After the ruling by the Kentucky Judge that domain names could be seized by the state as under the guise of “gambling device,” the two big online poker companies in the news these days for less than honorable reasons, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, have agreed to block the IPs from Kentucky residents trying to connect to the sites.
Basically, each Internet Service Provider (ISP), gives a range of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to its subscribers. Each subscriber has a unique IP address that can be used to geographically place the origination of the request sent to a website. And for Kentucky residents, this means that any subscriber that’s on that list of Kentucky ISPs won’t be able to access the sites.
This has essentially stopped the players in the commonwealth dead in their tracks. In an official release from the company, they stated that current players would be able to withdraw any remaining balances from their accounts, but that no new accounts could be created from request originating in Kentucky or from any Kentucky based IP addresses. This is to go into effect on both the .com and .net poker sites.
The executives of the sites say that the steps were taken to remain compliant with the Kentucky Circuit court of Franklin County’s orders so they could continue to provide uninterrupted services to other members of their playing demographic.