CA Online Poker Initiative!!

[permafrost]

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Your main approach to "legalization" is to convince Congress to repeal UIGEA. Suppose that approach worked. That would mean a California internet poker business would still be unlawful. Now what, still not legal!!? Do we start all over with an email blitz to Congress to somehow change California laws?

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Not true. The effort I'm leading is aimed at advocating for online gambling rights. It's not restricted to UIGEA. Please post your thoughts to Fight UIGEA!! -- Master action plan discussion thread.

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Your main approach has been to "fight UIGEA", as I might point out you just confirmed. I never said it was your only strategy. Again, my question is how does "fight UIGEA" gain us "online gambling rights", California or anywhere?



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I personally love the idea of a good CA initiative. It's Tuff Fish's specific proposal that I oppose.

[/ QUOTE ] Back on topic, we agree here. I look forward to you leading your discussion threads to that strategy.

[TheEngineer]

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Your main approach has been to "fight UIGEA", as I might point out you just confirmed. I never said it was your only strategy. Again, my question is how does "fight UIGEA" gain us "online gambling rights", California or anywhere?

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I entitled it "Fight UIGEA" because that's where the real problems started. I think we were all pretty happy with the pre-UIGEA status quo, as it seemed we could gamble online just fine. Regardless, we've always had an open forum for presenting pro-Internet gambling advocacy. To be frank, it never occured to me that someone would interpret the title to assume we were only interested in specifically fighting UIGEA. I'll change the title for this week's item.


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I look forward to you leading your discussion threads to that strategy.

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Thanks. I look forward to your participation.

[Tuff_Fish]

Skallagrim, and all you other lawyer types.

Does this mean that if this passes, the indian casinos can offer online poker too?





Sec. 12.2. In the event that federal or State law is changed or is interpreted, by enactment, a final court decision, a practice of the State gaming agency, or the inclusion of such gaming in a tribal-state compact, to permit gaming in California that is not now permitted to any person or entity for any purpose, or, if permitted, is being lawfully offered for the first time, this Gaming Compact shall be automatically amended to include that permitted or offered gaming, which shall be deemed to be included within the definition of "gaming activities" hereunder.

If so, then you guys can talk them into offering 12 tabling.

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Tuff
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[permafrost]

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I personally love the idea of a good CA initiative. It's Tuff Fish's specific proposal that I oppose.

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I just don't think that we are to the point where we need state level enabling legislation to have online poker. Getting a properly drafted initiative on the ballot in California and passed by the electorate is an expensive proposition, and I am not convinced that anything that the State of California could deliver is better than the free market (post UIGEA) status quo.

If online poker becomes completely unavailable in California, then it is time to re-examine an online poker initiative. A proper initiative will not look anything like Tuff's initiative. If the time comes that I can no longer play poker on the internet, I will draft the enabling legislation.

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The "status quo" is worsening and involves only transient, hard to market, unlawful suppliers, IMHO. A change to lawful, wildly popular, permanent, privately operated, regulated, competitve online poker sites would enhance our poker experience, or at least mine.

I suspect that time is not on our side.

[crashjr]

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I personally love the idea of a good CA initiative. It's Tuff Fish's specific proposal that I oppose.

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I just don't think that we are to the point where we need state level enabling legislation to have online poker. Getting a properly drafted initiative on the ballot in California and passed by the electorate is an expensive proposition, and I am not convinced that anything that the State of California could deliver is better than the free market (post UIGEA) status quo.

If online poker becomes completely unavailable in California, then it is time to re-examine an online poker initiative. A proper initiative will not look anything like Tuff's initiative. If the time comes that I can no longer play poker on the internet, I will draft the enabling legislation.

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The "status quo" is worsening and involves only transient, hard to market, unlawful suppliers, IMHO. A change to lawful, wildly popular, permanent, privately operated, regulated, competitve online poker sites would enhance our poker experience, or at least mine.

I suspect that time is not on our side.

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How is the status quo worsening? Deposits are not as easy as they were with NETeller, but they are not terribly inconvenient. Withdrawls via check in the mail work just fine. I can and do play at Full Tilt, Bodog, Absolute, PokerStars and Cake. Prima network sites are available as well. There is a movement afoot to create a poker carveout to the UIGEA. There is strong opposition to onerous microregulation of the ACH and clearinghouse practices coming from within the US banking industry. If the Treasury Regs. are as toothless as the banking industry wants them to be, then the worst consequences for US players post-UIGEA have already occurred.

I think that there is a good chance that the status quo is stable. I do not consider any of the sites where I play as transient. Payment processors may be, but with readily available funding options including pre-paid visa, pre-paid phone cards, Western Union, money-transfers, inter-player transfers, and simply mailing a cashier's check or money order, there is not even a need to use one of the transient payment processors. It is unlikely that state-run internet poker in California would have easier funding methods than are currently available with the US friendly poker sites.

Time at this point is not particularly important. If the new treasury regulations and other forces conspire to shut down internet poker in California entirely, then we can work to put an initiative on the November 2008 ballot. We only lose 8-9 months, which is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The people that Tuff despises - the 2+2 multi-tabling HUDbots and whatnot, will already be shut down if online poker is shut down this summer and will either expatriate or find another job; it won't matter to them whether the initiative is on the February ballot or the November ballot. In the mean time, the rest of us can go to the local cardroom or casino where the gamblers come to play "that all-in game we saw on TV."

[kartinken]

[ QUOTE ]
Skallagrim, and all you other lawyer types.

Does this mean that if this passes, the indian casinos can offer online poker too?





Sec. 12.2. In the event that federal or State law is changed or is interpreted, by enactment, a final court decision, a practice of the State gaming agency, or the inclusion of such gaming in a tribal-state compact, to permit gaming in California that is not now permitted to any person or entity for any purpose, or, if permitted, is being lawfully offered for the first time, this Gaming Compact shall be automatically amended to include that permitted or offered gaming, which shall be deemed to be included within the definition of "gaming activities" hereunder.

If so, then you guys can talk them into offering 12 tabling.

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Tuff
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Not if your idiocy passed as written, it would be illegal for them to do so.

[fsuplayer]

plz dont send this out, its horrible [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[Tuff_Fish]

I have cleaned it up a bit and made a couple of changes. There were a couple a changes I thought had merit.



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7) A player shall be able to observe one additional table where action is in process in addition to the table(s) on which he or she is playing.

8) Table and player statistics:

a) The site software shall not support the display of any listing of table statistics to any player not seated with chips at the table. This shall include but not be limited to, percentage of players seeing the flop and average pot size.

b) The site shall not allow a player to use software aids that gather and display real time current session table statistics to any player at a table excepting that such software is a part of the site software and is freely available to all players participating on the site.
c) The site shall not allow a player to use software aids displaying real time current session statistics for any player excepting that such software is a part of the site software and is freely available to all players participating on the site.

9) Players playing multiple tables at one time:

a) Any player shall be allowed to play at two real money tables on the site at any given time . The tables may be cash games, tournaments, or a combination.

b) The software shall be designed to reject attempts to place chips on a third table for any player.



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It still isn't California Party Poker.

Tuff
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[Tuff_Fish]

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plz dont send this out, its horrible [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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Why is that? Because you can't play 6 tables and use HUDs?

T
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[Dima2000123]

Tuff_Fish is onto something major, but unfortunately most people are way too short-sighted and greedy to understand his point. Good poker players should not be allowed to kill the games, good players should be allowed to fish only as much as it doesn't upset the ocean life. Any tools which give disproportional advantage to serious grinders over casual players drive another nail into the coffin of online poker.

All the things that he wants to ban do exactly those kinds of tools, they allow today's pros to extract stupidly large amounts of money, at expense of burning through all the fish very quickly. I've known a couple of competent casual poker players who gave online poker a try, but just couldn't win a single nitty session, and gave up on it, because it wasn't fun and because they didn't think they could ever win. I'm sure those $100-$200 was the most they could've donated.

I think that a lot of online pros should start thinking a little, and try to plan beyond their next session. If the smart ones think for a while, they'll realize that poker rooms removing stuff like table percentages or multi-tabling is in their best interest in the long run. Too many of them are probably the intimidating spec-ops commando types at $2/$5 live tables on whom the art of hustling the fish and making them enjoy the experience is completely lost. The attitudes displayed in this thread will make sure online poker will be dead even if Bill Frist ultimately fails at his task.