I don't play much on Full Tilt. I don't have rakeback, and I have no way of obtaining rakeback, so I have no impetus to play there. I now have even fewer reasons to play there: It's getting nigh on impossible to get your money out of Full Tilt.

Full Tilt has these methods of cashing out for Americans: Bank Transfer, Ultra Prepaid Phone Cards, and a (paper) Check. Bank transfer, or eChecks, has been down for some time. I don't need nor want a phone card. And currently Full Tilt is having extreme difficulties with paper checks.

I've written in the past that if the day came when you couldn't get money off the sites play would stop. This has not happened. Instead, players are complaining, and FT is likely scrambling to find a processor. There is a solution (indeed, what I'm going to write below will occur someday in the future for Stars, too) but no one in the U.S. is going to like it. First, though, let me describe the genesis of the problem.

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The DOJ wants to stop online gambling, especially sportsbetting. If anyone disagrees with me here, please just move on and read some other blog. And to point something out this has been the stance of the DOJ since the Clinton era so it's a staff mentality, not a leadership dictum. (I do agree, though, that the current DOJ leadership is very anti-online gambling.)

The DOJ has finally figured out that the Achilles heal for online sportsbooks is the payment processing industry. It is clearly illegal for a payment processing company to process payouts for an online sportsbook. The DOJ had been targeting the sportsbetting companies, and their executives who were foolish enough to change planes at DFW or JFK.

Sometime over the last two years someone at the DOJ realized that if winners couldn't cash out then they wouldn't use the services. So the DOJ over the last year or so set up accounts at a sportsbetting site(s), gambled, won or lost, and then cashed out. When they received the checks they determined the company that sent the check, seized the funds, and told the company that they had two choices: no more business with online gambling and you give us copies of your agreements with those companies and agree to testify against them or you can look forward to some time at ClubFed along with having your business destroyed.

There's no way any company is going to want to fight the federal government, and they capitulated. And I think FullTilt (which likely wasn't a target) has been caught in the crossfire.

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The payment processing industry is small. The companies involved either now know that dealing with online gambling makes them persona non grata with the DOJ or will soon know that. Sooner or later this will impact PokerStars, too, and their payment processor located about 50 miles from me will not be doing business with them. That day could be today, a month from today, or a year from today but that day is coming. I'm sure PokerStars knows that--the management there is anything but dumb. FullTilt was just unlucky enough to be using the wrong payment processor at the wrong time.

Does that mean that there will be no way to get money off the sites? Definitely not. Nothing prevents FullTilt from either issuing their own checks (drawn on a bank in Ireland) or using an Irish payment processor. Of course, that means instead of it taking 1-5 days for a check to clear you and I will be waiting 5-10 weeks. Large customers can get wire transfers, and those too will continue. But for John Lowstakes the days of cashing out, getting a check in the mail one week later, and having the funds usable in the bank a couple of days after that are ending.

Maybe FullTilt will be lucky and find another processor in the US or perhaps FullTilt will be the first firm to use an overseas processor. We'll know the answer to that in a few days. There's no question, though, that this is yet another hurdle for online poker and this will be another factor lessening new blood finding their way to the sites.