Online Poker Inches Closer to Exemption

[Mondogarage]

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There would be no motivation for US lawmakers to do an online poker carveout. PPA might be making some noise around Capitol Hill these days, but I doubt they have any real political clout. It doesn't seem to me that any politician would be all that concerned with going after the online poker playing voter bloc. And by carving out online poker, that just means leaving the gates open for a flow of money out of our economy.

I think this is all just wishful thinking on our part.

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Online poker is played by 12-22 million Americans (or at least it used to be). It is hard to say how many of those would vote a pro online poker ticket...any voting block of more than 1 million has a ton of political clout. This is one of the reasons the PPA is trying to increase its membership. Even raising it to half a million would make a big difference.

I agree it is a long shot for a bill to make its way through Congress, but at least the PPA is doing its job and trying.

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Okay, hyperbole is going to get you nowhere. Please provide evidence of online poker being played by 12-22 million Americans. Extra credit if you can prove anywhere near that amount playing with real money accounts. You're basically saying 1 in every 15-30 Americans and that just has never been true. (If it were, that many fish would make me very wealthy, indeed.)

Anyway, the OP is correct. Capitol Hill doesn't care about online poker while Iraq, the deficit, and upcoming presidential elections take precendence. Nor should it. It's important to us, but in the grand scheme of life in American society, it's nothing. Except it's a nothing that coming out as "pro-gambling" will do little except energize the far right in the next election cycle.

Now, if the PPA manages to grease a ton of palms with some real money there, that might change things. But, and here is where Frist's shady tactics last year really screwed us, your average member of the House of Representatives knows that absolutely nothing bad can happen to them as a result of not affirmatively voting to carve out poker, while the impact of taking such action on their future candidacies is unknown.

[1p0kerboy]

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Anyway, the OP is correct. Capitol Hill doesn't care about online poker while Iraq, the deficit, and upcoming presidential elections take precendence.

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This isn't necessarily true.

Take note that the rider for online gambling snuck in even while many other 'important' things were going on.

Also note that money talks in Congress, not important issues.

In a way I wish it were the other way around- with Congress working hard takling issues that are important to the well being of the nation. But that is rarely the case.

[Mondogarage]

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Anyway, the OP is correct. Capitol Hill doesn't care about online poker while Iraq, the deficit, and upcoming presidential elections take precendence.

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This isn't necessarily true.

Take note that the rider for online gambling snuck in even while many other 'important' things were going on.

Also note that money talks in Congress, not important issues.

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The UIGEA wasn't sneaked in because Congress cared about online poker. It got snuck in by a couple of right-wingers because they cared about having something to show off to their fundamentalist constituencies, not because they actually cared about gambling. And because the NFL and other very high paying constituencies with political clout wanted it to happen, for their own reasons.

And, it was snuck in by a different Congressional power structure which is...now...out of power. From a "look at your constituents with a straight face" perspective, it will always be easier to ban something looked at as immoral by large segments of society, than it will be to allow something that is of interest to a smaller sector of society. Why? Because the former looks impressive to a lot of voters, while the latter will please less than it will piss off.

[1p0kerboy]

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It got snuck in by a couple of right-wingers because they cared about having something to show off to their fundamentalist constituencies, not because they actually cared

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This proves my point in so many ways.

A Congressman's agenda is really never what it should be.

If the poker player's voice is loud enough, that's what the agenda will be.

Do you see why?

[Mondogarage]

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It got snuck in by a couple of right-wingers because they cared about having something to show off to their fundamentalist constituencies, not because they actually cared

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This proves my point in so many ways.

A Congressman's agenda is really never what it should be.

If the poker player's voice is loud enough, that's what the agenda will be.

Do you see why?

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No, because the poker player's voice can never be as loud as the voice of, say, the Catholic Church, or the Moral Majority, or the AARP, and their extremely well funded lobbies. Why? Because in the end, your "average" weekend poker player is a) far outnumbered by those in other, more "self-righteous" organizations, and b) has no reason to tie their cart up with those who are actually trying to make a living at the game.

Joe Schmoe who donks a few low limit tables ever now and then, while playing in their pub league freerolls, has almost nothing in common with the internet pros, and has no financial stake in the outcome. They're the ones not worried about trying to find new mechanisms to fund or withdraw from the sites, because online poker is such a miniscule part of their life.

The actual number of people in the USA who are truly negatively impacted by the UIGEA (as it pertains to poker, anyway), probably numbers no more than in the few tens of thousands, tops. I'll be more generous and say it numbers 80,000. (The actual number is probably more like 15,000, tops.) That's not a big constituency at all, and certainly not enough to sway any electoral events on a national level.

In the absence of a large constituency, you need a LOT of money to get anything done. I totally agree a congressman's agenda is rarely what it should be, because their agenda is, more often than not, simply getting re-elected. (Or, they're single issue candidates like our asshat Tom Tancredo, who simply want to ship everyone with a Mexican-sounding surname across the Rio Grande.)

Tell me why the collective poker players' voice can set a congressman's agenda. I just think you've wayyyy overestimated our pull in the real world, but I'm keen to understand your thinking.

[LeeLoo]

The negative responses are amazing. While it might not mean anything and never get introduced or passed at least someone is doing something and making a start. A month ago or so everyone was saying we sat on our asses and did nothing when we should have tried harder. Now we have a green name who apparently wants to bad mouth an attempt. I guess the green name has more pull and is doing more than the PPA.

[Skallagrim]

You naysayers and prophets of hopeless doom are as big a part of the problem as the religious right and the NFL. If you spent the equal amount of time you spend moaning in these forums in writing an e-mail to your congressperson, we would be quite far along on changing the law for poker. We have some allies in Congress, and Congress does all sorts of legislating on non-big issues. Sure money talks big in the Capitol, but so do votes. The NRA, whether you agree with them or not, stopped an awful lot of anti-gun legislatioin and it wasnt because they bribed the congress, it was because they could reliably turn out 5% or so of the electorate in certain states to vote on their issue alone. Polls show the majority of the general public supports the right to play poker online. Politicians know this. They also know it is not the biggest issue for most voters, but it only has to be a big issue for that 5% (or less!) that often makes the difference in election results. STOP WHINING, STOP THE DOOM AND GLOOM, AND JUST WRITE A LETTER OR TWO! IT IS FAR FROM IMPOSSIBLE OR UNLIKELY TO SEE THIS CHANGE. Of course if you really dont mind the loss of online poker ....

[ekdikeo]

Well, the estimates that I've seen are that there are or were anywhere from 6 million to 26 million online players in the United States. If towards the high end of that estimate, I imagine that that would count for a little bit of potential clout at a federal level. If that's spread out evenly among the 50 states, thats not very much among a state level though (except for maybe Alaska or Rhode Island).

[DoGMaTiCMD]

I don't know enough about whats going on to have a real prediction.

Thats something I think a lot of people here should admit before they rant.

[Mondogarage]

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Well, the estimates that I've seen are that there are or were anywhere from 6 million to 26 million online players in the United States. If towards the high end of that estimate, I imagine that that would count for a little bit of potential clout at a federal level. If that's spread out evenly among the 50 states, thats not very much among a state level though (except for maybe Alaska or Rhode Island).

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I would imagine whatever the number is, it's probably fairly proportionately spread out amongst the states.

I also think there's such a huge gulf between 6,000,000 and 26,000,000 as to make any individual estimate untrustworthy. All I can go on is how many players I see logged into the sites at any given time (and deduct a smallish number, say 10-15% to account for non-US players).

Then, your estimate has to differentiate between those like me, who have real money accounts, and those like my wife, who only have play money accounts. Even the largest online tournies have, what...6,000 player or so, tops. Most MTTs have anywhere from a few hundresd players to a couple thousand. While one can't draw a definitive conclusion from that, fields of that size are not indicative of a population of millions interested in preserving our game.

As for being "negative", all I'll say is that, in my day job, I work in the legal field, and am trained to look at all sides with equal parts open-mindedness and skepticism, and will not blind myself to political and real world realities just because I indulge in some moderate-to-heavy MTT and SNG action.

Frankly, I have no idea how this is going to end. I'm hopeful we'll see a poker carve-out, but given the pace of recent events, I doubt it will happen before most of the current players shut up shop or leave the US market. Which is, probably, exactly what the big casino operators would want, as it would clear the field for them to enter once the dust dies down...