No-one appears to know for sure what happened mid-week when a player circulated a graphic he had accessed on his mobile suggesting that Amaya Gaming’s Full Tilt subsidiary had been cleared for online gambling in New Jersey by the state regulator.
The player claimed that when he accessed Full Tilt.net from his mobile he was surprised to see a splash screen graphic which declared that Full Tilt has been “…fully licensed by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, offering real-money gameplay on a fully regulated online gaming platform.”
However, on testing the download link it failed to work, perhaps even at that early stage that some sort of glitch had occurred.
As the incident gathered forum momentum Amaya’s communications chief Eric Hollreiser stepped in to defuse the situation, confirming that the splash screen graphic was not correct, and advising that an investigation was already underway as to how it could have appeared.
The logical explanation is either a hack (unlikely given the sophisticated IT set up) or that Amaya’s development team may have prepared material in advance of a hoped for licence in order to move quickly when it was granted, and that somehow a screw-up resulted in the premature (and very temporary) display of this material… but that has yet to be confirmed.
However, due to persistent rumours that a New Jersey licence will soon permit Amaya to enter the New Jersey market, and recent tweets by state Sen. Ray Lesniak predicting that Pokerstars would be live in New Jersey by March, hopes are high among players that a breakthrough is imminent.