PokerStars has withdrawn their real money online poker offering in Israel with immediate effecting citing a ‘commercial assessment’ as the reason, and parent company Amaya Gaming hold their AGM behind closed doors.

When PokerStars launched their online poker product in 2001, few people would have expected it to have grown into the 800 pound Gorilla that currently makes every other online poker site look like a bunch of monkeys.

One of those ‘few’ people would have been the founder Isai Scheinberg, and so it’s not without a sense of irony, that the man who was born in Israel will today hear the news that PokerStars will no longer offer real money online poker in his country of birth.

I guess it shouldn’t come as a complete shock – although that’s scant comfort for the professional grinders who have just heard they are out of a job. Many of whom will be in the World Series of Poker (WSOP), over 7,000 miles away from home, and with no way to withdraw their money from the site.