Because the major sports leagues are hypocritical and want to pretend that sports betting doesn't drive interest in their games.

On the same token, they have a ton of money and aren't afraid to throw it around to your favorite politician. So they get what they want.

Well, your other options are:

1. Vote for a guy who isn't afraid to try and impose his religious beliefs on others (and hates gambling) and whose political party has it a part of their platform to ban all forms of internet gambling.

2. Vote for a 3rd party candidate who can't win

I'll gladly take option 3, the guy who isn't doing us any favors, but probably wouldn't stand in our way if something got done.

Merge/Bovada/Revolution> Reid/Kyll bill 15 months of a complete online poker blackout is unacceptable and DOES NOT need to be included in any bills

This can't possibly be true, can it???

It's true.

someone has to provide this part of the text, if you are paying taxes on your total "cashes" and not "profit", i don't see how anyone could make a living at poker (say 500k cashes in a year, 100k profit; pay 20% taxes on 500k= 100k, lol) There's just no way the PPA could let something like that get in there

We would only be able to play against other US players.

No swedes?

fwiw it was the same way in sweden before they changed it a year ago. But it didn't really matter, in practise they just took 30% of actual winnings anyway.

Yeah? How you gonna make money playing online then? Can someone with actual knowledge please elaborate on this?

a legitimate, safe, online poker environment will attract so many rec players we'll be drowning in them. I'll do 15 months standing on my head, saying thank you massah

the people protesting these bills are always kinda funny considering the games have continued to deteriorate each new time a bill is proposed. the last time we were hoping for a new bill to get passed that had a blackout period, the people in the know were saying things would get a lot worse... and yeah, then black friday happened. now we have people saying lets just keep bovada, merge, revolution, ok how about nothing? i always get visuals of ex-online grinders flipping burgers at mcdonalds somewhere and hearing about a new non-perfect proposal of a bill to regulate online poker and they just say "omgomgwtFFF!! 2 month blackout period! no hud!?!?!? no thank you, DO NOT WANT" while they go back to collecting a $137.45 paycheck.

Now that's some interesting information. I wonder how that's going to go over. I imagine a number of governors are not going to take kindly to that. Including Rick "The Veto Man" Perry.

I still find required opt-in to be a non-starter for me. Seems to make the bill into a wolf in sheep's clothing. "Here you get legal poker. Just kidding only like 5 states opted-in we got the 100% ban we were looking for in 45 states. Suck it freedom."

I still find it sad that we have to beg the government to give consenting adults the ability to play a game with THEIR OWN MONEY.

It is true. It is also true right now without passage of the bill. You are supposed to report your total winning sessions separate from deductions for your total losing session on your federal tax return as an amateur, and can only net them on a Schedule C for a pro. State tax law in some cases doesn't allow the same deduction for losing sessions. And even the pro may not be able to take the business expense deduction for losing sessions on their state income tax return if state law requires a different method of reporting poker income as gambling income.

Any such state that opts in will obviously have to change the way their income taxes work or no one in their state will play, making the opt in moot. It's already a known issue on the state level.

What does this even mean? Btw, DO NOT WANT a 15 month blackout period. BBL after i get done flipping some burgers.

wait, I'm confused. do you or don't you want a 15-month blackout in the bill? cause it's up to us. we're in the driver's seat wrt writing this bill, and if we even threaten to pull support for it, the prohibitionists will scramble to appease us.

This brings flashbacks of the last bill that was trying to get passed that had a blackout period and how people thought it was outrageous and they wanted to hold on to the grey area status quo that was FTP/PS at the time.

You'd think that with black friday people would know better but it's amazing to me that people would want to hold on to merge/bovada/revolution instead of a 15month blackout, way to lower the bar imo. Really reminds me of shifting comparisons addressed in this TED Talk (especially strating at 18:03)

I mean, you're not, if you live in a bad tax state. The effect can be at least partially mitigated by playing very long sessions, but, depending on other conditions, state taxes could still be an arbitrarily large percentage of real poker earnings.

In practice, the vast majority of poker players currently choose the felonious route of not reporting their poker income. Forced reporting under future US licensing will have tremendous effects on the poker economy.

Hopefully, once the entire population of any given bad tax state is forced into compliance and the first few thousand casual players get their 4-figure tax increases from a losing year of poker, something can happen to fix the rules that are in place. There is no clear rational basis for these rules being the way they are. These are rules that happen to work fine enough for traditional gambling that just don't really fit for competitive strategy games like poker.

Everything is fixed (as far as within-year stuff) if an entire year of poker play is defined as a single session.

seriously people. take the time its worth it and it really does help.

They are actually protecting freedom. States rights. The Federal government cannot usurp the power of the states to outlaw gambling. They can make it legal at the Federal level. They cannot mandate the states allow it. If you are waiting for that to happen, you'll be playing games for cash at King.com for the rest of your life.

I am not sure if this should be supported or not. There does seem to be some issues that need to be sorted before this bill is indorsed by the players.

interesting article I read tonight

http://www.kickasspoker.com/2012/10/...reid-kyl-bill/

After looking into more, the article seems a little harsh and possibly misleading. I just hope that the current players will be protected and that the playing markets will be at least national.

Just read this, thank you PPA (and Rich Muny):

Additional details on the bill have emerged and the PPA has acquired a copy of a new draft, one that has removed the language regarding player penalties. “It’s very clear and explicit that there are no criminal penalties for players,” Rich Muny, VP of Player Relations for the PPA, told PokerFuse about the new bill, which QuadJacks posted online in full. “They knew we would likely oppose a bill with player penalties and were willing to answer us on that.”

Read more: http://www.pokernews.com/news/2012/1...nt=#story-5046

well sure if you don't count asset forfeiture as a penalty.