I am so sick to my stomach right now. How dare the PPA, a supposed body to represent poker players do something so backhanded as this and then support it...

What do I mean? Well I have been contributing to the PPA for years. At no point did they EVER EVER EVER ask me or tell me about a blackout period and then poof, out of nowhere, there is a 15 month blackout period and the members had basically no time to mobilize against it. It's like Bill Frist within the PPA. I was also defending them vs 2+2 and saying they really did have our interests at heart, but they don't. They would never do this to us if they did and I am embarrassed to have defended them so often.

It's fine that the 15 month blackout will be manageable for some players. I see posts explaining how x, y, and z will be able to cope just fine. But for others, you have basically just kicked some people on the street. You have kicked some people in debt (with a reasonable expectation to get out of it) into bankruptcy or having to sell their home. You have forced people to leave the country. And you gave NO warning about this.

I wish I could take my money back from them. I never once regretted donating despite the lack of success over the years, but now that they have 'success', I have never regretted anything more.

Goodbye USA and shame on you PPA.

If you had been active in the forums reading about other bills, a blackout period was going to be included in all of them in some form or another.

I don't work for the PPA, nor do I blindly follow them, but I think they've worked their asses off to get us the best deal they can here. If you want to blame someone for a 15 month blackout, blame the government.

I have been active and the PPA glossed over this -- that was his point.

a regulation period could have played out in a VERY different way and about 1000x less extreme. this is WORST case scenario for any supposed 'success' bill.

i also have been checking in with the leg forum from time to time since the day the UIGEA came into effect. no, i have not been here daily, and am not claiming otherwise, but if this had been clear, there would be a thread with about 5,000 posts just about the blackout period. indeed, there was no such thing.

It's not even close to a worst case scenario.

The worst case scenario is if they don't put a time table on the blackout period and we just wait for the government to figure out how to run the online poker industry. That could take forever.

The provisions inside both the Frank Bill and Menendez bill likely would have left us without poker for longer, and possibly MUCH longer.

I've read about it with every other bill on this very site, so I'm not sure why you didn't.

The terms of the "blackout" weren't as specific as they are this time, but there was going to be a time where everything was being setup where people weren't going to be able to play.

but you realize we aren't all lobbyists or in the know on this kind of thing. it would be very easy to gloss over without details, and suddenly, smack, 15 months. it should have been made VERY clear what could be happening. instead, it was not.

what did I say? try reading it again. The PPA has tended to bathe all the bills in a rosy light and minimized the negatives, including blackouts. The OP thought they had a duty to players to make that known, so do I.

Should players gather information on their own, of course. Again, that wasn't the point of the OP or myself.

I'm not a lobbyist, and I have no idea what the crap is going on as far as technical details.

But it's fairly logical that when our government takes over the operation of a multi billion dollar industry that it may take some time to setup.

FWIW, I frequent this forum as well and was also unaware that an enormous blackout period was "implied". Water under the bridge now of course, but as a donating member i'd much rather have the truth layed out straight rather than have the PPA push their own agenda while leaving members in the dark.

i'm confused here. i thought the revised draft was gonna have a decrease from 15 months

Whether it was glossed over or not it was certainly talked about and people should have been aware something like this was a possibility.

Many of us have warned people to understand that with regulation comes some pain, before making up their mind whether to support legilsation. I support legilsation but was aware not everything would be ideal in any bill.

Things like opt-out/opt-in, waiting periods, etc. The really bad part about the Reid bill is it was done behind closed doors without public debate and hearings. We never saw a copy of the bill until recently.

We hoped it would. It appears it will not.

logical? logical to me would be that the status quo would continue until the transfer happened.

thank you.

it's almost as if everything has gone exactly as I said it would and the PPA has been the naive sucker at the table the entire time