After a prolonged buildup, the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma’s Pokertribe.com site has launched a free-play poker site, with real-money operations set to start in August.
Pokertribe.com currently displays a “play now” button to its homepage, along with a clock counting down the days, hours, minutes and (wait for it) seconds until Aug. 1, when the real-money option will reportedly commence.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Failin and a US federal judge have signed off on the Iowa Tribe’s plan to offer real-money online gambling to customers outside the state’s borders, similar to the deal Failin struck with a different state tribal group in 2013, before that tribe’s new leadership concluded the plan was really, really silly.
Pokertribe.com intends to cater to customers outside the US, who for some as yet unexplained reason will ignore the thousands of other online gambling sites currently at their disposal in order to wire money to a brand new site that looks as if it’s only accessible via the internet’s Wayback Machine, despite its claim of using “the most modern technology available.”
Pokeretribe.com’s modern technology comes courtesy of Universal Entertainment Group (UEG), the Florida-based firm that pocketed $9.4m from its previous non-operational dalliance with Oklahoma’s Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.
As you may have read, UEG CEO Freridoun ‘Fred’ Khalilian‘s CV includes being ordered to pay $4.2m to settle a deceptive telemarketing case brought by the US Federal Trade Commission, one of a pair of FTC actions against Khalilian-operated firms.
Something called “Fred’s Fan Club Team” has launched its own website – which features plenty of garbled syntax and the same 1990’s GeoCities visual aesthetic – to push back against those who continue to bring up “the 4 or 5 things that have gone wrong for Fred in his business and personal life,”
This past weekend brought a profile of Fred on NewsOK.com, which included the nugget that he’d had the damn good business sense to hire Gov. Failin’s daughter Christina as UEG’s spokesperson. Christina was quoted as saying Pokertribe.com will “generate significant revenue potential,” which we guess is true, in the same sense that Jamarcus Russell generated significant quarterback potential.
Pokertribe.com also has a clock counting down to the launch of UEG’s equally inspired airplane-based online casino project, which is apparently set to take flight on Jan. 9, 2017. Sadly, there’s no timeline for the launch of UEG’s Poker International Space Station (PISS) project, which was reportedly inspired by the number of Russians playing on PokerStars.
As we’ve indicated before when covering this story, CalvinAyre.com remains a staunch supporter of tribal governments exercising their rights to participate in gambling ventures and we sincerely hope that the Iowa Tribe isn’t too badly bunt by the time PokerTribe and UEG’s other high-flying Hindenburgs come crashing down.
