A long absence....

I'm just returning to the world of online poker after a four or five month absence. I was playing at UB.com, and one day I went to log on and I couldn't; that's when I learned about the law suits and Full Tilt, along with many sites no longer accepting U.S. players. I currently play on Cake Poker as jdn110 and HiLife poker as Shimbo42. I've checked other sites that accept U.S. players but can't find any that offer any games besides Hold Em, Omaha, and Omaha eights or better. My best game is 7 card stud, are there any rooms that offer stud? Or mixed games? I started to check out Carbon poker but they aren't accepting U.S. players right now. Even in real life I have a hard time finding a seven card game, at the casinos its always NLHE. The casino that offers stud is the one farthest from my location.

Don't get me wrong, Omaha Hi is my favorite game, but its not my best game. Perhaps I should invest time in mastering Hi/Lo split, it seems there would be many suckers in that game just trying to take half of the pot. What sites have you all been playing at since this happened? I used to stick to UB and PokerStars exclusively...

Any input would be appreciated, thanks.

Hi Gymbo and welcome back. I am not sure about the sites for stud, good luck.

I think that the only poker room that can offer a good traffic for stud games are the ones from Merge network. I heard that they will start to accepts new US players again next week.

First off, welcome back! I'm in the same sort of situation as you as far as legality and playing in the US. I'm currently on Bodog and they offer Hold Em, Omaha, and 5/7 card Stud. Haven't checked the traffic on the non hold em games so I can't say anything about that but you might wanna check it out.

Yes, these anti US rules are having an impact on many of us. Just hope the govt. does something to insure our freedom rather than restrict it more!

Stud games are around outside of Stars (best site for that) but few tables are running at most sites. Bodog has a few tables going at peak times... I used to be almost exclusively stud player but the pool has shrunk drastically even at Stars. Most US-friendly sites have PLO tho which is growing in popularity, meaning lots of people want to 'try' it and 'learn' it, much like the early HE days, meaning: Lots of fish in PLO and PLO8, you could do worse than concentrate on those. I played a lot of PLO8 but now find PLO to be just as fishy, and more noobs around.

My 2 cents...

I did not know carbon poker was no longer accepting US players, that is a bad sign, that must mean they feel they might be next on the chopping block.