March 8, 2010

Dear Representative Abruzzo,

Thank you for introducing HB 1441, the Internet Poker Consumer Protection & Revenue Generation Act of 2010. As a Florida resident and long-time Internet poker player, I appreciate your efforts to protect poker players because sensible regulation has proven to be the best way insure consumers have the protections they need and deserve. As the Florida State Director of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), I represent the interests of the 65,000 members of the PPA in Florida who are looking for the best Internet poker experience possible.

For a good player experience, an Internet poker network must have a “critical mass” of active player accounts to bring about a desirable choice of games, stakes, and tournament structures whenever logging in to play. Today, there are nearly a dozen international poker networks that achieve this after years of building worldwide client base. It is estimated that more than 600,000 Floridians have active player accounts on these existing Internet poker networks. Currently, when a Florida resident plays Internet poker they are competing with people across the U.S. and the globe. It is unrealistic to expect a single, Florida-only network to provide a similar experience. Given a choice between a state-regulated network which limits players and games and continuing to play on an international site that provides the desired player experience, I expect most players will choose the latter. For this reason, I oppose HB 1441 in its current form.

The single-network system proposed in HB 1441 for Florida eliminates the competitive marketplace that forces poker networks to offer special incentives to attract players. These incentives, which include rakebacks (a return to the player of a percentage of the rake collected), deposit bonuses (a bonus dollar amount paid to the player’s account on each deposit made), and freerolls (tournaments which award cash prizes but have no entry fee for the player), will no doubt be quite sparse on the Florida-only poker network. Not only does this reduce the consumer advantages for those Florida citizens who would choose to play on this Florida regulated network, the Florida only network would undoubtedly lose players to the sites that offers these player incentives. Unfortunately, the deficiencies in the current proposal will result in a poker network that is not popular with Internet poker players, and consequently, the revenues anticipated via this legislation will not materialize.

Currently, there is legislation before the U.S. Congress to license and regulate Internet poker. This bill, S 1597, the Internet Poker and Games of Skill Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act, includes revenue-sharing with the states. This bill is based on competition with sites worldwide and through revenue sharing will result in more money to state coffers than should bills like HB 1441 become the norm. Given this, I respectfully request that you give your support to these efforts by working with our Florida’s Congressional delegation rather than pushing now for a Florida-only poker network. Should the efforts for licensing and regulation fail in the U.S. Congress, a Florida bill would become the best option, but only one which affords the players a competitive marketplace along with access to the international community of players.

Should it come to that I would be happy to discuss with you suggestions for modifying the provisions of your bill to bring about both protections and the best player experience for Florida citizens. In the meantime, I hope you will opt to support the federal licensing proposal in lieu of HB 1441.

Please let me know how you plan to proceed so I will know what to tell our membership. I am available for further discussion of this issue at your convenience. Thank you again for your support of the rights of poker players across Florida.

Sincerely,


Martin Shapiro
Florida State Director
Poker Players Alliance
Florida.PPA@gmail.com

Nice letter Martin!

Thanks! Hope others will follow suit.

Did you send it to the newspapers, too? I would encourage that you find as many places as you can to send it, including talk radio stations. You can try to be a guest on talk radio.

Good luck.

The PPA has reached out to several FL newspapers and media outlets about Martin's letter as well as other news outlets.

Drew

Good letter.

If there are Florida poker media, Ante Up comes to mind, furnish them some story content based oon your response to the proposed bill.

(If you do not already have one, see if the PPA can furnish you an email list of all PPA members in Florida. then keep the momentum by contacting them as well. Pappas has already testifieed, correct ? PPADrew noted they had "reached out" to various media. You likely should go directly to the grassroots membership.)

Reaching out can take some time, so don't just do it once and give up. It also helps to find sympathetic reporters who are poker players who will take up the cause.

Thanks for the suggestions. There was an action alert sent out to all Florida PPA members:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...-alert-732634/

Great letter PX, keep up the fight in FL. This is important not only to FL residents but to everyone in the US because others states might follow a Florida model of intrastate online poker, so lets make sure it's the best model possible for players

Absolutely true.

I sent a letter to my representative via PPA.

TY!

Latest word is that the Florida Internet poker bill is dead for this year. Not absolutely confirmed, but likely.

Letters and emails from PPA members did make an immediate difference.

Wow that's great news if true.

Hopefully some progress on the Federal front over the next year will discourage Florida lawmakers from revisiting the intrastate model. One can only hope.

This is horrible news. PPA is just a shill organization for the IGC which is funded by the major sites who wish to keep online gambling offshore and unregulated. I love the way Pappas insists that little cheating occurs and how poker is regulated in reputable jurisdictions. Are you f'ing kidding me. Khanaweke commission, costa rica....right. This is a dangerous organization who has dedicated many of their resources fighting against the best hope of a regulated environment. They pose as a front for players best interest and prey on impressionable kiddos to serve their cause.

That the PPA gets a major percentage of their funding from the IGC and where that money comes from is not a secret. So what. A major lobbying effort takes major money. If the sites are willing to help fund it that's great as long as your contention that they are shills for them doesn't become true. So far, IMO, it hasn't.

Based on the bolded part you think it has. Do you really think the proposed intrastate bill in Florida would have been good for players? If that's our best hope of a regulated (in the US) environment then I'm all for holding onto the crumbling status quo as long as possible.

That's outrageous. PPA is a membership organization funded by its player base along with contributions by the IGC. Why should we carry their water? That being said, it's a shared load, much as with the NRA.

Also, legislation pushed by PPA aims to bring the industry under the the umbrella of U.S. law. If PPA weren't around, you'd hear ZIPPO from Congress about doing anything but banning online poker.

Sites don't have "doom switches." Rather, you're experiencing standard deviation. In fact, I'd guess your rare winning sessions are simply the result of running well (positive variance). Surely you've noticed that the good players here believe cards are random, while it's only the terrible ones who believe it to be rigged. LOL at the idea that sites only go after bad players with doom switches.

I recommend you focus on improving your game.

PPA gets some contributions from the IGC, but we also get plenty from the player base.

Please disclose the ratio of contributions from IGC to the "player funder" contributions.

"Also, legislation pushed by PPA aims to bring the industry under the the umbrella of U.S. law. If PPA weren't around, you'd hear ZIPPO from Congress about doing anything but banning online poker."

This is simply false. Canada is in the process of legalizing with no input from the PPA. New Jersey, California, Iowa, and Florida did not even know that the PPA existed until PPA spoke out against legalizing and regulating poker at a state level. Please give credit where credit is due.

"LOL at the idea that sites only go after bad players with doom switches."

Cheating definitely occurs as shown with UB, Absolute, etc. but it is hard to say at what level. I don't think the Khanaweke commission would be willing to help disclose such info . US licensing and regulation is the best solution whether at a state or federal level. The problem with the federal approach is that is it is getting little attention as the mass public could really care less. The only real hope for US sites within the next 4 years is at a state level.

It's enough that we players can be comfortable that they're carrying their fair share of the load.

Not so. States weren't doing anything intrastate prior to UIGEA. It wasn't even being discussed. Rather, it didn't come up until there was a lot of pressure at the federal level to get something done. This would not have happened had the PPA not been in existence.

Additionally, PPA has had its members write to governors and state reps. The auto-letter is at http://www.capwiz.com/pokerplayersal...005591&type=ML.

Also, PPA does not oppose licensing and regulating at the state level. Rather, we oppose models that would lead to small player bases and high rakes.

PPA has condemned the the UB/AB scandals and has been critical of Kahnawake's response.

Those scandals are not indicative of problems with the RNGs of any site, much less those of the bigger U.S.-friendly sites. People who don't understand that cards can go bad for a while simply do not understand probability.

We are getting attention at the federal level. Also, the Internet is interstate by definition. I have no problem with states licensing poker sites. My problem is that they seem to feel a need to block unlicensed sites, when they could instead focus on offering a service that wins in the marketplace.

Canada is not the US. I'm not familiar with what happened in Canada to start that happening. But if you think the move to wipe out online poker in the US was going to get stopped without the PPA or some other organization then you're delusional. Those who wanted to do this were organized and motivated. The opposition didn't exist. Yes, players didn't want it to happen, but they weren't doing anything to stop it.

I wish I would have seen this video before. Man, that John Pappas guy is goooood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRDlFXV_-ho