Yahoo! Breaks Into the Online Poker Industry

UNITED KINGDOM -- World renowned search engine Yahoo! has announced its venture into the online gaming world, with the launch of Yahoo Poker, a real money online poker room, in a partnership with St.
Yahoo! now offers real money poker to UK and Ireland residents.  Minver Ltd., the Gibraltar-based online solutions provider for European gaming networks.

The real money site will run on the International Poker Network (IPN), a poker room combining some of the biggest online and offline brands with the webs largest sportsbooks, and will focus on the growing European poker market.

US residents are not currently accepted as a result of the introduction of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which makes it illegal for banking facilities to accept money transfers to and from online gambling sites.

Yahoo! will become the only Internet Service Provider (ISP) to offer play for real money although competitors like AOL operate a 'play money' site and computer giant Microsoft has incorporated a play money poker game into the Windows Vista system.

The site is set to go from strength to strength with the ready-made customer base generated from the ISP’s main site.