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The latest effort by an American entrepreneur to circumvent U.S. gambling laws has been a real grind!
That effort is a new, supposedly legal online poker room that's based in the U.S. and is called Grrrinders (www.grrrinders.com).
The room is the brainchild of creator David Webb, a poker pro who's had limited success on the felt and has now turned his love of the game toward the Internet.
The concept is simple: You pay a monthly fee of $25 to join the website and in return you can play in free poker tournaments which offer cash prizes.
Since you are not risking any money to gamble, the site is technically not a gambling site and therefore may operate from the U.S. (in this case Reno, Nevada) and accept U.S. customers and allow them to use credit cards to pay for memberships.
However, the concept of these so-called "legal" online poker rooms has never been tested in a court of law in the U.S., so it's not really known for sure if they are indeed legal or are just lucky that the law hasn't caught up with them yet.
Grrrinders will have several competitors in the market.
Other online poker rooms run by Americans from the U.S. and using the same business model as Grrrinders include Triple Jack (www.triplejack.com), Pure Play (www.pureplay.com) and Club WPT (www.clubwpt.com).
Two others, Spade Club and Zosoz, went out of business while a third, Club Bluff, merged with Club WPT.
Hopefully for Webb, his efforts at being an Internet poker entrepreneur will pay off better than his efforts at being a professional poker player.
According to official tournament records, the 50-year-old Reno resident has won a total of just $32,175 in his career playing live tournament poker.
By Tom Somach
Gambling911.com Staff Writer
tomsomach@yahoo.com
