I think I should clear some things up. Adding BTC as possible deposit method
does not mean US players will be accepted. Ipoker didn't allow US players on their network and will not until the US regulate poker. This would -at first- just be an additional deposit method.
Funds will be converted to a t try out something like Dragon's Tale, only because you don't have to bring in your own btc and can use it as a way of
getting free coins, which you can use to play with there, or withdraw.
fiat currency(EUR,USD,GBP) so you won't be actually playing with BTC.
Why can't we play with BTC?
I would think that's because the iPoker network doesn't support playing with BTC. Lots of different companies use the iPoker network and provide their own 'skin' to make it look like their own site. The players often don't realise they're playing on iPoker, because everything is branded to look like the site they registered with. The different companies are responsible for handling deposits and withdrawals, which iPoker provides the games.
If you want to play with BTC,
http://sealswithclubs.org/ offers that. They have hourly freerolls (with a 0.05 BTC prize to the winner). The rake on ring games is cheap too, at only 2.5%. The biggest problem is that there are very few players. Currently (11:20pm PST) it's saying: "Join 23 Bitcoin Poker Players Online at 3 Live Tables"...
This is correct. iPoker only supports GBP, EUR and USD ingame for now. If BTC would grow it might be added of course, but this is a looong time from now.
If you would like to play for BTC I would recommend sealswithclubs as well. I played some hands there and it's quite nice and easy. As dooglus points out the playerspool is shallow and this is what an iPokerskin accepting BTC could solve.(in the end it doesn't matter in which currency you're playing right? You're only less open to volatility risks!)
My vote would be in the 'other' category. I like poker and gambling but wouldn't do it online because I wouldn't trust any of them...
(there are no open source poker sites are there?)
If you don't trust online pokersites you should definitely not play live. Pokersites hardly have any incentive to rig the game since they take a percentage of the pot, regardless of the outcome of the hand.(they actually might prefer splitpots or losing players lose less, but simple data analyses would discover this and this would destroy their business). Live games on the opposite have been filled with people trying to cheat and this still is a problem. I recently played a tournament where a fake reporter signed his partner what cards other players at the table had. This was discovered, but imagine all the frauds succeeding?!
