America’s ‘First Legal’ Online Poker Site Goes Live

America’s “first legal” online poker set is going live today.

The site was made possible thanks to the LasVegas legislature rushing through a bill that
made it possible to play online poker inside the state borders.
It didn’t take all that long for a company to find a way to take advantage of the bill,
and Ultimate Poker wins the race to be the first real money gambling site on the web.

Not surprisingly, Ultimate Poker is run by two casino entrepreneurs Frank and Lorenzo
Fertitta. If anyone is going to know how to put together a legal gambling site on the ‘net, it
would be someone that already has a long history in the market.

While this is the first site to pop up since Nevada passed their legislation, there are others
that are simply trying to get off the ground.

America’s first legal online poker site will most likely soon by joined by the Gibraltar
based 888. That firm actually got their license to have a gambling website first but has had
problems getting the site going.

Internet gambling had long had a “wink-wink, nod-nod” relationship with law enforcement
officials in the United States. It was never really legal but it was seemingly tolerated by the
government.

That changed in 2011 when the Justice Department cracked down on sites that were doing
business with people living inside the United States.

That move seemingly sparked web gambling advocates to look for a way to actually make
the past time legal and found that a good first step was to go state by state.

Other states, like New Jersey have been giving bills like the one passed in Nevada a good
long look. One has to think that if enough states make that move that a national referendum
could be in the offing.