A Little More Information

First, after reading for about two hours this morning many of the news stories and forum posts on the subject, it's pretty clear to me that the owners of Full Tilt, Poker Stars, Absolute, and Ultimate Bet have seriously broken US and international laws. Money laundering, coercion, and bank fraud are pretty serious things, and if you are to believe even half of the government's assertions, there is real illegal activities that have been taking place. In other words, the Department of Justice is going after these folks for bank fraud, and not for violating the UIGEA.

Second,I was able to play on Full Tilt (FTP) last night, but this morning when I tried the software attempted to do an update. The updater program chugged and chugged for a while, but then finally gave up.

The solution is to go to: http://www.fulltiltpoker.co.uk/ and download the software there. I did this and was able to log into my account, see the lobby, open tables, etc.....

....BUT, I was not able to actually sit down and play at any of the real money tables. The play money tables are working, but not any of the real dollar tables. When I tried, the program gave me a message that said I was not allowed to play real money tables from my location. Said another way, the poker sites are up and running now, with about half the normal traffic, so poker continues for the rest of the civilized world. It's just here in the good old circa-1984 USA that we're locked out.

So, what to do? I think there are two options:

1) Cash Out. Unfortunately, I've read on 2p2 that cash outs are "temporarily" suspended. This is true on both PS and FTP. Most people are advocating a waiting game right now, assuming that in a few week things will settle out and there will be a way to withdraw. I'm not so sure; I believe that the DOJ is salivating over all the money in the the US players' accounts and will try to seize the money. But that's just my doom-and-gloom opinion. We'll see.

2) Proxy/VPN.  I'm no computer expert, but it seems to me that there has to be a way to hide your US-based IP address to make it look like your computer is located outside of the US. In other words, if tehre is a way to make your computer appear non-US based, I think you could play on FTP and PS right now. Hell, there are 100K+ non-US players right now on FTP. I've heard of some high-dollar players setting up their computer system this way, but, unfortunately, I have essentially zero knowledge on how to do this.

That's all I know for now. I'm also open to any and all suggestions.
All-in for now...
-Bug