whether they are doing a good job or not, they are doing more than EVERYBODY else. My argument to the PPA haters is if u think u can do better, by all means do it.

If you had been looking at/doing the Daily Action Plan, you would realize that there have been numerous efforts focused towards legislation that favors the expansion of land-based poker in the US.

i like how the ppa reps ignored the best post in the entire thread

The PPA is one of the biggest scams in poker.

Why is the ppa polluting this thread with touts? This thread isn't a forum for them to drum up donations, it's a poker players opinion thread.

ive never understood this argument. if the players want changes to the ppa(the group they are suppose to represent), then they should be able to voice their opinions without getting this thrown in their face all the time. also, most of the people who are voicing their opinion simply do not have the time to start a group bc they are either people with real jobs, people who have had to move on from online poker, or they are people who have had to relocate to play online.

the ppa has been effective w/ their daily action plans and getting people to contact their state reps, but to say do it yourself or stfu is just ignorant. a group w/o criticism is a group w/o improvement.

thanks to them online poker is legal in the US

b/c otherwise who would care what they do

@Skallagrim

Before I can give your complete post the response it deserves, I need the answers to a few questions. It's my understanding that when one appears before a Senate Comittee, generally one does so at the invitation of the committee. However, most of those invited essentially apply for an invitation. Did you apply to appear before the committee, or let them know in advance that you wished to appear, or were you there as a result of an unsolicited surprise invitation by the committee?

By what process did your name get put before the members (was there a formal nomination from a non-Board member other than yourself? Did the Board approve the ballot?) How were members notified of the vote? How were votes transmitted? How many people voted for you to be on the Board? Was there somebody else who would have been appointed to the Board as a result of the same round of voting if you had received a smaller portion of the votes?

How did you notify members of the polls? How many members received direct notification (e-mail, paper mail, telephone) of the polls? What was the largest number of member responses you received to a single poll? How did you know that all responses came from members and that multiple responses did not come from one member?

Hope you realize that I'm not flaming the PPA.

The vast majority of criticism towards the PPA has been for one of the reasons I mention, and in ways that it's very difficult if not impossible to determine whether or not the PPA is doing a good job based on pure results. I can't believe I have to explain that to poker players.

Umm, I replied to this post directly and DTM has responded back.

The Committee chooses who will testify and their decision is absolute. Committee invitations (or in some cases subpoenas ) are sent to specific individuals of which I was one. A lot politicking goes on behind the scenes, of course, as to who gets invited and who doesn't - but it is the Committee Chairman (well, his staff usually) who controls.

I was not part of that behind-the-scenes talk so I can't tell you what was said. I can tell you that after the hearing the chairman, Senator Akaka of Hawaii, was quite talkative about poker playing and how he thought it was skill too. He joked with me about whether I had any good pointers about the game. Maybe he was just being nice ... maybe something else.

It was the existing Board that nominated me, and then there was a vote of the members "yea or nay." The vote was conducted, as is almost all PPA business, over the internet. I do not recall the actual method used.

E-mail. I am sorry but I do not have the numbers handy. My recollection is that we usually get a 10-20% response to our emails (when a response is directly requested and there is a link to it immediately available). This is actually higher than most organizations similar in organization to the PPA, interestingly enough.

Of course. Had you not posted in this thread I might have not posted in it either.

Skallagrim

I'm a poker player and I have an opinion.

To have a real strong opinion on something, said something has to be significant in some way, the PPA isn't.

And yet every post you've made has been trying to refute other posts and tout your agenda. That isn't an "opinion", is it? Time to call the shills off.

At least the PPA is trying to get **** done.

This is stupid logic that can be applied to having a negative opinion about anything, other than if you happen to be well suited for that particular thing yourself.

I didn't think that movie was very good.

Oh yeah? Lets see you make a better movie.

I didn't like the food at the restaurant.

Oh yeah? Lets see you prepare something better.

bla bla bla

The PPA is the only org that cares about us, yet players keep on bitching about it.

Curt's group qualifies. Not sure where PVA is on the spectrum. I think we can agree it's hard. l imagine Curt would tell you it is.

That's standard practice for state-level casino fights, though.

PPA is different because we actually are a players group. Skall and I came from here to represent us at PPA and PPA's mission is totally player-centric. Sites donate to PPA through the IGC because we get it done. FairPay, OTOH, was funded by casino interests.

Of course. They were well funded and, had their execution been better, they could have been in a position to help shore up the law-and-order angle of the effort.

I think they should have been more direct about their aims and things like that. They should have brought on PX to help them to navigate the waters. Had they been completely transparent and open, I think they'd have found what they were seeking from the poker community.

Some groups are funded by special interests, which is why they receive only token donations. PPA, on the other hand, receives donations from IGC and from players & enthusiasts. We fundraise actively within the poker community. Our ratio is skewed because of the dynamics of who donates. I wish the ratio were better, but I have little control over getting players to donate more.

Skall and I didn't come from PPA to post here. We came from the 2+2 posting community (and the broader "poker community") to represent us all within PPA.

And, as Skall said, I am I poker player and I have an opinion.

Why do you keep saying this??? Before we all organized under the PPA umbrella, our opponents were killing us on the Hill. They had the momentum. After we organized, we were suddenly on offense. How's that so hard to see? Is it because you think it should be easy?

It's like if a group of guys stopped a runaway car careening down a hill and pushed it back up a bit. Using your logic, you'd say they did nothing, as the car was where it was before.

please link me to your direct response to the post i quoted, i seem to have missed it and cannot find it.

Here I'll do it:

Skallagrim's response to my tl;dr post.

He has also responded to my response to his response.

More to follow.

caught all of those and will plead guilty to trolling in the sense that it was not "directly" replying to the original post.

however i think the tldr post deserved a response of equal detail and quality and less of the ppa rhetoric...this was subsequently addressed in the follow-up exchange.

looking forward to reading both perspectives as the discussion moves forward.

I don't really understand the hate for the PPA.

Yes, I'm just as frustrated as the rest of the US online poker players.

And I know they haven't really achieved anything when it comes to legalization of online poker.

But at least they are trying and doing something to get something done.

They've done more than most haters on here so I'm in favor of the PPA.

So you keep saying. With your claimed membership of > 1.2M members, over the past 8 years, you have managed to get poker players to sign up as members at an average rate of over 170K people/yr. That's sounds quite impressive. However, a significant percentage never had to pay any membership fee. (How many different poker players have ever paid a membership fee, BTW? What's the most in any one year?) How meaningful is a free membership that never expires? How do you know that all the people who signed up in 2006 still support the organization? How do you avoid double-counting if membership lasts forever?

When people look at the PPA and see that nearly all its funding comes from online poker sites, and they see that there is no mechanism by which the "members" exert control over the organization, is there any wonder that some people doubt that the PPA truly is a player organization? Fixing only one of those two factors could go a long way to changing those appearances.

Totally?!? C'mon now Rich. The PPA's mission is totally consistent with the aims of PokerStars. That just happens to be consistent with some of the aims of many US poker players as well.

Some US poker players believe that any online licensing requirements should contain bad actor exclusions so stringent that they would happen to disqualify PokerStars. Some US poker players believe that online poker should not be allowed. US players have spoken up on this site to voice concerns about high rake and player fund security (among other things). Do I need to go and quote one of your "that's not our mandate" posts?

Let me suggest to you that the PPA's mission is more consistent with that of PS than it is with that of US players as a whole.

So which came first: the first donation from sites or the first getting it done? What did the PPA get done before the initial funding from sites was promised?

And the IGC and its sources - FTP and PS - are not special interests?

OK, so the PPA had to ask/beg/call in favours/whatever. But it does have the presence in DC to get that done. Some peope ITT don't understand how impressive that is.

The fact that a Senate Committee chose to call a witness from the PPA would seem to be evidence counter to your assertion.

And you probably got > 98% of the votes cast. Sounds just like how they do it in one party states.

It was a ratification of a board decision, rather than an election.

10-20% of how many current addresses on the membership list? I agree that it a good rate of return for an organization of this sort.

It's a pity you weren't able to come up with actual numbers on the votes cast for you or on poll feedback. You might have been able to get me to eat my words about the PPA not even being representative of its members. I'll give you a couple of days. I may even hold off my main reply to your first response until then.

Sorry to make you work so hard. You know I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it had potential to improve your organization, and therefore benefit poker players.

The members to exert total control, though, though Skall and me. Either of us can pull the plug simply by speaking out if we see any issues. There haven't been.

There interests and the interests of many players have been relatively aligned. That's coincidental, as PPA is aligned with players.

Skall and I have direct input on everything PPA does. I can tell you I receive ZERO direction from Stars. I'd not accept direction from anyone but the poker community, so that works well for all of us IMO.

Sure, some do, but most people I hear from want PS and support online poker. It's my belief that the majority do not and that PPA represents the majority view.

That's why Skall and I are here every day.

PPA does think fund security is very important. I've said so many, many times. Legislation on the Hill includes such provisions.

As for the rake, I support a low rake and believe the best way to get this is through market competition (as Congress is very unlikely to put price controls on rake). Again, I've stated this many times.

I completely disagree. PPA has been active on non-online poker, where PS doesn't (yet) have a stake. We've been very supportive of Nevada's legislation, despite its shutting out of PS (which I happen to think it harmful to players, by the way), etc.

PPA was formed prior to IGC donating to us.

They are, but they simply donors. That's the distinction.

AstroTurf groups are owned by their funders. PPA is independent. If they took issue with PPA, IGC could stop donating, but that's all they could do. They assist because they benefit from empowering the poker community, as do the players (it's an expensive fight...it's tough to ask the community to foot a bill that large.)

If we had another candidate as qualified as Patrick, we'd want them both. There would be nothing to gain my making one of them lose to the other. Rather, we let the membership decide if they wished to have Patrick on or not.

I disagree. This isn't someone else's movie or food. This is our fight!

People are attacking the right to play poker. When we came together to fight back, we didn't outsource this to PPA. The fight belongs to each and every one of us.

Name one thing, one, they've done to help or protect U.S. poker players..

You are so full of hot air its ridiculous. Obviously my point was that someone can have a perfectly legitimate negative opinion of a product or a person's performance without being able to produce that product or do that job themselves. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about something trivial like a meal, or something very important like the President.

This is probably the biggest reason that I don't like the PPA. The stupid sounds bytes and rhetoric are insulting to people's intelligence. If you want to talk about the good things that the PPA has done, fine. If you want to answer criticism by going on about how we are under attack, challenging other people to do better, etc, then just save it.