. news outlet, "We're finishing up our second wave of testing and so far no problems. I may not be the biggest or the best, but hopefully I'll have a head start by two or three months." It was initially thought that licensed online poker rooms in Nevada would not start popping up until early 2013.
Interestingly, South Point has teamed with a Las Vegas businessman to create a brand new online poker platform. It works with Zen Entertainment on a free play site, but Gaughan called that software "complicated and hard to download," according to EGR. The CEO himself revealed that after poor sign-up numbers, he "lost interest in it when it didn’t grow as fast as I thought it would."
South Point's free play site launched last October and offered $100,000 in cash and prizes every month, including seats to the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event. Registration was open to players outside of Nevada. Gaughan told the Associated Press at the time that opening a free play site was the "first step in being ahead of the pack if Federal or state lawmakers decide to explicitly allow casinos to operate internet poker."Over on Two Plus Two, posters bantered over how competitive a legal online poker room in Nevada could be. Would high rake prevent some players from participating or would tie-ins with casinos help draw customers? "I'll take bad rake and pay taxes rather than risk my bankroll daily with these sites that provide shitty CS, slow payments, and poor rulings," wrote one player. "You won't be disappointed unless you're a huge fish."
Others on Two Plus Two questioned the liquidity a Nevada-only site would have considering that South Point's online poker room would, in some respects, be competing head-to-head with live card rooms. In this camp was one poker player who argued, "I bet there is no way this site will have any more than 3,000 people online at a time. People in Las Vegas or close to it are going to want to play live. People traveling to Vegas will play live."
Whether that sentiment will hold water remains to be seem. Players must be located within the borders of Nevada in order to compete for real money.
In recent weeks, Nevada gaming officials have awarded a number of licenses, including recommending Bally Technologies and IGT. According to EGR, "30 gaming operators and service providers have applied for licenses in Nevada, including the likes of Caesars, Boyd Gaming, and MGM Resorts." Recently, Kentucky-based Churchill Downs Incorporated, which runs the racetrack of the same name in Louisville and owns Bluff Media, applied for a license in Nevada.Gaughan added that if all goes to plan, South Point would forge a presence elsewhere as well: "At the end of the year, it will be a full blown site in Nevada. Then, we'll try and go into the other states where it is legal and do some contracts there."
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