PokerChamps Closes US Player Accounts

I received an email today from PokerChamps informing me that after a recent software upgrade they are able to implement a long standing policy not permitting access to individuals from the U.S. I have to withdraw my funds by tomorrow at 12PM EST when they will lock out the accounts.

For those of you who don’t know, PokerChamps is the site affiliated with Gus Hansen, although I think I saw his name as a Friend of FullTilt, so I’m not sure what the actual relationship is now. Anyways, it was a small site with low traffic that never seemed to get off the ground, other than a ton of people playing their freerolls. I don’t think it will be around much longer.

I have a few hundred dollars there that I accumulated through affiliate commissions and winning a few tournaments. When I try to withdraw my funds I’m told that I don’t have a real money account (since I never deposited) and I have to deposit before I withdraw. Since I don’t think making a deposit in hopes of it clearing and being able to cash it out again in about 18 hours is a good plan, I’m probably never going to see that money.

So is the first in a series of sites shutting down their US players? Is it time to start panicking? Probably not. I would think that the big sites, aren’t going to go away, but for those smaller not so profitable sites, it may no longer be worth the hassle to stay in business. I might think twice about playing at smaller sites for the time being, and maybe not keep as much cash at sites I don’t regularly play. Not that I think these sites are going to shutdown and run away with my money, it might just save me a headache later if they do shutdown and there’s rush to cash out.