YouTube Republish Poker Videos

YouTube restored Jaime Staples’ videos and removed the strike on Gripsed Poker but not everybody was as lucky. 

After we originally reported on the wave of video removals and strikes to poker channels, YouTube gave a strike to Gripsed Poker, a free poker school. It was soon discovered that the links and calls to action to join poker sites were the problem. 

Promoting “online casinos” is against YouTube’s rules and they see little to no difference between a casino and a poker room. However, this was done without any of the warnings that the YouTube rules specify.

Pleading poker YouTube’s case, Jaime Staples reached out and was eventually successful in getting channels restored, you can read his full statement below.

Soon after, poker YouTubers saw their videos restored and Gripsed Poker reported that YouTube removed the strikes on their channel. But celebrations of the averted "Pokerpocalypse” were premature, as other channels still had an uncertain future. 

When asked about his channel, Spanish poker YouTuber Elias Gutierrez revealed that he still had a strike on his channel. When I asked why his channel wasn’t spared like the others, he said: 

“I made the appeal, but still no answer.”

It seems that YouTube only helped those channels that Jaime personally brought to their attention, while lesser known and non-English speaking channels were completely ignored. 

While in situations like this many bring up the old adage of “putting all your eggs in one basket”, YouTube has a virtual monopoly on online video. There really isn’t another basket.  This serves as a grim reminder that there’s still a lot of work to do in normalizing poker as a game of skill.