While online poker rooms around the world are currently experiencing enormous growth one of the original poker sites is stepping away from the industry.
Ever since losing the rights to its domain name (Poker.com) in 2002, officials with LegalPlay Entertainment Inc. have been struggling to stay afloat in the competitive online poker market.
After switching its corporate name from Poker.com to LegalPlay, the company tried to differentiate itself by instituting a skill-based poker game.
With consumer demand for such a product lacking, the company decided last month to pull out of the interactive gaming space and turn their focus to mineral exploration.
President Mark Glusing said the decision was especially hard to make during the current boom of online poker sites. But the competition, he said, was too fierce, and after losing its main asset, the domain name, the company couldn't recover.
"We had the volume to be a successful player in the sector," Glusing said. "But things occurred, and assets of the company weren't protected, and I felt like I was getting on a three-legged horse."
Glusing was brought on board to the company after it had lost the right to the "poker.com" domain name.
Looking for ways to stay competitive, the executive team felt that a skill-based poker game that skirted federal gambling laws was the answer.
"I still think that is the right course of action," Glusing said. "But there is just no need for it right now because everyone is so successful without it."
He added, "With the WTO decision earlier this year and with it being an election year and a host of other factors, it became clear to us that it wasn't going to be as easy as we had expected for the government to regulate the industry."
LegalPlay on Monday announced its foray into the mineral exploration arena after signing a deal with Worldwide Silver and Gold Corp. to potentially acquire a stake in a copper project in Mexico. The mine potentially contains high grades of gold, copper and zinc, according to company statements. Financial terms of the deal weren't released.
In the meantime, both of the company's main sites, SkillPoker.com and LegalPlay.com, will remain operational. Glusing said the company's focus will not be on the poker system, but it will still be operational for those players that use it.
Nevertheless, the company is more than likely finished with online gaming regardless of the U.S. legal climate.
"I would rather sell the system than try to get it going again if the regulatory picture changes down the road," Glusing said. "We would be better off just selling it to someone who has the appetite for that."
The ideal buyer, he said, would be an operator with a large share of the U.S. market.
"I think it would be ideal for a PokerStars or Party Poker," he said. "It would be something they could get and then protect their market share whenever the government does decide to regulate it. If I were them, I would be offering me a lot of money for this system, but they don't see it that way."
The Domain Dispute
The timing of the domain name dispute couldn't have been worse--right at the beginning of the online poker boom.
Then president of Poker.com, Michael Jackson, said the company learned in December 2002 that the group that owned the domain, ALA Corp., had given Aztec Riches Casino, an online casino, the rights to use of it.
The redirection happened overnight without any advanced warning. Adding another fold to the controversy was the fact that Poker.com was in the process of renegotiation its monthly fee for use of the domain name. ALA said it gave the domain name to Aztec Riches because it could command a higher monthly fee than what Poker.com was paying.
The ownership of the domain name was later transferred to Communications Services Inc., which announced that the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, an arbitrator for ICANN, had ruled that Poker.com has no compliant.
Glusing said CPR ruled that Poker.com's dispute is not with Communications Services. He added that the dispute is still unsettled, but acknowledged that the case is now more about getting
repercussions for the business than it is getting the rights back to the domain name.