PPA Statement

[Eaglesfan1]

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The PPA can quickly address Mason's concerns. If not, we should disavow them and rally around Mason and a new organization.

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Yeah, this def could work... if Mason was actually doing something for our cause...

[MiltonFriedman]

"Powerful industry leader and President of the Poker Players Alliance, Michael Bolcherek, claimed on Tuesday ..."

Say what ?

It takes very little juice to get a bill introduced. However, I wish him luck, as the AGA is not really behind a poker-carveout ... MGM wants it all legalized for US casinos/Harrahs would take a carveout, probably due to their diminishing value poker brand.

[permafrost]

Help me follow the logic here. The PPA's primary goal is to get a bill passed by Congress that gives poker a skill exception to the "new law". States then will have no choice but to allow any and all poker businesses since it is a skill game exempt from laws.


PPA will then move on to the "only proven public policy" for online poker; U.S. licensing, regulating and taxing. But if Congress earlier gave poker a skill game exemption from laws, why would they ever need to regulate and when was online regulation ever proven?? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[curious123]

I only browsed over this, but that confused me too perma.

[yeahright]

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The PPA can quickly address Mason's concerns. If not, we should disavow them and rally around Mason and a new organization.

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sarcasm?

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Surely that was sarcasm....2+2 has made it very clear that have no plans to help the effort to save online poker. Here's Mason's quote from a couple days ago.

"Two Plus Two is not making any effort to form a player's group. But there are some posters here who are discussing this option and it is their perogative to do so."

Has anyone ever gotten an answer on why 2+2 will not support anything? Do they have some kind of vested interest in online poker being banned?

It just seems strange.

[SlapPappy]

It seems clear to me that Sklansky, Mason, and whoever else don't care that much about saving online poker. This is not a shot a Mason, or Sklansky I just think they don't consider it very important to them.

[Capitola]

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Help me follow the logic here. The PPA's primary goal is to get a bill passed by Congress that gives poker a skill exception to the "new law". States then will have no choice but to allow any and all poker businesses since it is a skill game exempt from laws.

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I don't think so, at least not the second part.

I'm guessing their goal is just to get a carveout from the UIGEA and by extension the Wire Act. States will still be able to regulate poker and gambling however they want. It will still be illegal in Washington unless they change their law. But at least the DoJ will be off the backs of pure poker sites.

Also, I think US-based poker sites could then be set up as long as they didn't serve any states/jurisdictions where it was illegal. This would probably be tricky given all the ambiguous state gambling laws out there.

That's my take on it, anyway. Like a lot of people, I'll be waiting to see if a bill actually gets introduced. It probably won't go anywhere, but I'd be somewhat impressed with the PPA if they got it introduced.

[Knight Vision]

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at least the DoJ will be off the backs of pure poker sites.

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I haven't seen any indication the DoJ is on the backs of the pure poker sites.

[Capitola]

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at least the DoJ will be off the backs of pure poker sites.

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I haven't seen any indication the DoJ is on the backs of the pure poker sites.

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Their pursuit of the PartyGaming founders is a little bit scary, since Party didn't offer sports betting when they opened and, according to some, didn't offer betting on American sports until after they had pulled out of the US market. So what exactly is the DoJ basing their case on? The two weeks that Americans could bet on horse races before they got booted off? Not much cash to be had there, and I'm sure cash IS an objective.

In any case, right now the DoJ position is that all forms of gambling violate the Wire Act, so we have no guarantee they won't go after pure poker sites. An explicit carveout would do wonders for online poker.

[JPFisher55]

Actually, IMO if a federal law giving poker this exemption is passed, then, under a line of cases referred to as the dormant commerce clause cases, that exemption would preempt state laws on online gambling.