Last week the North Gauteng high court ruled that online gambling is now illegal in South Africa, however after that announcement Piggs Peak issued a statement that they will appeal the ruling and that all operations of the online casino will continue as normal.
Since yesterday however Piggs Peak has shut down all operations issuing the following statement
Saturday, 28 Aug 2010
As you are aware we lost our application in the Pretoria High Court regarding the legality of South Africans playing on our Swaziland licensed internet casino which has serious implications for South African players. We are in the process of applying for leave to appeal the judgement and felt that we could continue operating in the interim. We have since been advised that we should stop operating for South African players until the matter has been resolved.
In your interests we have taken a decision to stop operating from midnight Saturday August 28 until application for leave to appeal has been heard and decided upon, which we feel should take no longer than a week or two.  All remaining player balances, will be held safely at Piggs Peak Casino Swaziland. You can cash in any balance by e-mailing support@piggspeak.com and your request will be processed.
Yours Sincerely,
Lew Saul Koor
Operations Director
Piggs Peak Casino
At the time of publishing this post, the Piggs Peak online casino website has been shut down only displaying the notice above on the homepage. Silversands is however still operational.
Maybe this is really the end of online poker and gambling in South Africa, whats your thoughts? Will you be withdrawing your funds ASAP?
I have withdrawn my funds as I don’t believe that it will take two weeks to appeal. How does this law affect us? Can we still play on international sites or can we get nailed for that?
Hi Sareph, according to the court if continue doing online gambling you could be fined R10million or get a 10 year jail sentence. How they are going to determine if you play online I have no idea.
I suppose as this goes on it will be added to the fair use clause found on most ISP’s terms & conditions, the same as downloading pirated content from the internet the ISP’s are held responsible for what their clients do….. So I guess the poker rooms at the casinos will be picking up again, I know I will be playing less poker as it was convenient to sit down with R100 and play R1/R2 online, as apposed to getting in the car and driving to the casino and placing R500 and playing R5/R10 tables and tournaments that cost R500 to enter as apposed to R7:50 and up…… I also think due to the fact that you got to play more often online the bad beats and the percentage that one will loose increased with more frequent play maybe this is a good thing for poker players in South Africa, but only time will tell…
Silversands has now also shut down service to South Africans.
I just logged into Silver Sands now to verify if it has shutdown and it is still up. Did they make a statement saying when this would come into effect?
Weird If I go to http://www.silversandscasino.com/ I get a notice that silver sands have excluded South African players from using their site.
Ye I saw earlier today there notice on entry, I managed to login to the poker software but didn’t try to sit down and play. I don’t think they get a lot of business from other countries though, I think the majority of both of their clients are from South Africa. I wonder how long it will take to shutdown or if they might win an appeal.