Exclusive: South Point Poker ?will be first real-money site in US?

Casino veteran and CEO Michael Gaughan says operator will have head start of up to three months, with site due to go live in September.


*** YOU WILL HAVE TO BE A RESIDENT OF NEVADA TO PLAY SO THIS DOESNT APPLY TO 99.8% OF US ***

?Unfortunately [because we are] the first one, the regulator is putting a few more restrictions on us, and wants us to start a little slower than we would like,? explained Gaughan. ?We will conform to their wishes, but at the end of the year it will be in full blown site in Nevada. Then we?ll try and go into the other states where it is legal and do some contracts there.?

South Point has teamed up with a Vegas web entrepreneur Lawrence Vaughan ? CEO and co-founder of employment site jobbi.com ? to produce its new gaming platform, after having encountered problems with previous platform suppler Zen Entertainment.

South Point was the first Nevada casino to launch a free-play poker site in October last year, however Gaughan called it was a ?disappointing? experience, with the site failing to attract the expected player volumes. ?It was with a different company and it just did not work out ? we only picked out around 23-24,000 people and I thought it should?ve done a lot better,? he said. ?It was complicated and hard to download. [The poor results were] partly down to the provider and partly because I lost interest in it when it didn?t grow as fast as I thought it would.?