This week’s poker news gets going with headlines out of Illinois. Could they be the next state to legalize online poker? We take a closer look.
Illinois Submits Online Poker Bill
Now that bill HB 3142 has been filed, we could be seeing online poker get legalized in the state of Illinois soon. The bill, which was first submitted by Rep. Bob Rita and co-founded by Rep. Jonathan Carroll, has been labeled it as the Internet Gaming Act and it would allow any racetrack or casino to offer up to three platforms for online gaming.
If passed, Illinois would become the seventh state to legalize online poker, trailing Nevada, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Delaware. West Virginia was also able to legalize it back in 2019 but the state has yet to even launch a market for it.
All operators in the state of Illinois will be charged a whopping $500,000 for a license along with an additional $250,000 for renewal. The bill makes it clear that all of the funds collected from any type of internet gaming would go straight into the state gaming fund. The bill is in the early stages of its life cycle after being referred to the Rules Committee, the full vote will take place if it passes there.
Full Tilt Poker Has Been Shutdown
The platform called Full Tilt Poker has now been shut down. Don’t be alarmed, though, as all of the funds remaining will be moved over to PokerStars. Full Tilt Poker will be closing their desktop and mobile versions as well.
A long time ago during the poker boom, Full Tilt Poker was arguably the most popular online poker sites in the world and even rostered a number of top players such as Phil Ivey and Erick Lindgren. Sadly, the company realized that they weren’t able to play its players account balances a few years ago. It was then that Poker Hall of Fame nominee Isai Scheinberg had been able to work out a deal that would allow PokerStars to purchase the company for $547 million. It was also included in the deal that PokerStars would pay the players what they were owed as well.
This deal was struck back in 2014 with PokerStars not owning Full Tilt past 2016. The company moved over to The Stars Group, which in 2020 was bought by Flutter Entertainment. Flutter is now deciding to shut the company and all of its operations down for good and migrate the players to PokerStars.
Card Player Poker Tour Venetian Main Event Comes To A Close
Ankush Mandavia is a little bit richer after the 2021 Card Player Poker Tour Venetian $2,500 buy-in no-limit hold’em main event. Mandavia managed to outlast a field of 652 entries to win first place the largest chunk of the $1,467,000 prize pool.
He took home $260,000 for his first-place finish, marking this event down as his fifth highest recorded tournament score. His lifetime earnings are now slightly below $5.4 million.
Cash wasn’t the only thing that he was awarded with in this event as he picked up 1,260 Card Player Player of the Year points. That number of points was able to launch him into fourth place in the current POY standings just two months in.