The state of California has been making attempts to legalize the online poker activities as soon as possible and local authorities kept announcing that they are doing their best to accelerate the legislation process.
Meanwhile, executives of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel, a San Diego-based Native Indian Tribe, announced that they are to launch their online poker room regardless of authorities decision about legalizing the online poker.
That announcement made local communities angry as they regarded it as a way the tribe to gain some more popularity and violate the rules established.
However, it looks like things were serious as the tribe representatives said that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act regards the online poker as a Class II game or in other words, it is absolutely legal.
PrivateTable.com was supposed to be launched and the tribe officials defined it as an online poker room where everyone is free to play. They also added that the servers will be located at the Kahnawake Tribe lands, which was responsible for monitoring the poker room activities.
It appears that the launch of the website was a well-thought-out project as every detail has been taken into consideration. FinPay, a company that is relatively new on the market, was to be in charge of processing transactions.
Dobrosoft/IG Soft was supposed to supply the platform of the newly launched gaming website.
However, the initial plan was slightly amended. Instead of launching the site PrivateTable.com, the tribe changed its name to DesertRoseBingo.com.
Soon after the launch of the platform, Kamala Harris, California attorney general, managed to get a restraining order, issued against the website.
Later, California authorities concluded that the site is not compatible with the established gambling rules and regulations and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in particular.
Despite the attempts for releasing a poker website turned out to be useless, the bingo section the tribe manages is still fully operational and anticipating court’s final say.
Nevertheless, the actions taken by Santa Ysabel tribe raised some important questions. Market analysts were wondering how come a tribe that have been experiencing financial difficulties for months and that had to close its land-based casino, have succeeded in finding the money needed for launching a new website.
According to the attitudes of the local communities, poker players have to be thankful for the immediate interference of authorities and the closure of the site. Yet, tribe representatives did not give up and continued insisting on being provided with the right to run a “legal” poker website.
However, apart from being illegal on the territory of California, the poker website was not supposed to use the independent player verification and the licensed geolocation services, too.
