[DeadMoneyDad]

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My feeling on this thread.

Mason came off HARSH!...must be bad blood or something.

PPABryan comes off like a political guy...never answering the question yet dancing around it (like "how long till you think it'll be legalize"..."ummm....earlier the better" no [censored] sherlock)

Whatever...if poker sites really wanted it legalized they wouldn't of been so stupid and thrown TONS of money at this BEFORE the bill passed. (I do think they want it legalized, but they were too stupid or arrogant or cheap to actually do something about it..everyone knows, for enough money this bill wouldn't have gone through)

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Let's stop this one right now.

No amount of money would have kept Bill Frist from attaching the bill to the must-pass Port Security Bill. One man made this happen. It did not come up for a vote on its merits. It was not debated. No one could have stopped it.

I'm all for revisionist history, but get your facts straight.

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Your facts are correct up to a point.

The poker community has been behind the curve at every step of the way. Maybe it was individual greed, or coroporation indifference, but there was no concerted effort by the "poker community" to fight back against the tide of political opposition to gaming.

The one power well organized enough at the time, B&M's, were atcually against us in the UIGEA. It looks like now from recent industry efforts that B&M's have realized that on-line poker isn't a large threat to their bread and butter business. The problem is, it seems, poker as a whole may not be as valuable in terms of total gaming to the B&M.

That is a future challenge we face. B&M's along with the unrestricted gaming crowd have little interest in a "poker only" bill, for them with a longer time frame in mind, total unrestricted on-line gaming is the big prize. The B&M's can wait for enough pressure from the World to help them accomplish their goal. In the mean time on-line poker is a market some might want to enter, but under the current enviroment they are just as happy to sit back and keep the lid on the boiling pot.

In some ways, the B&M's loose a lot of their leverage if we get a poker only bill. There is a little to be gained by the B&M's from a poker bill, but they have also found out that on-line isn't a total threat to their current business. If you look at the "table" from a long term B&M owner's perspective, keeping a "netural" stance on on-line poker is the safe course.

The other problem is the AGA already has banking interests, and major ones on their board. I know it is considered only a theory of mine that the US banking industry, until they figure out a legislative model to get a bigger share of the on-line pie, will continue to oppose on-line poker if for no other reason than foreign banks profit and they don't. When you consider that currently B&M's and US banking interests are alined then you begin to understand that unless we become a real force in politics our fate as poker players is and will continue to be largely determined by others.

Our best weapon is the fact that we do have in general the numbers in total to be an effective force. The 365 Billion dollar question is can we organize ourselves to matter. We are the only pro-gaming group that has an issue to currently mobilize the number of people to be a real grassroots force.

All the other pro-gaming groups, as well as the PPA currently, are industry lead or sponsored. We'll have a Million members by the end of the year. IMO those numbers are soft but large enough to build an effective force.

Unfortuantly the PPA has a lousey past track record. Yes John et. al., are doing all they can to change that, but it will take a whole lot more people devoting the time and money of some portion of their poker lives over the next year, IMO, to be sucessful.

How many of you are really willing to give up a couple of hours and the associated money a week, from playing poker to playing politics, over the next year or so to make this happen?

How many of you that want to go back to making a nice living from all the fish that populated the waters pre-UIGEA are willing to help restock the lake?

That is the real question.



D$D