Poker Stars Late Arrival in New Jersey a A Blessing In Disguise

It is more than two years since New Jersey coordinated the launch of the online gambling industry. Now PokerStars has at last been able to join their iGaming brethren to launch their online poker platform in the Garden State.

What would at first seem to be an extreme disadvantage for the PokerStars site, as they are entering into an already well established market - two years after the fact - may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for them, This is because PokerStars has now avoided all of the early issues that has plagued the New Jersey market.

“PokerStars will be getting a free ride.”

These are the words used by the former bwin.party Director of Poker Jeffrey Haas, The “free ride” comment aimed at describing the advantages that PokerStars would have because they re entering the New Jersey online gaming market after the many kinks had been worked out. Mr Hass said that they had got the systems (the KYC, geolocation, and the payment processing) up to speed and that it is a much smoother process.

It took about a year for the New Jersey Gaming Enforcement to approve PokerStars’ license, and thereafter a further six months before the site was launched (it launched on March 16).

The reputation of all of New Jersey’s online gaming sites took a hit due to the early problems (some self-inflicted and some unavoidable) the industry faced. Part of the problem was New Jersey’s very aggressive nine month timeline from the passage of their online gambling law to launch that caused a whole lot of headaches.

Geolocation in New Jersey was difficult in the early months which had many false-negatives (about 5%). Geolocation also suffered due to its overall effectiveness and multi-layered approach, thus players with weak wifi signals or turned off were greeted with messages that they couldn’t be located and they were unable log on to the licensed state’s online gambling sites. The geolocation system were reading that players weren't located in New Jersey, an some were only a few feet from the actual server.

At the launch of the industry credit card approvals were in the single digits, and without alternative funding options players were frustrated not being able to fund their accounts. Because of the timeline of the launch the DGE had little little opportunity for fully testing and approving software features, so the first movers had to launch with the bare-bones which were stripped-down versions of their software.

PokerStars reality

PokerStars have come in without any of the problems the other sites had to deal with. Over the past two years all of the above problems were worked out and greatly improved placed PokerStars to seem like the first company with its act together.

The Bottom line

As long as PokerStars takes care of its business, it’s expected that they will have a lot of success in New Jersey compared to the first movers who came in and faced the problems.