Full Tilt Looks to the KGC
June 29, 2011
By Noah Stephens-Davidowitz
Full Tilt Poker is considering reopening its operations with a permit from the Kahnawake Gaming Commission.
Earlier today, the Alderney Gambling Control Commission suspended Full Tilt Poker’s licenses. Afterwards, players were unable to connect to the client software, and Full Tilt’s website reported that its system was “down for maintenance.”
Now, multiple sources at Pocket Kings Ltd have told Subject: Poker that Full Tilt may use a permit from the Kahnawake Gaming Commission to continue allowing non-US players to play and possibly to resume processing deposits and withdrawals. The KGC regulations require a permit holder to operate its business from the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, so it would be expected to take hours for Full Tilt to accomplish the transfer of data to servers in the territory. In addition, the KGC website says that its application process typically takes between four and eight weeks. Some sources inside of Full Tilt have claimed that poker site either still has a permit with the KGC or could effectively skip this process, but we have been unable to verify these claims.
The Kahnawake Mohawk Territory is a Mohawk reservation located just south of Montreal with a population of around 8,000. Its gaming commission is best known in the poker community for its regulation of Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet and its many failures after those sites’ respective superuser scandals.4 The KGC has regulated many major poker sites in its history, including Full Tilt, PokerStars, Paradise Poker, and Party Poker, in addition to Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, but it lost favor after the scandals.
It is unclear at this time how the various entities that work with Full Tilt Poker, such as Alderney Gambling Control Commission, payment processors, governments with citizens that play on Full Tilt Poker, and governments of countries with Full Tilt offices would react to such a move.