Delaware’s new gaming provider Rush Street Interactive will turn on its internet casino and sportsbook products in January 2024, but has no plans for online poker in the near term. [Image: Shutterstock.com]

Decade of online poker has ended

That online poker shut down in the state of Delaware is not a surprise – players were told in mid-December that it would happen. The problem beyond the present for poker players in the Blue Hen State, though, is that there is no telling when online poker will return.

Though largely unknown in the rest of the country, the three racino-based online poker sites in Delaware – Delaware Park, Dover Downs, and Harrington Raceway – are among the oldest in the United States, launching in November 2013. They have used the 888Poker software platform, which had the added benefit of being the same one used by WSOP.com, thus allowing Delaware players to sit at the same tables as players in Nevada and New Jersey, which have their own WSOP-branded sites.

888 is gone as of December 27 and RSI has not flipped the switch

888’s contract with the Delaware Lottery expired this year and after initially looking to renew for another decade, the company withdrew from the bidding process, leaving Rush Street Interactive (RSI) as the lone option for the state. So 888 is gone as of December 27 and RSI has not flipped the switch on its gaming products yet.

Run It Once coming…some day?

RSI has casino and sports betting products, both of which will launch in Delaware in January 2024. Poker, though, is a problem. The loss of 888 was already going to be an issue for Delaware players, as it meant that they would lose access to the shared liquidity with Nevada and New Jersey, thus drastically shrinking the activity at the tables.

Delaware is the sixth-smallest state, with an estimated population of just over 1 million residents. It has the lowest population of any of the states that have legalized, regulated online poker.

But more than that, it does not appear that RSI plans to launch a new online poker product in Delaware any time soon. RSI acquired Phil Galfond’s Run It Once online poker room in March 2022 and plans to use it as its poker product in the United States. As the Delaware Lottery’s new online gambling operator, RSI could easily launch Run It Once along with online casino and sports betting, but because of Delaware’s size, or lack thereof, it does not appear that the company plans to do so any time soon.

Might need other states with Delaware

What it looks like RSI is planning to do is wait until it can launch Run It Once in other states along with Delaware. RSI has online casino and sports betting sites in New Jersey, Michigan, and West Virginia, all of which are part of the Multi-state Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA) with Delaware and Nevada. Thus, it should have the ability to bring Run It Once to each of those states and link them up in an interstate network and then bring Delaware back. It’s likely a matter of “when,” not “if,” but nobody really knows when that “when” is.

One of the unfortunate things about the situation is that it didn’t have to be this way. As pokerfuse reported, the RFP used in the bidding process appeared to authorize the Delaware Lottery to require 888 to keep its poker offering up until the transition to Run It Once could be made. Obviously, that didn’t happen, perhaps because RSI said it wasn’t going to launch poker for quite some time.