Online Poker Vpn Americans Abroad
My friend Michael who lives in Japan asked me to write VPN poker because he keeps getting asked about this topic and he’s getting tired of answering the same question over and over. Michael is an American who relocated overseas pre-UIGEA for school and work and much like myself he knows all too well how difficult it is to establish yourself overseas.
How to use a VPN to unblock poker sites. Many poker rooms limit players based on their location, which is determined by their IP address. A great example is the US, though there are other countries that have banned online gaming. For people who enjoy it as a relaxing hobby it may not really matter as there are free online rooms that.
- Honduras is in Central America. After Haiti, Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Central America. Every year many Hondurans emigrate abroad, mainly to the USA. Due to the lack of domestic economic impulses, there is no improvement in the economy or a reduction in poverty in sight.
- How to watch CBC Player outside Canada. The term VPN sounds more technical and scary than it is. Basically it is a small program that runs on your computer or app for your tablet or phone that takes away any set-up or complicated use.
- Playing Poker Via A VPN - Virtual Private Network Poker Sites Guide. No votes yet. Guide To The Pros And Cons Of Using A VPN To Log Onto Offshore Poker Accounts. VPNs have seen growing popularity as more people have become concerned about privacy and personal security online. They can also be used to sidestep national restrictions and allow.
- Just follow our step by step instructions on choosing and using a VPN to access betting sites abroad. Staying safe online has become a widespread concern in recent years. Casual web users have started taking note of all the private information companies collect and store, as well as the extreme measures some governments will take to censor and control online activity.
When I moved from the US to Gibraltar I was using Neteller for most of my payment processing. When the US cut off Neteller I was still allowed to play poker on non US-facing sites but getting Neteller to accept the fact that I had actually relocated outside of the US and wasn’t just trying to scam them was a month long mission. I had to make multiple long-distance phone calls, provide utility bills, and provide a sperm sample just to get them to believe I was no longer a resident of the US (okay, the sperm sample is a lie but it felt like they were intruding way beyond the scope of a mere eWallet).
I remember my friend Michael expressing similar problems to me when he moved to Japan. He had to jump through so many hoops that he felt like a trained circus performer.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to trick the system but if you want to appear to be outside of the United States you’re probably going to have to actually live outside of the US.
Getting a VPN and an overseas bank account are not enough and even the part about getting an overseas bank account isn’t easy. The US is infamous around the world for their strict banking regulations and money laundering laws so most banks that want to stay on the US’s good side don’t even want to deal with Americans.
The quality of your banking relationship often will be based largely on your legal status in the country. For instance, I could not simply open up a bank accounts with well known international banks in Gibraltar or Malta. I had to show proof of employment, a work permit, a residency permit, a letter of introduction from my employer, and a utility bill.
[contentadL]However, in Thailand it was a totally different story. In theory you’re not supposed to be able to open up a bank account unless you have a work permit. But TIT (This is Thailand) which means you can walk into a bank and they might refuse to open an account for you on Monday and go in the next day to the same exact branch and they’ll open up an account with nothing more than your passport.
I’ve heard similar stories about the Philippines and and a few other SEA countries. One person will tell you that they had to show a mountain of paperwork and another person will report that all they had to do was give their hotel as their home address.
I’ve also heard that in Spain you can get an account as tourist. From what I understand it’s mostly with smaller banks.
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I have heard that some Hong Kong banks will open up banks for US residents if you go to their US branch and have the US branch verify all of your paperwork (i.e. signing documents, etc) and everything can be handled via fax between the two branches.
There are also options for banks in the Caribbean, Switzerland, and other countries that are well known for catering to people who prefer their banking to kept private but it’s very hit and miss for US citizens and usually they won’t touch you unless you’re going to be putting on deposit enough to make it worth their while ($10,000 would be an absolute minimum).
The general rule though is that you’re going to have to get legal residence somewhere in order to open a bank account. That means moving out of the US and having the legal right to live in the country.
So how do you get a visa to become a long-term resident in another country? The most obvious is obtaining employment in another country. For US citizens that’s easier said than done. I can’t go through all of the reasons as that would be another post in itself but for the most part the rest of the world either produces people with similar educational backgrounds which means they already have citizens who can perform the work or nobody would pay you a competitive salary.
For instance, if I were an IT guy and I went to the UK seeking employment in the IT sector, they probably already have tons of people with similar educational and work experience backgrounds already in the UK so it would be hard for any company that wants to hire you to make the case to the government that you possess a special skill set that they were unable to find locally.
Now, let’s say you decide to come to Thailand where you think you’re IT skills put you on a different footing since they don’t have technical schools that are comprable to US IT schools. Great, you might find opportunities but they may not hire you because you don’t speak Thai and even if they do hire you they’re only going to pay you what they would pay a Thai which might only be 30,000 baht ($1000) per month and not the $5,000 – $10,000 you might be expecting for that same skill set back home.
The only job skill Americans inherently have that can not be done by the local population in many countries is teaching English. Korea, China, Thailand, and many other countries around the world pay a premium for English teachers who speak English as their native language. Granted, here in Thailand premium means that you probably start off working at about 30,000 baht per month ($1,000) with an upside of maybe making 100,000 baht per month if you can get a nice cushy private school job after getting a few years experience under your belt.
So living overseas on a work permit is difficult. What other options are available? You could study overseas. I take Thai lessons and have an education visa. The school costs me less than $1,000 a year.
I think you can find something to study in nearly every country that would be covered under a educational visa. Cooking, Buddhism, martial arts, or whatever. I’ve seen educational visas given for just about everything.
That’s probably the best route for many people to go.
Another option is to set up a front company and give yourself a work permit. I’m not suggesting that you do anything shady or illegal but why can’t you open an internet cafe where you want to live, employ yourself, and hire someone to mind the till while you sit in the back room playing poker all day?
I said something about VPN’s didn’t I? Oh yeah, right there in the subject. All of stuff above is why just getting a VPN connection probably won’t work. You’re going to need to establish residence somewhere in order to have all of the proper banking relationships and prove that you live outside of the US. For instance, what happens if you try to do a cashout for a large amount and they ask for proof of residence and request a utility bill? If you opened up a dodgy bank account on a tourist visa that’s going to be next to impossible to provide.
You could get around it by subletting an apartment or something and trying to have the bills in your name but then again you could run into problems getting the utilities in your name since you don’t have a legal right to be living in the country. For instance, here in Thailand it was more difficult for me to get cable television than it was a bank account. I had to show my passport, my visa, have the landlord send a letter telling them that I was legally renting the apartment, etc.
I’ve heard of people suggesting that you get something simple like a post paid mobile phone but here in Thailand I’ve had difficulty getting one. Here was my last conversation with the AIS rep.
Me: I want to get on a post-paid plan
Rep: Need work permit.
Me: I’m on a educational visa. I can’t work in Thailand but I can live here.
Rep: Sorry, cannot.
Me: I have a 1 year visa. I live here, I have a bank account here, I have a Thai driver’s license.
Rep: Okay, I think we can do.
Me: Great, so what papers do you need from me?
Rep: Work permit.
The other thing about VPN’ing your way out of the US is that it has a huge potential to set off alarms at the poker sites. I know both Stars and Tilt (as well as Party) have very comprehensive checks in place that flag suspicious activity. This is mostly for catching collusion, fraud, and money laundering but the VPN solution could put you in their crosshairs just as easily.
Let’s say you get a VPN service that makes it look like you’re in Canada. You’re playing on Stars and your VPN connection gets dropped for whatever reason and after a few seconds it reconnects and you’re back playing from a Canadian IP address again. Well, you bought the Canada package so that means you might have started your session with an IP address that’s associated with Vancouver and reconnected a few seconds later from an IP address associated with Montreal. Unless you’ve found a way to break the laws of physics travelling 2295 miles in just a few seconds is impossible and this could set off a flag that you’re masking your IP address which is usually done by people trying to do something funny on the site so the security department gets a notice to review your account, freeze any cashouts, and seek further clarification.
Busted. Now you’re back to square one again.
One way around that would be to purchase a dedicated Windows server in the country you plan on pretending to be in and installing the poker software on that computer and then remote desktopping into the server and playing from there. You would always have the same IP address but I’m not sure how laggy it might be trying to 24 table over a remote desktop connection.
Like I said, there are ways to get around all of the individual hurdles but they all come at a price and a risk. If you really want to play on Stars and Tilt (or Party or any other non-US site) your best bet is to leave the country. The whole reason you’re in the mess you’re in is because you chose to make something your profession which the US government had explicitly stated it felt was illegal. Why continue to skirt the laws when you could go completely legit?
Plus after a year or two when (hopefully) there’s legalized and regulated poker in the US you can come and clean up on some of the old grinders who have been letting their skills get rusty 🙂
On April 30, 2013, the poker world saw the launch of the United States' first legal online poker site, Ultimate Poker. But Ultimate Poker has one significant limit: it is only legal within the boundaries of Nevada. As more sites come online under similar state schemes—New Jersey and Delaware are likely next—online gambling in the United States may be poised for an explosion.
It wasn't always this way. Among online poker players, Black Friday refers to the infamous day in April 2011 when the United States brought federal criminal charges against the founders of three major overseas online poker companies: PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Cereus (under the brand name Absolute Poker). The move targeted companies accused of illegally catering to US players, and it shut down easy access to real-money online poker for American players.
Federal prosecutors alleged that the 11 defendants violated the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006 and conducted notable bank fraud between financial institutions, poker companies, and players. In parallel, a civil case sought the forfeiture of $3 billion worth of company assets, many of which were overseas.
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Eight of the 11 named were out of the country when the indictments came down, but the others either pled guilty, settled with the government, served time, or experienced some combination of it all. The UIGEA (PDF) summary, as written by the United States Treasury Department, specifically 'prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law.'
One of those convicted as part of the Black Friday roundup was John Campos. He pleaded guilty to one count of 'dealing in bets used as a means for participating in a lottery by a state nonmember insured bank' and served three months in federal prison. Campos remains on probation until November 2013.
The government accused Campos, then-vice chairman of the board of directors at SunFirst Bank in St. George, Utah, of agreeing to process gambling transactions in exchange for a sizable investment in the bank from these poker companies. In a sentencing memorandum (PDF), the prosecuting United States Attorney, Preet Bharara, wrote that SunFirst Bank processed more than $200 million in payments from November 2009 to November 2010.
'My perspective on it is that [the law for online gambling] is still not clear,' Campos told Ars by phone. 'Until some of the states start to actually pass the laws and the banks start processing, it's still pretty nebulous. I think there are still some questions as to implementations. I'm afraid to do anything in that area, because the federal government is scary.'
Major poker sites will no longer do business with American residents for fear of running afoul of federal law.
'Everybody hates [the United States government]. You know why? We're like the sovereign of the world. [Internet poker] has come out and we're seizing people's money in France!' Jeff Ifrah, an attorney who represents PokerStars, told Ars recently over coffee in San Francisco. 'Half the money [seized on Black Friday] was in France, Spain, and Italy. Players don't want to deal with US law enforcement [and risk] their accounts being seized or extraditions.'
Players who had money on one of the targeted sites have largely had their assets frozen—the US is still trying to repatriate the money.
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'I had about $12,000 on [Full] Tilt, so I still haven't seen that money and am hoping to get it back from the Department of Justice in the next year or two, if I'm lucky,' Matthew Stout, one of the world's top poker players, told Ars. As a result of Black Friday, Stout decided to employ the services of PokerRefugees.com and relocated to Costa Rica, and later to the Netherlands, where he can play 15 to 20 tables at once online, all day long. (Stout noted that he still files taxes with the Internal Revenue Service.)
Now two years after Black Friday, the outlook for online gambling has changed dramatically. Collectively, the American market for online casinos and poker could be worth as much as $12 billion, according to a 2009 estimate by Goldman Sachs. At present, 'traditional' (that is, offline) gambling revenues in the US total $35 billion annually, roughly the size of all foreign online gambling sites. With depressed economies nationwide, state governments increasingly want a piece of that revenue—and they are willing to license online gambling to get it.
There's just one problem: how do website users prove—really prove—that they are physically located in states like Nevada?
Welcome to Nevada
The big question for the new online gaming companies is exactly how are they going to limit online gambling on a geographic basis. The Internet is by nature borderless, though some applications do enforce IP geoblocking to limit the consumption of various forms of intellectual property (Hulu uses this). But to anyone who knows how to use a virtual private network (VPN), such blocks are trivial obstacles.
Under Nevada's new regulations, players using a Nevada-based poker website need to be physically present within the Silver State while playing, but they do not need to reside there nor have financial assets there. They simply need to prove that they are located within the state's geographic boundaries.
Nevada has not said precisely how it will determine a poker player's geographic location, but it does make clear that simply checking the IP address isn't going to cut it. 'People do use IP geolocation, but it could not be a sole qualifier,' Jim Barbee, the chief of the technology division at Nevada's State Gaming Control Board, told Ars.
If a company came to the board trying to get its poker product certified and was only using IP-based geolocation, Barbee said he would respond this way: 'Why are you wasting our time? My nine-year-old can spoof that.'
So what does Nevada require? 'It would involve multiple data points, incorporating IP address, registration information, street address—we would be marrying all the data points together,' Barbee said. 'In order to do location information you're going to have to do an algorithm and weigh the variables. Based on the sum of those variables, you'll make a decision: is this person located in this area or not? One of those would be IP geolocation information. Another could potentially be where they were when they created their account. Another would be GPS information, and another would be cell phone or Wi-Fi triangulation. Overall, a solution will be multi-factor—it will include several of those data elements.'