Why is that unreasonable? Just because many poker players organized to fight back doesn't mean PPA is an entitlement for those who sit back. It's funny to read the occasional bitter complaint from some who feel like they deserve to be getting more. It's also funny that you expect me to be a salesman begging for your support, rather than an organizer for a fight in which we all need to fight together.

PPA is an opportunity for all of us to stand together to fight for our rights. That's all. If you're not wishing to do it through PPA, the next logical step would be to create your own group. That's especially true when you don't have a specific critique of PPA's methods and just complain because you want this to be an easy fight.

It's because the US is very different on gaming issues than other nations. Like Sun Tzu said, "know your enemy." If you don't understand the fight, how can you begin to think of solutions?

First of all, I'm no lobbyists. I'm an engineer who started organizing people here on 2+2 to fight back. It was an effective start and I was invited to join the PPA board. I moved into my compensated role five years later. In other words, I didn't come from PPA to talk to posters here about the group. Rather, I came from the 2+2 posting community to join PPA and to help the fight.

As for the rest of it, you want PPA to fold and to give the fight over to Sheldon Adelson?

Rich,

I think it is widely misunderstood generally WHY/HOW the unique structure and history of gambling in the US itself has been a major roadblock to getting affirmative legislation passed, except in some rare circumstances.

Until recently, this was not a "know your enemy" issue. The basic roadblock came from the "friends" among those B&M gaming interests who have been about as protectionist and infighting an interest group as could be imagined.

In 2003 the only interested B&M parties in the US were, ironically enough Sheldon Adelson's Venetian Interactive and the MGM. Their attachment to large B&M investments left them open to regulatory restraints against their becoming operators.

Concurrently, from 2001 - 2006, Binions and Caesars built the WSOP B&M brand on traffic from offshore online poker operators, rather than becoming operators themselves. Emerging replications of that B&M/online relationship by Stations/FullTilt and Wynn/Stars was cut short by Black Friday.

At the State level, the poker community has never tapped into the very powerful, connected gaming interest of the lottery industry (Delaware being a hybrid where the Lottery controls the B&M industry.)

Sometimes your "friends" or their advisors can be your worst enemy. For example, the "poker only" strategy/tactic has proven to be self defeating. First in Nevada it is truly short-sighted, as casinos currently can offer onsite mobile betting and Statewide mobile sportsbetting. In Nevada, poker only simply makes online poker "look bad". As a result of "poker only" largely flopping, future online gaming efforts, whether lottery-driven or B&M driven, will likely relegate poker to an afterthought. (California admittedly is a wild card, ironically, poker- only MAY be passed in California precisely because it is not as important or as threatening to a possible coalition of interests as adding other igaming channels.)

Rich, the bottom line is needing to understand your "friends" in order to cobble together a viable poker strategy. Focusing on your enemies is good for defense, but a mistake and distraction in putting legislation through. What matters is the support you CAN get, not the votes/support you cannot get. The PPA deserves credit for very good defense, but, outside of football, a defense rarely puts points/runs on the board.

Gzesh: Yes, but "know your enemy" applies to everyone, friend and foe alike. One should understand the motivations of every party in situations like this.

Once every couple of years I come in and bump this thread as AN obvious RANT....

But it is now been 8 years and little to no results for US online poker players. Keep up the good fight Gents

if you came around more often you would see nobody is fighting for online poker players anymore.

Sad but true. What do you think about the following: if state budget deficits continue to flounder if not take a dive from the overall U.S. economy getting bad enough again, will more states get open to the idea of including any and all revenue boosters they can get their hands on? I know online poker will be small but something is better than nothing right?

I haven't seen potential tax revenue be an effective selling point for online gambling anywhere

Good job keeping up.

You kind of answered your own question here.

But didn't PA, NJ, DE, NV and WV/MI market tax revenue generation as a plus to get online gambling & poker legally passed in those states? Believe me, I am very pessimistic overall however with online poker getting legally ratified in many more states let alone ones that really count like the biggies of CA, NY, FL and TX.

its an argument to be made, but nobody opposed goes "oh we'll get how much tax revenue? then Im in!"

the bottom line is this ... nobody cares about online poker anymore, not even Pokerstars. Everyone has moved on to only wanting full casino, and now sports betting. Online poker is to the online casinos what poker is to the land based casinos, if that even

If online poker comes available in other states, it will only be as part of a greater package.

when Pokerstars stopped funding the PPA, they effectively said poker, and more specifically poker players, were no longer part of the fight

That is the reality on the ground

Very disconcerting but good analysis. Time to overdose on some antidepressants lol j/k. (Although for some, poker is life. So much for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Whatya gonna do?)

Good job collecting a Salary and over 10 years accomplishing almost nothing for online poker players in the US

SamuraiPoseur,

Do you play on any of the several online poker sites which accept play from the US ?

Are you simply too afraid to do so ?

Over 7 years ago, you boldly wrote:

"The real answer is that we do not need any regulation at all at the Federal or Local level other than the normal Governing bodies of Taxation already set Laws that all businesses follow.
.... once 18 years old I should be able to freely do with my own money what I want as long as it does not directly hurt my neighbor. "

Cheap talk, sonny ...

Are you a man of your convictions or are you too afraid to play poker unless some nanny state is regulating the site for you ?

Interesting thread. I haven't posted here in a long time because I gave up on online poker. However, IMHO, online poker is better off without government regulation or interference. Before governments interfered, it was easy to deposit and withdraw funds from online poker sites and most of them were fair and not rigged. Then the US government made it so difficult to transfer money to and from poker sites that most left the US market or went bankrupt. With the Euro governments taxing and regulating the sites, the survivors realized that they needed to retain existing players since replacing them was more difficult and costly. So, IMHO, they rigged their games to even out results.

I realize that the US, and likely the rest of the world, will not have unregulated and untaxed online poker. Living in Missouri, I doubt that I will have access to the online poker for a long time. IMHO, this reflects the sad state of the US and the western world. TE and the PPA gave their best efforts to save online poker in the US and failed due to no fault by them.

To those who think that most industries need government regulation, remember that before the New Deal such government interference was rare. Yet the US economy generally grew faster than today and its standard of living after the Civil War increased at a pace not seen since the Depression other than the 1950's.

"Government is the problem"
Ronald Reagan

I agree, and yes this has mostly been my personal vent thread because I predicted long ago the PPA would be VERY ineffective in fixing the problem as I believed they are very much a part of the problematic system that caused our problems...

"We cannot hope to solve our problems with the same thinking we had when we created them" Einstein

I hope each State can continue to pass legislation, then share liquidity and eventual allow worldwide competition that is taxed, regulated and fairly ran for all.

The reality is that the Internet briefly created something that was never going to last (unregulated, effectively untaxed poker, played even in jurisdictions that were unfriendly to gambling).

When the inevitable happened, advocates went back to the slow grind of legalizing state by state. And that's actually an extremely frustrating process for online poker players, because the massive pools of the unregulated poker sites allowed for a quality and variety of games that can never be achieved state by state.

But that's reality, and it isn't some horrible imposition of liberty. You have basically the same, or slightly broader, rights to play poker than you had in the 1980's.

I like this thread very much. Closing in on nine years now, not legal in the USA but the USD is still the currency used on the sites. America!

Basically until the government has the easiest way to collect their "money" it won't be legalized in all the states. It's to bad our government is a joke. To actually think they do anything effective with it is a joke too. An independent company could do 10x more with 10% of the money. So much corruption, just to keep the petro dollar as king.

So unfortunate but so true

Any updates on Colorado? It seems that PPA does not care about some markets.

PPA shut down in mid-2018.