Amaya Continues Grey Market Withdrawal: Ongame Network Follows in PokerStars Footsteps

The withdrawal of PokerStars from numerous grey markets was big news last week, as many players were denied the ability to play on the world’s largest room in a clean-up process that happened within just couple of hours. Now the Ongame Network is following the same suit withdrawing their real-money offering from numerous countries belonging to the ‘grey’ market category.

Ongame Network was acquired by the Amaya group in 2012 in a transaction worth nearly €25 million. Things haven’t changed much across the network since the acquisition, but this latest move shows just how serious Amaya are about getting their ducks in the row and maximizing the odds of entering the regulated US market.

Much like with PokerStars, there weren’t any early warnings for the players, who were simply notified by a pop-up at the login that they were no longer allowed to participate in the real money games. Although there wasn’t much of the warning, Ongame players from the countries that have been banned by PokerStars and Full Tilt earlier could have fully expected this development. Unlike PokerStars, this will not influence too many players on the Ongame Network, which is much smaller in comparison.

The list of countries is the same like the one for Stars, including countries like Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Nigeria, UAE and many more (the full list can be found in our earlier article). While this move alone will not have particular influence on the majority of worldwide players’ pool, the writing is on the wall.

Amaya seems to be very keen on disassociating themselves from any and all markets where things are unclear on the online poker regulation front and this causes concern from players from numerous countries, as poker regulation is simply not the top priority (or even close to it) for many territories where coming up with more pressing regulations takes precedence.

While poker community anxiously awaits the next move from the Amaya Group, we can all just hope that they will not go too far with this and that at least countries without laws prohibiting online poker in any way will be safe for now. Otherwise, the number of countries left without a favorite pastime of many (and a profession of quite a few) could go into a three-digit territory. If countries don’t care enough to try and regulate it, neither should Amaya.