CYBERSPACE — Add the UK’s Leisure & Gaming and online payment processor FireOne to the list of online gambling firms that will cease handling accounts for U.S.-based customers in light of the recently passed Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.President George W. Bush is expected to sign the Act tomorrow, after which the office of the U.S. Attorney General, working in conjunction with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and other government offices, has 270 days to craft specific regulations and requirements under the Act.

According to Reuters, Leisure & Gaming officials said the company will stop taking wagers from U.S. gamblers if Bush signs the bill into law, adding that the firm is engaged in talks to sell its operations within the United States.

FireOne also stated that it will stop serving U.S.-based players after the ban is signed into law. According to Reuters, following FireOne’s announcement, in which the company warned investors that the forced move would have a “significant impact” on its business, the price of FireOne’s shares lost 26-percent by 1:00pm GMT.

The online gaming sector has suffered a huge loss in valuation since the Act was passed earlier this month – an estimated $7 billion decline in value, according to Reuters. Party Gaming and 888 Holdings PLC were the first major companies in the sector to announce that they would immediately cease operations with respect to U.S. gamblers/accounts, and have since been followed by numerous other publicly-held gaming firms.

Some privately-owned gambling operations, however, have announced their intention to continue serving U.S. customers unabated, with some issuing statements asserting that the new law does not apply to poker.

PokerStars, identified by Reuters as the “world’s second-biggest Internet poker firm,” stated today that the Act does not apply to online poker, as poker is a “game of skill.”

“These provisions do not alter the U.S. legal situation with respect to online poker,” PokerStars said in a written statement, according to Reuters. “Our business continues as before, open to players worldwide including the U.S. You may play on our site as you did prior to the act.”

PokerStars, which is registered in Costa Rica and processes payments through subsidiaries in the Isle of Man and in Cyprus, might be playing its own game of chance with the rules, some analysts warn.

Although he allowed that the “language in the bill is not explicit,” John J. Farmer, former attorney general of New Jersey, told Reuters that if people try to “exploit the ambiguity in the language, it would almost certainly end up in court.”

Under the language of the Act, the terms “bet” and “wager” are defined as “the staking or risking by any person of something of value upon the outcome of a contest of others, a sporting event, or a game predominantly subject to chance, upon an agreement or understanding that the person or another person will receive something of value in the event of a certain outcome.”

According to Farmer, PokerStars is relying on the notion a court would find poker to be a game not “predominantly subject to chance,” but that argument is hardly a slam dunk.

“The closer you come to purely skill-based games, the safer you are,” Farmer told Reuters. “But it’s hard to say that anyone is totally safe, given the climate we’re in.”

Farmer noted that whether a company wants to take such a risk may depend on whether that company is publicly traded or privately held, as privately owned business could prove a harder target.

“Any publicly traded company is going to be risk-averse and say it’s not worth the risk,” Farmer said, adding that the “demand for online gaming is clearly there, and that’s going to open the door to the less reputable entities.”