tamiller866
yet for mind numbing (political/financial) reasons Poker Players continued lobbying the Federal government to change Federal laws when there were no Federal laws preventing State regulating i-gaming.
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Considering it was the Feds that said no poker, ones natural inclination was to believe the Feds could/would give it back. Most of us are not lawyers and the confusion is reinforced when you are being told to push this Senator and that Congressman. All over this forum we are being told to contact federal legislators.

If this is the case, one would wonder why the states such as New York with plenty of poker players, and lots of savvy lawyers, did not immediately jump into the void?

Because NY is a swamp of special interests.Patronage,nepotism,cronyism,unionism all have to considered before anything gets done.NYCOTB bankrupt,Nassau cty.OTB on the brink.One party rule in Albany.Sheldon Silver rules by decree.Wanna see MMA events live in NY nope,King Shelly disapproves.It will take years just to decide how to whack up the poker pie.If you're looking for leadership on this issue,look elsewhere.

While I believe the coast was legally clear all the way back in 2006 when Congress laid out the rules within the UIGEA (must be intrastate only and 21+), the political waters were (and still are) murky in even the most liberal States.

The technology to ensure internet gambling remains intrastate is only now evolved to a trusted level, while age verification remains controversial, moreover, no one was lobbying for it - literally no one.

When California, the most poker friendly State in the union proposed regulating poker, Poker Players responded by urging opposition to the 'protective' legislation:

So without even the Poker Players supporting legislation that locked out the sites which funded the Poker Players lobbying efforts, the proposition stood no chance of succeeding against the lobbying efforts of the Tribes, lottery and horse tracks - all of which are equally powerful concerns in your example State of NY.

It took BF for Poker Players to back off on their demands that the 'white-listed' sites funding their lobbying efforts be granted intrastate licenses:
With those sites finally under indictment, Poker Players gave a courteous nod to intrastate licensing, but by this time the Tribes were a more powerful lobby than the card-rooms proposing the legislation and the leader of the Democratic party (POTUS, apologies to Harry Ried) was giving his nod for a lottery approach, so nothing short of an organized march on Sacramento was likely going to be effective.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I believe that had the millions of Poker Players rallied in favor of intrastate legislation we could have had lotteries serving online poker by now in several States, but even now it is questionable whether 'we' would want that, so it's not in any doubt than any Daily Action Plan that would have called for support for that effort back when PokerStars and Full Tilt were readily accessible would have been ignored - all deference to Rich Muny's amazing leadership aside.

TA,

PPA was neutral until the legislation was amended to add significant penalties, both criminal and civil, on players who chose unlicensed sites. Also, keep in mind that American players had access to big overseas sites and weren't exactly demanding legislation to shut down access to those sites. In fact, the most opposition PPA ever saw was when we supported Sen. Reid's proposed licensing bill in the 2010 lame duck session, as it called for a blackout period.

Thanks for the kind words.

PPA has been supportive of state legislation, endorsing the bill that passed in NV and the proposed legislation in NJ. Our requests for removal of the sanctions on players in CA fell on deaf ears, so we came out against that bill. Additionally, the majority of pro-poker communication to governors and state reps comes from PPA members via PPA's prefilled state letter.

I do agree that not too many here would have joined daily action plan initiatives to ask state lotteries to establish online poker monopolies back when we had access to the bigger formerly U.S. facing sites.

Had the alleged millions of players responded with any strength we'd be playing
already.When the rednecks tried to shove SOPA through, FB and Twitter really blew up and the big internet players added pressure too forcing them to back down.Post BF the PPA went to work but the rest of the poker community stayed in bed.The last 2 petitions put forth by PPA got less than 10K signers.The con men in Washington respond to two things,votes and money.It's fairly obvious they don't think we can supply enough of either.

Even that's questionable, look at marijuana and gay marriage as examples of large, vocal, politically active interest groups who have yet to even dream so big as to seek immediate Federal authorization.

Those groups recognized long ago that what they were seeking is a State issue, the only thing they request is that the Federal government not enforce the old laws on the books to prevent their State-by-State progress.

Even had the financial 'stakeholders' been uniformly aligned behind a hypothetical outcry from millions of players, the best we could have achieved would have been getting a bill through Congress similar to what the healthcare (insurance) industry pushed through (ObamaCare) which was then tied up in court for years, is yet to go into effect and might be over-turned in the next congress.

Like it or not, gambling has always been a State issue just like recreational drugs, marriage and healthcare, and unlike with health care, poker players can't rely on SCOTUS to invoke the mythical 'good & plenty' clause (Maxine Waters term) of the Constitution to hope that even if a Federal bill were pushed through that they 'would be playing by now'.

The biggest problem the PPA faces is that unlike those other issues, most poker players 'grew up' believing that online poker was a right they once had which was taken away - similar to your internet privacy example - but in fact it was always illegal at the State level and the Federal government simply passed a bill pledging support to help States enforce their own laws.

So how do you motivate people to 'ask' for something that they believed was already theirs? How do you suggest to them that the best path to regulated poker is to lose access to (even during a short blackout period as Rich reminded us) to the sites they trust?

Who is going to show up to march on the capitol of a small state in order to gain the ability to play poker (and pay tax?) with the few thousand others in that State when most have grown up believing it is their right to play against millions world wide (and tax free?).?

Gays have gotten what ever they asked for that does'nt require a vote by the people.Ryan White act,HIPPA,massive redistribution of research dollars,taking from cancer,heart disease etc.(many more victims btw)and putting them towards AIDs research.Obamas DOJ wont enforce the DOM act.Activist judges ignored the will of the people in California.

If gays spoke out against the UIGEA I might not be in Merge Poker purgatory like I am now.

I didn't want to go into details (our resident fact checker calls that 'politarding') but yes, had poker players been actively lobbying their States for legalization (and making progress) then it's likely that the UIGEA would have been ignored by the Obama administration much the way the DOM was, but that wasn't the case.

Poker Players were doing the exact opposite except for within the two States where POTUS least wanted internet gambling authorized - in the States influenced by the commercial casino industry 'we' were supporting regulation, and three weeks after AB258 hearings BF came down, the day after regulations were passed, the OLC released it's opinion, etc.

So it was a catch 22, had 'we' marched in favor of Illinois-esque lottery based legislation prior to BF, BF might not have happened, but we might have gotten ourselves stuck with lottery-based intrastate-only poker.

Gays didn't have the dilemma of choosing between the status quo and State licensing as there was no 'offshore' marriage option, so it's unfair to lay blame on poker players for not being as vocal when the situations were entirely different.

Your prior post suggested an outcry should have developed after BF, but most of the community leadership was either under indictment, under suspicion, taking flight or too young/naive to make an impact, and followers were more worried about their current bankrolls and future earnings to suddenly become political.

It was only after BF that most people became aware of the relationship between the PPA and the site accused of defrauding them, not exactly the best moment to launch a membership drive, and there were few if any well recognized individuals who didn't have a relationship with one of the indicted sites.

Again, even with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight it's hard to imagine a scenario in which history doesn't play out exactly the way it did, the deck was stacked against online poker from the moment the American Gaming Association decided that they were the stakeholder of an industry that they had previously lobbied to destroy.

The irony there is that it was Full Tilt's own notification of authorities of the whereabouts of Daniel Tzetzkoff that gave the DOJ the needed evidence, and Scheinberg's negotiations with Wynn that swayed the AGA to stake their claim on the market which caused the DOJ to pull the trigger on the indictments - up until then the DOJ seemed satisfied to play a cat and mouse game in which they occasionally succeeded in a large seizure of 'gambling' proceeds.

Could you write up an example of a tweet/message to send our congressmen? Or do you think it's a complete waste of time and that regulation will get done when it gets done?

Also, I'm unclear what you mean when you say it's a state issue, yet you also say you want federal regulation. Do you want the federal government to regulate the states that choose to "opt in" to inTERstate poker? Or do you want inTRAstate regulation from the feds?

Here are some generic examples of 'positive tweet' reasons the Federal government should regulate online poker:

States have begun authorizing online #poker and gambling but few have experience regulating it, Please support HR 2366.

#Poker players should be allowed to compete with others from any State or Country where it is legal, Please support HR 2366.

Online #poker is not going away, play will continue on offshore sites unless US sites are competitive, support HR 2366.

Lottery is a State issue, #poker is a contest of skill that deserves Federal consumer protection, support HR 2366.

Monopolized online gambling violates WTO, US technology would dominate free market #poker, support HR 2366.

NV is protecting it's #poker players with hi-tech regulation, all Americans deserve the same, Pls support HR 2366.

But Tweets or preferably Facebook posts, emails or letters with a personal touch are more likely to be effective, especially when targeted at your own Representative and/or Senators.

Telling them a story about why you enjoy online poker and making them aware of your willingness to either defy the current deposit restrictions or even relocate if necessary is going to be more persuasive than generic arguments.

I believe that Congress should treat poker the way they treat Horseracing, rather than lumping betting on Horseracing into the same 'seedy' connotation of other sports betting, it's viewed by Congress as an American tradition that needs to be maintained for future generations by allowing it's exposure through current technology.

Poker is to casino games as horseracing is to sportsbetting, it shouldn't be viewed with the same disdain as those other activities simply because many State laws erroneously equate poker with craps when it clearly has more in common with Bridge.

Yes it's possible to gamble recklessly on poker, but it's also possible to gamble recklessly on investments, yet Congress didn't outlaw investing, rather it chose to regulate it after a "Black Friday" in the stock market.

Authorizing the use of games of pure chance to generate revenue has traditionally been left to the States in compliance with the Tenth Amendment directive that any powers not authorized by the constitution are reserved for the States.

Poker however is not a game of pure chance but rather a fair competition, or at least it should be a fair competition but few States have the experience and/or technology to protect consumers to ensure that poker competitions are equally as fair as stock market investments.

It was for these same reasons after 'Black Friday' that Congress chose to centralize Stock Market regulation, and it should be for those same reasons that Congress should act now following poker's black Friday to centrally regulate poker and the obvious choice to locate that centralized regulation is the gambling capitol of the US (NV), the same as they elected the financial capitol of the US to centrally regulate the markets.

I also believe that the Federal government should prevent States from using the facilities of interstate commerce to offer the types of gambling they defined as Class III when constructing Tribal gambling law, the only competition these games offer is between the player and the 'house' and no government should be in the business of offering addictive games which are inherently rigged by the long term odds to defraud it's own citizens.

So while the moral decision to authorize gambling is a State issue, Congress should be reminded that regulation of States issues falls into their jurisdiction whenever interstate commerce is involved, so just as States have the right to authorize prostitution, the Federal government has the responsibility to prevent another State or Country's moral decisions from effecting the economy of non-authorizing States.

If Delaware wants to offer full blown casinos to their citizens, that is their right, but it is a privilege to do so on the internet which should be denied, conversely a State such as Utah has the right to set a policy that even poker is a forbidden pursuit, but since internet poker is interstate/national commerce, only the Federal government has the power to enforce that policy and the UIGEA has proven itself ineffective.

For those reasons Congress not only has a right to get involved with internet gambling, it has a duty which it has shirked by burying it's head in the sand and declaring it a 'State issue', with both the Wire Act and the IGBA off the table in regards to poker, they can no longer 'conservatively' choose not to take a position.

We (the PPA) have them boxed into a corner, they can no longer pass the buck, so tell them why you would like the decision they now have to make to be one that results in Federal regulation - not because you want to play, they know that you could play right now if you wanted to badly enough - but because you are tired of worrying if your deposit is safe, if the shuffle is rigged or are hackers using God mode, bots, HUDs or collusion to deprive you of a fair game.

Excellent post!

Good stuff TA

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/58_20...1.html?pos=hln

Hold on a minute, Senator. I don't think that's necessary. tamiller says the Wire Act opinion changes nothing.

Kyl was Reid's co-signer on the letter to the Attorney General asking him to clarify whether the Wire Act applied to all betting, and requesting that he not release that clarification publicly if it did not, so I'm quite certain Kyl is aware that legally the clarification made no difference.

Politically it made some difference, Congress could no longer bury their head in the sand by telling their constituents that the Wire Act would prevent interstate online gambling.

But State licensed Horseracing has been wagered online for years, Iowa commissioned a Study in 2011 (http://www.iowa.gov/irgc/Intrastate%...et%20Poker.pdf) that came back telling them that the Wire Act wouldn't apply if they put poker online, Illinois and NY were already moving to put lottery online, Minnesota had already put bingo online, FL and California had tried to forward legislation to put poker online, NV passed it's online poker regulations, and Washington DC itself had already passed a bill to allow their lottery to put poker online prior to the 'game changing' OLC clarification.

The whole theory that because some data packets might not remain intrastate and therefore any packet containing a bet would violate the Wire Act was laughable, Kyl and Reid knew what the answer to the letter was going to be when they wrote it, but hoped they could use that answer privately to get the Wire Act strengthening ball rolling prior to States finding out they had a green light - Obama had a different plan.

Minor nit...here's the actual language from the letter:

"Conversely, if for some reason the Department is reconsidering its longstanding position, then we respectfully request that you consult with Congress before finalizing a new position that would open the floodgates to Internet gambling."

(emphasis added)

Not a nit at all, theirs is just formal political language for saying exactly what I posted.

I think some goalposts got moved on that last salvo.

This is where the 'goalposts' began:

txbarbarossa asserted that the Wire Act clarification was a 'game changer' - entirely false, it was a cosmetic/political changer - then mapleleaf 'corrects' him by extrapolating his misinformation into 'not only was it a game changer, a new administration could change the game back'.

For the reasons I gave, the Wire Act clarification only changed the game for Reid and Kyl, as it only publicly revealed what the PPA, legal experts, State lawmakers, etc. already knew, so a proper extrapolation should be that we would want the game changed back (if 'un-clarifying' a statute was actually possible), because as Congress found when writing PASPA, whatever gambling States get online prior to Congress taking action will be grandfathered out of Federal prohibition.

But that narrative doesn't fit the liberal bias of these forums which is more focused on getting/keeping their 'team' in power than getting Federal poker regulation, so they would rather perpetuate the myth that 'evil Romney' might reverse what 'angel Obama' did for State governments than hear the truth.

The GOP is misleading it's own supporters by telling them that a vote for Romney could somehow prevent States from putting gambling on the internet, and the liberal majority of the pro-poker movement is seizing on that GOP propaganda to rally support for their preferred candidate.

Factually calling them out on their own BS would probably be just as effective at swaying opinions for your 'team', but more importantly reminding them that no change of opinion is going to transform an online slot machine into a sporting event or contest might actually get them to support the Wire Act strengthening bill we need to amend with a poker carve-out.

5 years ago us congress put out a memo that us wanted to get into online poker but new usa sites couldnt compete with the BIG 3 SITES
how to do it
1=the big 3 sites need to stop being allowed to have usa players
poker stars fulltilt absol/ultimatebet
2=usa players would need to be stopped from all online gaming
3=online poker bann for up to 2 years to make a ready and willing player pool
4= when new poker is allowed only usa players allowed on only usa sites so all will be taxed
5= no foreign players cuz they cant be taxed
6= no usa players allowed on non usa sites
WOW look whats happened

why cant they just allow it and charge a license fee
and get the taxes from the players when they cash out
greedy ****s
gotta screw people around
look at how many people that got hurt from that krap
not just players banks and their people
if we cant tax em we dont want em
greedy ****s
like a little kids mentality in goverment
they can regulate certain types of cards to be used for online gamin and charge a fee
u pay em up front cash and use em for online PURCHASES stoppes the fraud
banks can sell em walmart whoever fees taxes BUT NO
all kinds of ways to make money off it
push it all overseas way that usa does bizz OUTSOURCE IT
make em leave and go overseas to play
ROFL
hurt banks players
like little kids WE CANT TAX EM OUTSOURCE EM
let the other countrys make moneys from em

banks could make moneys
players could make moneys
player spend moneys on stuff cars hookers lap dances
banks make moneys off the moneys creates jobs but no OUTSOURCE IT
push the players somewhere else hurt the others hurt the banks
send the moneys overseas OUTSOURCE EM
push the others on sites that arent really very good or reliable
bunch of morons in congress
OUTSOURCE THEM DOLLARS instead of makin something out of it OUTSOURCE EM let somebody else get it

Sorry, but it's not some conspiracy. A poker market that barred US sites while allowing offshore sites to offer services was never going to thrive. It was structurally unsound and was doomed to fail.

read it agin i understand what ur sayin
its about bannin offshore sites and makin usa only sites
and no matter what happens thats gunna be weak

u can say what u want congress is doing exactly what they said they must do to make usa sites instead of working with the existin sites and other countrys
ban other sites
outlaw poker for up to 2 years
make it just usa sites usa players
tax everything
hurt lots on the way oh well to bad for them
its not our problem
say what u want thats what they doin
and its a shame

Why should a few people that are problem gamblers dictate the personal freedoms of everyone else?

Do we want to live in a society where we have no choice in life simply because risk is involved?

How can personal responsibility ever be tested if all challenges in life are banned?