05 October 2006 | Author: Mike Hanna

Email spam V's fallout from the online poker ban

With the recent US ban on online gambling, will it mean that we get less email spam in our inboxes, or more?























I am a poker fan, but am not a fan of the random poker spam emails that I get daily. Every day I get spam emails from poker rooms, as well as poker affiliates, telling me how much money they want to give me for free, and how much money I could win if I played with them. I don't mind getting promotional emails that I've signed up for, but I hate unsolicited email spam!

The recent US ban on online poker made me think that maybe - hopefully - I would get less of this spam abuse. For those of you who don't know: the US senate has passed a bill to ban online gambling, including online poker. This bill will make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to pay any money to online gambling sites, meaning that the US online poker player will be cut off at the source. Because he/she will not be able to add money to their poker account, they will not be able to play poker online for real money.

This ban may see a real cool-off in online poker promotion, and hence less poker spam emails sent out; but then again it may mean that the poker rooms will upscale their advertising in the UK to try to hold a firm grasp over their biggest remaining market. After much thought, my original hopes of fewer spam emails were transformed to feelings of dismay over the thought of even more email spam.

It makes perfect sense that the big poker sites should try to keep as much of their profits as possible, and hence hit the UK market with force; so I imagine that they will seriously upscale their efforts to promote their sites here in the UK. This will mean a lot more offline promotion - TV commercials, newspaper ads and advertising billboards. But it will surely mean a lot more online promotion too. This online promotion will undoubtedly manifest itself primarily in the form of email spam. Large sites will be sending out emails to tell you how much better their poker room is than their competitors, and poker affiliates will be distributing even more spam emails telling you how much free money you'll get when you sign up. It could be a poker inbox explosion!

There has been talk of the UK following suit and banning online gambling outright. If this is done, then maybe we will see the death of online poker, and so the death of poker email spam - we can only hope.

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