As of April 15, 2011, when you go to pokerstars.com, this is what you will see.

It’s a lot like what happened to the pirate websites recently where the Department of Justice took over the domain name and put their own message up on their servers.

The FBI has indicted 11 defendants who are the founders or owners of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, and seized over 70 bank accounts.

Pokerstars has moved their website to pokerstars.eu and for non-US players, it’s business as usual. However, US players are not allowed to play although their website states that all your deposited money is safe.

At this point, I have to believe that most players would be scared to deposit any new money and there is probably a rush to withdraw money from the sites. This obviously has to hurt the bottom line for those big poker sites.

What will this all mean for online poker? For now, it’s wait and see but it’s not good for business, except perhaps at live casinos.

Liv Boeree

In case you’re not familiar with Ms. Boeree, take a look at her website.

Liv won the EPT San Remo €5,000 Main Event and pocketed the $1,698,300 first prize money in April 2010. After this great win, she was asked to join Team Pokerstars.

According to her bio, she studied at the University of Manchester, and received a first-class degree in Astrophysics. She’s also a model and TV personality in England, not to mention likes to rock out on her electric guitar. Those are some really unusual combinations of talent.

Many states have had false starts for many years regarding legalizing online poker, including Florida, Hawaii, and New Jersey to name a few.  Perhaps because of all the red ink and many government bank accounts being empty, D.C. has been given the green light in the 2011 budget to allow online poker to their 600k residents.

Interestingly, the word “poker” is not mentioned in the bill. However, it allows “both games of skill and games of chance,” and to offer games on the Internet. It’s obvious that this would include online poker. The game would most likely be provided by Intralot Interactive, which has an existing relationship with the D.C. Lottery.

Officials expect that the online poker site will not be ready until the end of 2011 and proceeds to not come until 2012. Things move slowly in government.

It’s not clear if Intralot will have the experience needed to create a good online poker environment but that may become mute if this causes a domino effect and forces states to legalize online poker.

It will still take years for things to move forward but this is definitely the first step to legalizing online poker in the United States.