I'm so sick of reading the mindless comparison's to PS.FR......ladies and gentlemen, the market size of France compared to the US is minuscule, the rake involved on that site is a direct result of this, comparing what happened there to what could happen in the US is comparing apples to oranges....or fruits to vegetables.....

FWIW, Baka is Japanese for stupid. Coincidence?

So do we need to support a bad bill or not?

Honestly, if this is the best we can get and we cant remove the 50% tax, lets move to the states and litigation. The state route is terrible, but its possible we can find at least one state where we can get a good bill.

I hope this passes committee but lets be honest: this bill is not good.

Mypethybridge, we need the companion revenue bill to go through committee as well because we need the revenue component for the states contained in that bill. With no revenue to the states, who the heck is going to opt-in?

The 50% tax isn't in this bill homeslice

OK, but the state revenue component is in the bill that has the 50% tax.

Right now we have a bill providing no revenue to the states but where states can opt out. Does that sound like a good plan?

So, at some point we have to get that tax out in order to include the state revenue. Anything from today's hearing give you hope we can accomplish that?

Glad I wasn't the only one who caught this.

+1

I don't understand any of the negative comments ITT. We had a good bill to start with and none of the amendments that passed really changed it that much:

There were three bad amendments that passed today that I can recall:


1. No credit card. This is an inconvenience.

2. Sites have to locate physically within the U.S. An inconvenience to the sites.

3. No licenses for sites that offered illegal gambling. This is kind of a big deal, but there is no guarantee that FT and Stars will be named on such a list. They'll have the opportunity (twice, if I am understanding the interplay of the amendments correctly) to make the case that they did not violate U.S. law.

Today actually went pretty well.

TE's larger point is also very valid. Recall that UIGEA had passd the house as a stand alone bill by a vote of something like 300-and something to 90 or so. Today, we are going to have a legal poker/gaming bill voted out of committee with at least some bipartisan support.

The PPA has made a lot of progress in swaying opinion in the house, and deserves a lot of credit for moving the house from overwhelming opposition to this point where we have bipartisan support in the committee.

I hesitate to say this because gaming has been a special case for much of American history, but:

One of the reasons these committees exist is because they encourage congresscritters to develop certain areas of expertise. This creates a culture in Congress whereby most congresscritters defer to the committee's expertise (or at least their party's leadership on the committee) on most bills.

When a bill passes out of committee with broad bipartisan support, this is a clear signal to the remainder of the house that the bill is a Good Thing that needs doing. These bills usually sail through Congress.

Two caveats as this applies to HB2267:

1. It is not clear whether we have "some," bipartisan support or "broad," bipartisan support. Which it turns out to be will have a big effect on how this bill is received when it gets to the floor. If only the hardcore ideologues in the republican party oppose it, then we can expect a lot of congresscritters to defer to the committee's expertise. If we only pick up a few republicans, then this will go to the floor as a partisan issue with only niche republican support (republicans who think it ill benefit their districts or their contributors).

2. Gaming has always been a different sort of issue, as it has long been perceived as a moral issue. So there may be widespread ideological opposition on the house floor even if the committee vote indicates there is some bipartisan support for the bill.

So, the final roll call vote today will be an important indicator of what sort of reception HB2267 will receive in the full house. Lots of republican cross over will be a good thing, only some cross over republicans will indicate that we are being perceived as a largely partisan issue.

imo

If we lose there, it's game over for the status quo.

If we were to win, it wouldn't be because the courts ruled that the Constitution does not give Congress authority to regulate or ban online poker. Rather, it would be that current law does not prohibit online poker.

With that, we'd be slightly better off than status quo for now (UIGEA would clearly not apply to poker, though I imagine the DoJ would continue to claim it does), but that's all. This issue would STILL go back to Congress before any U.S. based site would dare open up (no state would license an interstate site to operate in states that don't specifically authorize it). No matter what, we have to win over Congress.

Its a big picture positive, I agree, and we really need this out of committee.

Im also very sure that we want this bill to die before it gets put into law and we can create a stronger bill in the next Congress. Im very pessimistic on state opt-outs though, which partially colors my view.

I think if you listened to today's hearing and think Stars and Tilt are ever getting a license you are being very, very optimistic. While I'd prefer those companies to be able to serve the market, banning them does not make a bad bill on its own.

I think its really bad here because I dont think we have a path through the Senate and I think Stars and Tilt will be able to read the writing on the wall. We really want them to fully support legislation in the short-term in order to maximize PPA influence.

TE, I admire your patience.....I would go on LIFE TILT if I had to keep repeating this to all the naysayers out there.

Thanks for being there for us.

nice summary Mpethy. Agree with everything you said

I could answer this substantively, but I will just say: Yeah, I was just lamenting the additional delay.

The delay sucks, but the clock is running out on this anyways so its not as big of a deal. Even stipulating its a good bill (which I disagree with, but w/e), I think our best outcome is out of both committees and win a floor vote in the House.

I just dont see how this is getting through the Senate given the short calendar and the fact that even if Kyl couldnt kill this outright, he'd use procedural hurdles to make sure it took up so much time that's not really feasible to pass it this year.

+1

+1000!

Really? Were you not watching the proceedings? Amendment after amendment proposed by people with no clue how to play winning poker -- and all but a few passed after little deliberation.

yes, and if that happened, then we could pursue legislation. The status quo is crumbling as we speak, right? You can't have it both ways. Either the status quo can't last and it doesn't matter or the status quo will persist. Which is it?
yes, but it it isn't easy to pass new laws.

Also, if some bill passes which excludes 1/2 the country from playing, it will be difficult to change that status quo.

disagree; the next house is going to have a republican majority or at least be way more closely divided. Afterr January, our chances of success diminish at least to a certain extent.

disagree. The bill as amended today requires the treasury to generate alist of sites that violated U.S. law. This will require the involvement of Treasury lawyers. Treasury lawyers will not be (unduly) influenced by politics, but will be influenced by nuanced and sophisticated legal arguments. Stars and FTP can marshall their lawyers and provide their arguments to the Treasury lawyers and make the argument that they didn't break the law (Party offered Blackjack, so they never could have made the "just poker argument." In addition to "poker is legal," Stars and FTP will also have available the argument that even if they broke the law, it was inadvertent within the meaning of the amended Bachus amendment. The fact that there is no U.S. statutory authority for the illegality of internet poker is a strong fact in favor of this back up argument.

So, "we didn't break the law and even if we did it was because you dummies didn't have a clear law for us to follow," means Stars and FTP are alive and well.



Agree that there doesn't yet seem to be a clear path through the Senate. But today was half a win for Stars and FTP because it gave them an argument to continue to pursue licensing.

+1

yeah wouldn't it be nice if everyone drank the kool-aid and kept quiet or perhaps just sang the sycophantic chorus in harmony?

I'm sorry if discussion offends you.

Thanks! Much appreciated.

hahaha +1 again

Most Senate work is done through back room deals LG. In the Senate ANYTHING (both good and bad) is possible.

Skallagrim

I'm befuddled by the amount of discontent over the amendment to prohibit licensing of companies that have violated US law. For starters, as repeated here several times, we're not even sure it will be interpreted that Tilt and Stars fall in to this category.

Secondly, even if they have, it seems shortsighted to bemoan their departure from the scene. I imagine the people making this argument would have thought the sky would fall if Pacific and Party ever left the US market. It's my belief that a newly licensed and regulated US poker scene will bring 2 or 3 (or more) major players to the market, and Tilt and Stars will slowly dissipate as they struggle to compete without a US presence, not unlike Party and Pacific have faded from our memories.

Furthermore, I don't understand the undying allegiance to Tilt and Stars. It's not like they've handled the responsibility of self-policing in an impeccable manner (and UB and AP have essentially failed miserably). All one needs to do is read the Internet Poker forum to see daily threads about how they deny any semblance of due process to their players, have routine payout problems (albeit not through any fault of their own) as well as alleged collusion and bot infestation. The point here is not to vilify Tilt, Stars and Cereus (Cereus is perfectly capable of handling that without my assistance), but rather to make the point that maybe (likely?) a new system will be leaps and bounds better and we'll look back 5 years from now and scratch our heads at how Tilt and Stars ran their operations.

That's a reasonable argument for FTP and Stars. I think its optimistic, but its at least a potential viable path to licensing.

If this Congress is our best chance then we're screwed though. We aren't passing a law by January. There's like one month left of business, then election season, then a lameduck session. Just cant see how it happens.

Financial crisis was such a killer, if that never happens Healthcare sails through in like 20% of the time and we kick off this process much earlier IMO.