With the first real money online poker hand having already been dealt in the US by Ultimate Poker in April, next up it's New Jersey's turn to deal. It has indeed been a long wait and it will be a little longer than most anticipated but at least we now have a date set. That date will be (on or around) November 26th 2013... 2 days before Thanksgiving Day. If all goes to plan then online poker players in the Garden State will have something else to celebrate that day. It could be a very special holiday indeed for many people, with NFL games, online poker and turkey! What more could you want? It's still looking likely that the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa will be among the first, if not the first to deal the historic hand and the brick and mortar casino is getting prepared for the thumbs up from the regulators.
Even though revenues were slightly down from last year, The Borgata was the best performing casino in Atlantic City in Q1 and has it's sights set on increasing those revenues by leading the way in the online market too. The casino is owned by Boyd Gaming and MGM Resorts and plans are in place to combine it's online and offline presence by offering online satellites to land based events at the casino. There has, as yet, been no announcement made who the online provider is to be and the likely partner will be bwin.party as they have already worked together in Nevada. There are a few sets of figures doing the rounds as to how much revenue the online gaming venture will bring in for the state, with the treasurer pinning hopes on $1.2 billion generated, bringing in $180 million in taxes. However other reports show that it could be as much as six times less than that at somewhere around the $250 million mark. Whatever the tax revenue in the first year, the ball will be rolling and the chance for growth and expansion will after that. As with Nevada, it's all about interstate compacts and if and when we will see these.
