Last month British Columbia became the first jurisdiction in North America to launch a full government run online casino. This online casino will capture a slice of the money lost to offshore gambling and help pay for provincial essential services such as health care and education. Online poker will be lauched later this year. Poker will be a GTech G2-powered poker network which will be shared by both the Loto-Quebec and the Atlantic Lottery Corporation. The Ontario government and the OLGC are still mulling at the option of adding a government run online casino.

Playnow.com though did not launch sucessfully. BCLC’s online gaming site was taken down shortly after as the accounts belonging to 134 playing users were compromised. In total $8000 was illegally wagered and those users had partial credit card numbers revealed, banking information, and other personal info were compromised. A security breach of this sort is not a good thing for a new startup company trying to earn the trust of its players. The PlayNow system also crashed on the first day after unexpected levels of traffic.

So as of right now PlayNow.com is currently unavailable.

BCLC apologizes for the inconvenience this has caused to all our players.

A solution has been implemented and we are now in the process of third party testing and verification. Once complete, next steps will be to receive regulatory certification and the site will be re-launched.

The BCLC better get their act together if they wish to add online poker to their offering. Poker players are less forgiving.