@thepizzlefosho: I apologise for being rude. You have a lot of interesting things to say and I should read your posts more carefully.



For the record, I hated Reid 2.0 but could have accepted it. If 2.0 was a sandwich made with rancid bacon, then 3.0 was a feces sandwich with a lump of cold poison (strychnine) for desert.

I can live with some concessions to Harrahs but state lottos / indian casinos are the greediest monopolist ****s on the planet and they need to rapidly oxidize in a conflagration of saturated lipids.

this was nicer than you needed to be, and funny. much appreciated and I apologize for my rude comments as well.

interwebs be gettin heated sometimes.


oh and karak +1 to "really, skall?"

The Reid bill is dead because the Bush tax-cut bill has already passed from the Senate...or maybe...

Please tell me this means you think the bill may go back to the senate.

That's what the news article says. Don't know how likely it is to happen.

maybe our voices along with the PPA is the reason this bill is dead for now?????? Maybe Reid agreed to hold off and try to do a little better next year?

I discuss a lot of the current topics right now on the 2+2 Pokercast released today:

http://pokercast.twoplustwo.com/list...hp?episode=152

You should listen to the whole Pokercast cause it's awesome, but my segment starts at 1:33 (1 hour 33 mins) or so.

More than 50% of US ipoker players risk being permanently banned by the Reid bill, all would be blacked out for a year or more. Those fortunate enough to be allowed to access ipokerAmerica, if and when it gets running, will face a limited market with uncertain prospects due to high taxes and the likely high costs that are systemically related to federally regulated affairs.

It seems the immediate issue facing ipoker is the task of wresting control of PPA from those who would support this totally unsatifactory outcome. If this is not possible, due to prepositioning advantages by the status quoers, it will be necessary to found a new organization devoted to repeal of UIGEA.

Otherwise no further action or support is required, to get a bad result, as the casino interests have co-opted the movement for their own objectives.

It's also worth pointing out that if the PPA continues to get nothing accomplished, and poker players continue giving them money month after month, they don't really have any incentive at all to do anything. They'd actually be out of their jobs if legislation passed that everyone thought was amazing.

They have to try to make it seem like they are doing things that are important. Getting a bill out of committee in the House literally doesn't matter if it doesn't become law. Getting Harry Reid to think about attaching the poker bill to tax legislation literally doesn't matter if no laws end up being changed. The PPA acts like these are accomplishments that we should be impressed by.

John Pappas says this, “We always knew we had a chance to pass legislation during the lame duck session, but it fell short. But, I think there’s significant momentum going forward. We’ve done a good job of convincing lawmakers that the status quo isn’t acceptable.”

This is patently not true. There is no momentum going forward. Republicans will have control of the House in January, and Spencer Baccus will be the chairman of the Financial Services Committee. The environment in Washington will be the worst its been for passing progressive poker legislation in the past 5 years.

How do you know what the Reid bill would do? We never saw a final draft. They were all just discussion drafts - ideas floated around to get feedback. We don't know what the language of a final draft would have been. We also don't know what the position of the PPA would have been on the final draft. It was all just negotiations and lobbying - far from anything on which we can draw final conclusions.

No. It was a freestanding bill that was watered down by the Senate before being added to the SAFE Ports Act.

Dems will continue to control the Senate next year.

You and other PPA haters keep talking about the guys at the PPA being "out of a job." You need to realize that none of them are working at the PPA for their only source of income, and many are volunteering. So please stop talking about how they are only posturing to make it look like they are working hard so that we keep donating. Those guys work like crazy to help online poker gain ground for the benefit of all of us.

Dems will still be in power (as TE notes above), but you guys also seem to be of the belief that the majority of the senate can just wantonly attach whatever it wants to any bill it wants and say "lolotrickedu!!" and make it pass. That's just not the case. There's a lot of red tape and procedural blocks in the way as well. It's a very complicated system.

Is this what your instincts tell you? Skall, Pappas and TE are getting filthy rich off this. Thanks for your well informed assessment of the situation. So if Kyle wasn't around to block the bill would the PPA then be doing a good job?
The only thing that worries me is that these guys get fed up with listening to comments from people like you that most likely have zero clue what is going on and decide enough is enough and quit.

It is worth noting that the Reps are way way better at wielding both red tape and scissors than the Dems, though.

So, you're saying that if a fight looks tough, it's best just to run away and do nothing?

Not at all. There's plenty to do at the state level, for B&M and charity games, for federal and state tax issues, and for plenty of other stuff.

We were getting steamrolled back when UIGEA passed. That bill passed the House as a freestanding bill. Additionally, the GOP chose to add to its party platform a plank advocating banning online poker -- a plank that has been in the platform since 2000.

So, it was clear back then that we were clear underdogs. If I were willing to fight only those which I'd be guaranteed to win, I'd certainly not have chosen this one.

I'm very proud that many of us chose to stand up for ourselves in a tough fight.

Were you really expecting a repeal of the Wire Act and UIGEA? It's nice to expect the impossible, I guess, but I have no idea how you believe such a thing to be achievable.

Not true. IMO, the cat's out of the bag. Reid publicly endorsed online poker, and Caesars, MGM, and others will fight quite actively for it. States will push intrastate bills, too. As a result, I believe we're better off for this bill being introduced and failing to pass this year.

Good Job Karak, well played.

I still think we can get a better bill with more opt in incentives and little to no black out. I also think the best way to get it passed is spin online poker in a positive way to the public. Harrah's should have spin commercials hitting TV a month ahead of the next fight that shoots down arguments to the Regulated poker. If Harrah's and other casinos would talk things out with the big offshore sites and come to terms between each other they could pool resources. Harrah's could still get some start up time. The offshore sites could get amnesty, a better entry date and maybe rent their software. The PPA could help negotiate between them. The offshore sites could offer direct transfer cash outs to the new US sites. Maybe even links to the new US sites. Working together always is the way to go. More lobbying money in one direction.

Is there any conceivable strategy for passing a bill that's favorable to poker players out of the House Financial Services committee with Spencer Baccus as the chair, and then having the bill be passed out of the House with John Boehner as the Speaker? It's nice the Harry Reid supports legalizing and regulating online poker, but that's pretty irrelevant considering the political reality in the House of Representatives.

This isn't a matter of running away from a tough fight. Over the next two years I don't see any path to victory at the federal level. If you disagree I'd be very interested to hear how you plan on succeeding in this political reality.

Senator Kyl didn't "block the bill". He said that he wouldn't support the tax bill if Sen. Reid attached the poker bill to it. Then Sen. Reid unilaterally decided to not include the poker language. This is a very important distinction. If passing the poker bill was a priority to Sen. Reid, he still could've attached it to the tax bill and brought it to the floor for a fight and dare Sen. Kyl and other Republicans to vote against it. The fact of the matter is that poker isn't really all the important to Sen. Reid, and he isn't willing to put any other legislation at risk by taking a chance on the poker legislation. To me, this confirms that Sen. Reid isn't a reliable ally of ours. The casinos gave him a lot of money to try to make this happen, and he hosed them.

Whether they are pretending to work hard, or actually working hard but being really bad at what they do isn't a particularly important distinction to me. Either way they are failing to advocate for professional poker players in a meaningful way, and I think it would be wise to explore other avenues to achieve our legislative desires.

And more than ever at this moment. The DNC is too busy trying to ward off the great liberal/centrist schism.

Nah.. the GOP's got its own schism that is probably way worse than the DNC's. Plus, the DNC was sucking at doing things back when everyone thought the GOP was done existing and the Dems were all jerking off to Obama speeches (myself included, of course).

The GOP's just better at playing chicken than the Dems.

Oh snap. Apparently Reid just caved to a continuing resolution?

wowwwwwww