PokerStars‘ New Jersey online gambling site plans a soft-launch next Wednesday ahead of its scheduled official launch on March 21.
On Thursday, Stars’ parent company Amaya Gaming announced that Pokerstarsnj.com would allow a maximum of 500 players to download and test-drive the New Jersey site’s software starting at 4pm local time on March 16.
Real-money play will be limited to eight-hour blocks between 4pm and midnight for the first two days. This window will widen from 8am to midnight on Friday, March 18, with 24-hour access granted on Saturday and Sunday.
Assuming no five-year-old nephews of Sheldon Adelson manage to elude the site’s age-verification obstacles, the rest of the state’s poker players – if there are actually more than 500 – will be invited to start playing on Monday the 21st.
In addition to its flagship poker product, Stars’ New Jersey site will also feature a broad range of online casino options, and that range just got a little broader. On Thursday, Swedish online casino technology provider NetEnt announced that it had inked a deal with Amaya to provide desktop and mobile casino games to Pokerstarsnj.com.
NetEnt already supplies casino content for Amaya’s European-facing sites, as well as for the New Jersey digital operations of Amaya’s Atlantic City brick-and-mortar partner Resorts Casino Hotel. In fact, NetEnt supplies most of the New Jersey online licensees, including the Borgata/Bwin.party tandem, the Golden Nugget, Tropicana/Gamesys and Caesars Interactive Entertainment.
Bjorn Krantz, managing director of NetEnt Americas, said the deal was “yet more proof of the trust and confidence that exist in NetEnt’s operational and portfolio capabilities.” Amaya’s director of casino Sam Hobcraft was equally effusive, saying NetEnt’s games would help Pokerstarsnj.com become “one of the leaders in online casino in New Jersey.”
