Remember when the US government was engaged in a very public battle with the rampant boom of online poker channels established both inside and outside the country? Of course, suits in Washington only looked scathingly on such activity because it had not found an effective way to tax virtual casinos. And the high-rolling hotels in Vegas and places elsewhere in the States were none too thrilled with the rather sudden establishment of a parallel industry almost entirely independent of themselves and which they could not easily influence.
Well, suffice it to say that Internet-based gambling has not died down to any significant degree. Most all businesses in the relatively young market have simply transferred their places of residence to locations outside the US. But one operator in particular of poker tables designed for computer screens has been doing the unusually, deciding to stay inside the American landscape to satisfy home-office card sharks. It’s name is PurePlay. [img src="http://i29.tinypic.com/14kwqro.gif" caption="" credit="" alt=""] It’s based in San Francisco. It’s described as “the first and largest US-compliant play-for-cash online poker destination.” And it just today announced its third official investment round, headlined by Bay Partners, Ron Conway, James Joaquin, and others. Total funding for the company now stands at $15 million.
Founded in 2004 and first launched in late 2005, PurePlay markets itself as risk-free, in the sense that it operates under legitimate means in the US. Given the purported illegalities that surrounded much of the online gambling sector over the last several years, it’s above-board nature alone puts the company as somewhat of an exception to the unruliness. And looking at PurePlay’s stated figures for player counts and financial awards dealt, the company seems to have done reasonably well for itself. It claims to have served over 1 million poker players, to which it has distributed some $3m in winnings.