By Zach Purgason

09/09/2008

The San Francisco based, online poker company, PurePlay, reported this week that its player memberships now total over 1.5 million.  The site, PurePlay.com, which derives much of its popularity from its apparently legal-to-U.S.-players platform and payout system, also announced that it has given out over $4 million in prize money to its members since November of 2005.

Since its humble beginning in the fourth-quarter of 2005, PurePlay.com has been an industry leader in developing and executing a system for legal online poker in the United States.  After the UIGEA bill passed in October of 2006, such a platform has become even more crucial to the growing online poker industry.  Nevertheless, without drastic changes to the 2006 legislation, sustainable and reliable options seem few and far between.

In spite of the apparent necessity for legal online poker in the U.S., PurePlay.com is the only one to develop a system unlike one in the poker room of an actual Las Vegas casino.  Instead of monetizing the site with tournament buy-ins and “raking” some percentage of the plot, PurePlay simply charges its resident players a monthly membership fee. 

Specifically, “VIP Members” pay $19.99 per month to play in an unlimited amount of tournaments and ring games where players gamble with play money en route to real cash prizes for the top performers.  The membership fee is enough to allow PurePlay.com to keep game play advertisement free. The site – at this time – is the only successful one of its kind. 

Its success is not only due to the $150,000 in monthly cash prizes it disburses, but also in the extremely wide range of tournaments the company offers.  In fact, in 2008 no online poker site sent more players to the World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas than PurePlay.com.

With continuing attractions including weekly $10,000 Classic Tournaments, PurePlay.com will attempt to repeat this achievement in 2009.