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With the exit of Stars and Tilt from the US, is the PPA even going to be around?

-How does anyone set up and guarantee coverage of a press conference?
-How many of us have done more than what is possible without leaving our homes?
-How does anyone guarantee that our issues will be on the front page of any print outlet?
-How many in this forum were up in arms over the bill proposed by Harry Reid and slamming the PPA for daring to support it?

I get people being mad and wanting the PPA to do 'more'. I guess I'm not exactly sure what people think the PPA is actually capable of, in terms of overall influence in light of the way our government works (or doesn't work). It's taken this drastic action by the DOJ and quashing of the status-quo to seemingly wake us up to more concerted action.

You might be frustrated at what you feel is ineffective action by the PPA over the last four years, but I guess I'd ask what exactly have you done over the last four years regarding this issue? Or have we simply expected 'someone else' to do the work for us?

When did the PPA reject last year's bill?

Sorry, I was mistaken. I had remembered them rejected the idea of the blackout, but upon further reading, they were willing to take it.

Expand, please.

I realize that Stars was involved in Vegas politics. But, beyond that... wondering what you mean.

I saw a recent TV interview with John Pappas and the Youtube video from the other guy and I'm sorry to say that they weren't very impressive. Al D'Amato issues a statement once in awhile but he doesn't seem to have any traction with anyone anymore. The PPA needs a new national spokesman with some clout. Just my 2cents.

While the OP, seems a little emotional. I do have to agree with some things he is stating.

The PPA seems to be in hide mode, instead of on the offensive right now. Also in light of many news outlets seemingly siding with the players over the DOJ. The time seems perfect for the PPA to go on the offensive.

Instead.....crickets

I have donated to the PPA, done hundreds of emails, sent at least 10 actual letters via carrier mail, and made several phone calls. Sadly I am starting to feel I care more, and do more as a person, than the PPA is currently doing as a organization.

Now I know they do try, which is why I sent them money. But it really seems they need stronger leadership.

Obv this is my 2 cents.

http://craakker.blogspot.com/2010/06...-are-duds.html

That sums it up better than I can.

http://pokerati.com/2010/04/19/harry...ne-poker-bill/

PPA has to step up their game imo

The PPA is pretty irrelevant, looking at the my states forum page it seemed like the two "directors" were more enamored with their title then actually progressing the acceptance and legalization of poker here.

As a player in a state where poker it is expressly prohibited by the states constitution, all the federal legislation passed won't change that. So without a more active state and local activity with an emphasis on changing state laws, as opposed to only focusing on federal legislation the ppa will remain largely inefficient, ineffective and irrelevant.

I've always supported the PPA - as of now, it's our only united front.

But, I do want some damn results. I'd like to see the PPA sit down with members of Congress, draft a bill that everyone likes, and get the bill passed. I'd like to see the PPA raise more hell about what happened. Is their job easy? No. But, I am tired of mass e-mails.

There have been some great articles in the media describing how stupid the DOJ's actions were - here is a group of people saying "tax us!" With this much momentum, I except to see the PPA step up.

The local infrastructure needs a massive upgrade, agreed. We need more good people stepping up and more activity and organization from state directors. The national staff cant possibly be affected to lead local efforts, but I do think we need to figure out a way to build more effective local grassroots.

I don't really understand comments like this. The vast majority of PPA members play online and want to have the ability to play at Stars/FTP because they have the largest player pools and players trust their sites...so if they oppose legislation which prevents their members from doing this, exactly how does that make them a shell of a political organization for PS/FTP? Generally speaking, what's good for the sites is usually going to be good for the players (with regards to getting legislation passed), so doing things that are in the site's best interest doesn't necessarily mean they don't represent player interests. More often than not, the two interests are not mutually exclusive.

Really, if Stars and FT had put some % of their profits from US players into serious lobbying efforts, online poker would be legal in the US by now.

i remember the PPA claiming some huge victory like "SEE?! WE DO DO IMPORTANT THINGS!" when the news came out that funds would be released. kinda reminded me of that scene in the wire when levy explains to a naive stringer that he was being screwed by clay davis

"He rain-made you. A guy says if you pay him, he can make it rain. You pay him. If and when it rains, he takes the credit. If and when it doesn't, he finds reasons for you to pay him more. Clay Davis rain-made you!"

i'm not saying that the PPA is scamming the donations, but i think the rest is applicable

AND on top of that, your biggest victory to date is tainted by the fact that FTP basically said "well the DOJ has your money, we aren't paying you twice"

i think what drives me the most insane about the PPA is you have people like theengineer and skillagrim (ESPECIALLY theengineer) who get so comically insecure and defensive whenever people attack the PPA in the leg forum constantly attacking people with "well at least we're trying! wtf are you doing?"

and that would be fine and dandy if those 2 were just some random posters, but these are ****ing board members of the PPA? these are the people who are going to bat with congress, people who are so lacking in professionalism they just attack posters who have negative things to say about their efforts? yea, i'm sure you've heard the same thing from them a thousand times and are just tired of it. big ****ing deal. it comes with the territory. if you don't have the patience and professionalism to deal with it maybe you shouldn't be taking up your positions, should you?

hey, you wanna know why people think you haven't done ****? because in 5 ****ing years there hasn't been any legislation that has been voted on to prevent us from exactly the scenario we're in. 5 ****ing years after UIEGA and poker is now completely gone from the country save for some rogue sites and now we're left completely at the whims of the DOJ and congress getting around to regulation when they're good and ready. and i'm sure i'll be directed to some completely benign bull**** you have achieved in the last 5 years. good job guys. thanks for your efforts. i'm def enjoying multitabling play money.

and no i have nothing constructive to offer. it pretty much speaks volumes of your abilities to get **** achieved when the only way your arguments against the PPA are valid are only if you have an idea on what to do. isn't that what my donations have gone to? for YOU TO HAVE THE ****ING IDEAS?!

and i bet if and when regulation is finally passed because harrahs/wynn/zynga/party have given enough financial influence to respective members of congress to make something happen, there you'll be claiming victory.

jesus christ

If I'm not mistaken 2p2 actually didn't support the PPA until very recently. MM didn't state why he didn't support them but I'm starting to wonder if this is why.

I kind of agree with OP I got an e-mail from the PPA the other day. Claiming it's because of them that your funds will be released.

I agree D'Amato was a well known and I believe well respected Senator of the state thats brought on all these charges he should know how to get on the Major New Networks and organize real rally's.

The moment PS/FTP/UB/Whoever decided to operate outside of the rules of the USA, their interests became separate from the interests of the players. The players were doing nothing wrong, but the sites were operating an illegal enterprise. Since most of them won't face their accusers, they will be found guilty. At this point, anything that supports FTP/PS further is directly in conflict with the interest of the players. Since I suspect the majority of the PPA's donations came from these sites, I expect them to be pretty quiet.

In defense of the PPA I have seen them quoted in almost every poker article I have read, which is a lot of them. I am not too worried about a facebook post they made, it probably took 2 minutes to type that post. I don't know if its a result of the PPA but it seems like the media is on pokers side on this issue.

I think the PPA should separate themselves from Stars/Tilt and setup new alliances moving forward (Caesers perhaps?). I understand this might not be a popular opinion but I think going forward it's the best way to get poker back in the US. The Stars/FTP issue is likely going to be a long hard fight for both sides. I believe the best thing for online poker would be to support the fight we are most likely to win.

personally i think it would taken a massive fight backed by a ton of money to have prevented this from happening.

As i feel the only ones that could fund such a fight would been PS and FTP. I dont know how much they have done, maybe they have done all they could. But considering the profits they made they and only they as i see it would have had the possibility to have made a change.

I doubt PPA has even 1% of the money needed to faught for your right. They prolly done all they could, i havent send a $ to PPA so i dont think i have the right to give em any critic either.

but i am a euro and dont even play PS or FTP so what do i know

They should def side with Harrahs and MGM to get online poker 100% legal so all transactions will be approved with no chance of committing a crime.

I agree. What has the PPA done but collect $22,000,000 a year in dues and make some people richer? By their own accounting they only spent around 1.5 million last year so where did the rest go? Maybe that is why they are not registered as a non-profit organization.

Probably true, but in many ways our interests are fairly aligned, at least in the past. Also had 100s of thousands of internet poker players cared enough to be even a small bit active before and donated $20 or more a year each, then we would have had a ton more clout. As it was we weren't, and so who provided most of the political advocacy related funding instead?

Easy to bitch but as a player community we did relatively little, hard to complain when that is a simple fact.

The PPA is about as effective as its constituency is active. That is, to say, not very. Hopefully we are waking up and making our voices heard with our politicians, because the PPA needs some back up.

Think I see what you're saying here and I do agree to an extent, though I don't think that player interests are completely seperate from site interests like you're saying. After all, if a bill did go through it would probably benefit both the sites and players long term barring it being something like you can only play on a site run by your state or something.

I do see your point though (I'm assuming this is what you're getting at or close to it) that poker sites had the benefit of being able to sit back and wait for a bill to show up that would be very beneficial for them. If it does, great, we're already dominating the US so we'll continue to print money, if not, oh well, we made a lot of money we may not have made otherwise. Meanwhile, the players have been sitting here for 5 years now hoping something....ANYTHING happens. Fair enough, but at the same time the sites had to know something like this was a real possibility and they risked being perma-banned from the US market, so it wouldn't really make a lot of sense to me that they would be so short sighted, so not sure I buy that. Feel free to correct me if I'm misrepresenting you.

I also don't agree that "anything that supports FTP/PS further is directly in conflict with the interest of the players."

Edit: and FWIW I was mainly defending what I thought was an unfair critique of the PPA, which you didn't address.