It's a ways off, and Congress will have their say...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...googlenews_wsj

If the link doesn't work, go to Google News and type in online poker washington dc

"The city council approved a budget last year allowing the district's lottery to operate a poker website accessible only inside district boundaries. City officials say the window for Congress to raise objections to the law was due to expire Thursday, allowing it to take effect."

This would be too ironical.

obg

I am unable to tell whether the PPA has been fighting against this or not!

LMFAO, this is too rich.

Interesting question, since D.C. isn't part of any state and is, in fact a FEDERAL district, what are the implications re: intrastate vs interstate (I'm assuming that it wouldn't affect the rest of the country legislatively) vis a vis the courts? Also, regardless of whether it becomes a viable business in D.C., this would be a HUGE PR victory for ipoker legalization in that Congress pretty much controls what D.C. does and wouldn't it be delicious to say,
"It's good enough for D.C. and Congress didn't object to THEM getting ipoker, so why should they object to the rest of the U.S. having it."
I'm almost giddy at the prospect of the political hay to be made.

If anyone out there can make the case that it is possible to create and run an online poker site in an area limited to 600,000 total residents and make a profit, I may change my opinion.

Otherwise it has to be recognized that a law allowing for an "inter-city" online poker site is only, at best, a symbolic victory.

The PPA supports symbolic victories. It is a good thing that the DC council approves of regulating online poker. But until and unless the DC government tweaks this law to allow for DC skins of a network that includes other justisdictions, this law will not have a much of a practical effect.

Skallagrim

With greatest respect, I disagree to the part I bolded.

Once out, the genie cannot be put back in the bottle. It may be the catalyst to embolden others to go forward with much better plans, perhaps even a linking of states with international skins.

Someone has to go first, and D.C., as I posted earlier, how ironical!

obg

It is now Friday, anything from Congress Kev?

obg

nm. same article

Congress does not object to lawful intrastate IP, sorry, try again.

Who said anything about intrastate IP? Obviously I was talking about NATIONAL legislation... FAIL, try again.

PPA might want to ask the WSJ for a correction since it was identified as "A group representing the interest of offshore poker sites"

I agree. The hypocrisy of congressional lawmakers, allowing themselves an activity while in DC, they have attempted to deny to the tax payer who pay them to have that opportunity, would be a rhetorical club the PPA could make good use of.

I agree too. And, by my way of usage of the English language, that amounts to a significant symbolic victory. Every vote in favor of online poker is something of a victory for us politically.

The interesting thing about this DC bill is that it leaves almost all the details to be worked out later...so its hard to predict what actually will happen if this passes.

But what is pretty safe to predict is pretty much what Pappas said: there is really no economic way to run an online poker site exclusively for a total population of 600,000. At least not without some overt linking to an existing network that provides the software and the access to a larger player pool - and how likely is that to be approved?

So DC players should not expect to have a realistic, playable alternative to the status quo as a result of this bill passing. Although there is some hope, the odds seem bad. That is why I said I do not expect this to have any real practical effect.

But the mere fact that any legislative body recognizes the value of creating an openly legal and regulated online poker market is always good for our cause.

I overall agree this is a positive development for us.

Hope that explains my thoughts better.

Skallagrim

Could DC do a deal w NV?

I realize your comment was intended to be rhetorical but it really wasn't.

First look at the sizes of Stars and Full Tilt. In the past week the average number of ring game SEATS (not players, a critical distinction) at the sites have been 30,400 and 16,400 respectively. So one person 24 tabling at Stars counts as 24 SEATS. The important question then becomes how many tables is the average person on each site playing at once? At Stars I think 6 is likely a substantial underestimation, and perhaps somewhere around 3 or 4 for Full Tilt. Taking these numbers that gives an average ring game PLAYERS online at each site of 5,067 and 4,685 respectively.

And obviously both of those sites are well beyond the critical mass required to maintain games and produce mind bogglingly large profits. All the sudden that 600,000 figure is starting to look quite substantial. Even if there are only 100,000 potential players in that population after accounting for age/preference and you only capture a fraction of that demographic, the site has the potential to be huge.

Except you didn't factor in how many more it takes to maintain those figures 24/7. Plus how many more it takes to keep the MTT & SNG tables going full guns at the same time. And you aren't going to get the most active players - those that already play at FTP, PS, et al - to switch over all at once, so how do you achieve the required critical mass?

A better way to judge is to look at how many player accounts it takes at PS & FTP to make them as active as they are. They both have registered players in the millions.

IMO your numbers are way high, you have to remember that in order to attain those numbers of multi-table players (which I suspect you are putting WAY too high anyway) FT and Stars draw on pools of hundreds of millions of people not 600,000 , nope not even close to having the numbers you are throwing around.

I'm NOT sure I totally agree with the premise that such a pool wouldn't be at least somewhat viable with decent marketing I could see you getting possibly as much 2 percent of the population as registered 'active' accounts, meaning about 12,000 players of which probably around 10 percent will be pretty hardcore giving you possibly around 1000 'regs', now figure in rake from both groups:

11,000 rec. players X ~$20 rake/month avg. (a bit arbitrary but I think reasonable) = $220,000/month
+
1,000 'reg.' players X ~$200 rake/month avg. (also an arbitrary but probably resonable number) = $200,000/month
=
Rake revenue of ~$400,000/month.

Now given these numbers which I think are probably fairly reasonable, D.C. could POSSIBLY support 1 such site depending of course on the cost of licensing and other 'fees', but no one is going to get rich off of it for certain. Once all the operating costs and taxes are taken you can probably figure something around 10 percent net profit or about $500,000 per year on revenue of $5million.

Forbes says that in 2010 Stars made ~$500million Net profit I think my figure above of 1/10 of 1 percent of that is probably in the right region for D.C. .

Look at it this way, Stars probably reaches around 10% of the entire global population as a base, or around 600million people and D.C. has a population of 600,000 or (drumroll) 1/10th of 1 percent of that, which pretty much matches the numbers my slapdash figures came up with.

Probably would be a viable business but nothing earth shattering for certain.

Anyway, as I said in earlier posts, the value doesn't lay in whether it becomes a real and viable concern in D.C. but rather in the political symbol the legalization represents vis a vis the rest of the U.S. .

at least Skallagrim gets it right


Skall

Indeed. I did a double take on that sentence.

Why is everyone making a comparison to ftp and stars only? There are small sites that stay afloat with very few tables going at a time.

Plus, the site can sell more than just poker, just like any site can.

Plus, as the first and only US site, they will get millions of hits from people who are just curious. They can sell plenty of advertising space -- ftp, stars, Ceasars (Harrah's), WWE, etc.

Plus, there will likely be a benefactor or two who would like the site to stay open because of the positive effects it could have on regulation elsewhere in the US.

Follow up^^^:

Indeed, the PPA could buy advertising space and post a banner:

Live Outside DC and Want to Play Here???? YOU CAN'T --BUT YOUR CONGRESSMEN CAN!!!!
Want to tell them what you think of that??? Click Here.

The issue here wasn't whether a Washington D.C. only site would be larger than Stars/FTP which is of course silly, but rather is there a reasonable expectation that the site would be able to operate at all. Skall's comment was: If anyone out there can make the case that it is possible to create and run an online poker site in an area limited to 600,000 total residents and make a profit, I may change my opinion. I think I did a reasonable job of making such a case!

I do agree with you that figuring out how many players it takes to keep things going on a site would be an interesting and useful metric. And as luck would have it, its a metric we do have access to for Party Poker! http://www.bwinparty.com/~/media/Fil...ualReport.ashx

So the cliff notes of the cliff notes would be that Party Poker operates on an average of 55,900 unique players per day which is fed and roughly maintained by an average of 1,700 new signups per day.

So the key question then becomes what is the realistic potential market in an area with a population of 600,000? If it is 100,000 then you could certainly reach Party like numbers. But what is needed is evidence is there that there would be a market of 100,000 potential players.

You did. Your "It's good enough for D.C." refers to D.C. officials attempting to allow some intrastate operations. In your sentences next breath (which is normally a clue that "It's" and "it" are related), why would "having it" be an obvious reference to having "NATIONAL legislation"?

Evidently you're not aware that D.C. is basically controlled by CONGRESS and not the elected local government.

Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution grants the U.S. Congress ultimate authority over Washington, D.C. The District of Columbia did not have an elected municipal government until the passage of the 1973 Home Rule Act. The Act devolved certain Congressional powers over the District to a local government administered by an elected mayor, currently Vincent C. Gray, and the thirteen-member Council of the District of Columbia. However, Congress retains the right to review and overturn laws created by the city council and intervene in local affairs.

It should be obvious to anyone except a COMPLETE nit that I was referring to legalizing/regulating on a national level to allow for an interstate/international federally regulated form of ipoker. For you and any other nits out there my use of "It's and it" in this context meant ipoker in general, not specifically intrastate ipoker.

Ffs, get a life and stop trying to nit interpret people.