Poker Site Licensing Information

The top tier online poker sites are governed by these licensing and regulating bodies:

Isle of Man Government, Gambling Control Commission - (PokerStars and others)

States of Alderney Government, Gambling Control Commission - (FullTilt, Party, and others)

These are internationally recognized legitimate government agencies, and they do respond to end-user inquiries for information about online poker rooms, and investigate complaints about individual online poker sites from players.

The next largest group of poker sites includes Party Poker, iPoker/Platech network, and Ongame network, which are all publicly traded companies subject to tons of regulation and scrutiny in multiple jurisdictions including Austria, Italy, UK, and others. None of these take U.S. players because of the uncertain legal status there.

Beyond those top five, you then get down to the many smaller companies that may or may not have reputable regulatory agencies, and many of them operate out of jurisdictions with only token regulation (like AB/UP).

And here are some of the companies approved by those agencies to do software evaluations and random number generator audits.