Wishing Everest Poker US Massive Success

Everest Poker is one of the largest online poker sites to have never targeted the US market. This puts them in great position to benefit when HR2267, or a similar bill, gets signed into law. If you’re not familiar with HR2267 this is a bill which passed the US House Representatives Financial Services Committee by a 41-22 vote in July 2010 that would introduce fully legal online poker that is licensed and regulated in the US. While it’s not exactly clear what this stipulation would mean, or if this is the final version of the bill that will get voted on by the full House, one amendment introduced by Congressman Brad Sherman, CA, that was approved late, inserts wording that sites that have intentionally broken Internet gaming laws cannot get a license to conduct business in the United States.

As you can read about on our page on poker laws, it’s not certain that even the standalone poker sites such as Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars have broken any laws. However, this is up for debate and when a US internet gaming commission is established, one would figure there will be red-tape involved for these companies. Everest Poker as a site that was never known for targeting American players, once again, one of the largest online poker sites to never have done so, who also explicitly forbade and blocked US players from real money play prior to UIGEA going into effect, likely has far less red tape to deal with. This could potentially allow Everest Poker a head start on the US market should they obtain a gambling site before their competitors.

At this current time, Everest Poker does not accept US players. Check out our top recommended poker sites for US poker players on our comprehensive poker sites reviews page. 

Everest Poker Helped Make Poker Global

If this does occur, it could not have happened to a more deserving company, one that has done more for expanding poker globally and, therefore, one for which we at US Poker Site are rooting. You see, as a late comer to the online poker market (2005), their parent company GigaMedia realized that the US market was already well established, and that there was also steep competition in other English-speaking markets. So, rather than compete with online giants, Everest Poker opted instead to invest similar amounts (of about equal proportion to the alternative) into bringing poker to the rest of the world. The first of these expenses was in creating the Internet’s first true multilingual online poker site. Here, players from all over the world could visit the Everest Poker website in their language of choice and download the software in that matching language or other languages. They were the first online poker site that was truly multilingual, and even their customer support was available in French, Japanese, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Spanish and several other languages. With the software in place, Everest poured massive marketing dollars into radio advertising in Germany, and also sponsored the largest French language poker portal and forums. It didn’t take long for French and German players to fill the tables and for the multilingual poker idea to catch on in the rest of the world. In September 2006, I personally joined Everest Poker and after making my first deposit I entered a $22 SNG. The reason I can remember this clearly is that I was literally blown away that in this nine player sit and go there were seven different countries represented.

Today players benefit from the “global poker boom” which has helped keep the games softer 24/7/365 due to diverse player bases. This effort that Everest Poker put in as an innovator and early pioneer of “global poker” is an effort their competitors now benefit from as well. With that, we wish them the best of luck in obtaining a gaming license, and actually are pulling for them to get a head start

Everest Poker Lucks Out?

In 2008 Everest Poker signed a four-year deal in which they replaced PartyPoker.com as the table sponsor for the World Series of Poker. Every WSOP table that has appeared on television in 2008, 2009 and 2010 (and this should continue in 2011) has the Everest Poker logo and website advertisement in plain view. The price Everest Poker got on this deal, while significant, was a major bargain if you factor in that poker would soon be available in the US. Their exposure in the US market, while also having a multi-global brand that has player traffic 24/7/365, should really help if and when they do start accepting US players.

It’s also worth noting that several of the big players in online gambling made offers to purchase Everest Poker over the years. Despite lucrative offers on the table, Everest Poker never entertained selling. Now in a prime position to be one of the first fully legal US poker sites, this turned out to have been an incredibly smart gamble.

We wish Everest Poker the best of success and look forward to playing US poker there in the near future.