Source

Heller told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that after the election, he and Harry Reid will "absolutely" be able to set aside their differences and pass internet poker leglislation. His suggested strategy is to have the House pass a bill outlawing internet gambling, then have a poker exemption added to the bill in the Senate.

Does this strategy make anyone else nervous? What are the chances the bill prohibiting online gambling is just passed without a poker exemption?

I hope they get on with already....real jobs suck ballz.

Outlawing internet poker in the house is done so all the house repubs can claim they never voted to legalize gambling.

Yes, but how much faith should we have that the poker exemption actually makes it into the final bill?

this is really good news

So long as Harry Reid is drawing breath that shouldn't be a concern, a real concern would be Kyl inserting a poison pill into the poker carve-out (such as forcing States to vote to opt-out) which could get the carve-out severed and leave us with the internet gambling prohibition.

He's up for reelection he's going to say anything to get the spot. I wouldn't take this too seriously. I love politicians.

It's always best to go to the original news source, rather than one of the poker news rehash sites.

From the original article in the Las Vegas Journal:
From the 4Flush article rehash:
See the difference? In the original, Heller's "absolutely" is talking about the "chances of legislation". So is that the chances of working on passage of legislation together with Reid during lame duck, or the chances that legislation "will pass" as rehashed by 4Flush?

As regards the possibility that a prohibition bill will pass without a poker carveout, I've been expressing that concern for months now. Here is the latest.

There is certainly a risk in the overall strategy of putting a poker carveout into an anti-online gambling bill. In the UIGEA, there was a carveout for state-licensed igambling, horse racing, fantasy sports (new) and state lotteries. Now our Congress wants to expand express prohibition to all intrastate and interstate igambling, excluding only horse racing and limited forms of state lotteries (and maybe fantasy sports - yet to be seen). The inclusion of a poker carveout, something entirely new for federal law, would depend on Harry Reid's political clout.

I have no doubt that Kyl would throw a monkey wrench into the process if he saw the opportunity to pass the prohibition bill in the Senate without the poker carveout, despite any existing Reid/Kyl compromise. Personally, I'd peg the chances of such happening at just under 10% - pretty low, but still a four-outer on the river.

Any type of federal legislation that is good for the players is a legislation we should support. As long as I take an all-in pot from someone who lives all the way from the west coast, I'm fine with it.

yeah i'll believe it when i see it. until otherwise noted, all politicians are full of **** and have alterior motives

This.

Yeah thread title is misleading, Heller certainly isnt guaranteeing an online poker bill passing. Just trying to clean up the mess made for our chances from all the politicians running their mouths last month. Not a bad things, but far from saying a bill absolutely will pass.

He's still talking about a House first strategy, which means him and Reid still arent on the same page.

"Absolutely passing" and "absolutely setting aside differences" are two very different things.

The Pokerfuse article made it look like he was saying the bill would pass, but in the original context it's unclear and seems less likely he was refering to the bill's chances of passing. Mods can edit the thread title if appropriate.

I'm not comfortable with the suggested strategy of passing super-UGEIA alone through the House and then only later amending with the poker carve-out in the Senate. Kyl would be thrilled to get poker outlawed along with every other form of gambling and has proven a shrewd enough politician to attempt such a tactic to accomplish his goal of eliminating all internet gambling in the US. And while I believe the most of the big casinos behind Reid support iPoker, their commitment and loyalty to the cause is not beyond question (Fair Play USA).

I agree with PokerXanadu that this scenario seems unlikely, but the fact that it is even a possibility is very concerning.

or was it "absolutely, absolutely" in the way people say "uh huh, uh huh" while someone else is talking.

I don't know, the whole order of things from that article is strange


where's the fast forward button for life? i can't take this **** anymore

Here's audio of Heller:

http://www.nevadanewsbureau.com/wp-c...rdebateno2.mp3

i hope it pass so sites like Betonline can die and burn in hell.

In that 17 seconds I did not hear the word absolutely.

So in your opinion what we've come to is hoping for the bill to be as bad as possible for players so that it doesn't get overturned. In which case we get UIGEA II.

Nice.

It needs to be a clean bill, constitutionally, but that won't necessarily be a bad thing.

If the bill doesn't force States to act, the courts could be petitioned by players (or casinos) within the State to force them to act via either a dormant Commerce Clause argument in States that permit B&M poker or possibly even an equal protection argument in States that don't.

A 'good for the players' bill that breaches State Tenth Amendment rights has very little upside (even if it held up the litigation would take longer than the blackout period) and a huge downside (no State-by-State alternate route).

Vote for Heller. Heller can bring republican votes Berkley cannot bring any repub.votes.

Since this bill's only chance is for it to be attached to must pass legislation it would seem that all that matters is that nobody will block that from happening and not the number of votes the bill will get. I am clueless as to what agreements need to be made for it to be attached.

And then there is the house.

epic rage if they pass a ban on online gambling with the expectation of carving out poker only for them to not get the poker carve out done. It seems like they are trying to make the politicians happy and then are going to bend them over after they get something going and try to ban as many forms of online gambling as they can.

Seems like good news anyway one takes this right?

GOGOGO Poker.

I read as little into this as I do into the political spat Heller and Reid had last month. I just think it's all election politics that have little impact on the real chances of this bill. We just need to get this dark cloud that is the election out of the way before we really know if this can get done.