blonde poker forum

Wall St Journal today

Staffers for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are circulating a bill to legalize poker playing on the Internet that's backed by large casino interests.

The Nevada casino companies pushing the measure were among the Democrat's biggest donors during his fierce re-election fight. They argue the bill would provide consumer protection for poker players and would provide some tax revenue for federal and state governments.

On Wednesday, three Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Mr. Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) opposing any efforts to pass Internet poker legislation during the lame-duck session.

"Congress should not take advantage of the young, the weak and the vulnerable in the name of new revenues to cover more government spending," Rep. Spencer Bachus (R., Ala.), the ranking Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee and others wrote.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, declined to comment.

Mr. Reid, who has opposed online gambling in the past, is holding his cards close to his vest regarding plans to move forward with the legislation. Passing such a measure is highly uncertain as the heated session winds down, given the sensitive nature of the subject.

Previous attempts at online-gambling legislation haven't moved forward, but casino interests believe that given Mr. Reid's powerful position atop the Senate, he might be able to push the poker measure into another bill, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The legislation would overturn a bill passed in 2006 that bans financial institutions from processing online-gambling transactions. That led publicly traded companies to pull out from operating online sites in the U.S. In their place, offshore sites have gathered an estimated 10 million U.S. poker players, according to the Poker Players Alliance.

According to the draft of the bill reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Reid's office is considering language that would allow only existing casinos, horse tracks and slot-machine makers to operate online poker websites for the first two years after the bill passes, which could limit the ability of other companies to enter the market.

The bill would also outsource oversight to state regulators, another move supported by existing casinos that don't want to see the federal government become overly involved in regulating their industry.

The bill as drafted would send taxes on wagers to both federal and state governments.

Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Resorts International, a large Las Vegas-based casino company, said he hoped such a bill had a possibility of rushing through in the next few weeks. "A lot of things happen in this kind of time frame," he said.

Internet gambling has been a top priority for the Las Vegas-based Caesars Entertainment Corp., which recently changed its name from Harrah's Entertainment Inc. and is the largest casino company in the world by revenue. The company owns the popular World Series of Poker brand that it hopes to parlay into online success to make up for anemic growth in its U.S. casino markets.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/congress/111294034.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3iUMEaPc:E7_ec7PaP3iUiacyKUnciaec8O7EyUr

http://ftrain.blogspot.com/2010/12/quick-and-dirty-summary-of-reid-poker.html

Panic on the SNE thread on 2+2 over the 15 month potential 'blackout'.

Should I be concerned about this then ?

If over the long term, every country's players being ringfenced from every other country's players concerns you, then yes.

Will countries with good players lobby countries with bad players to bring down the ring fences?

Ilm afraid that players of all countries will be lobbying to play somewhere that doesn't ass-rape them with taxes.

sky could actually be falling :(

really doesn't look good short-term.

http://www.parttimepoker.com/new-draft-online-poker-bill

Someone could make an absolute fortune in the 15 months blackout.

Who wants to invest?

Yep there could be plenty of money made imo. I can imagine a couple of operators swooping in during the blackout and enjoying 15 months of US traffic, fully prepared to get banned thereafter from the states. I also think this is a cracking time to invest in a likely candidate who will be trying to get in the US market who never was there before (PKR really springs to mind, a 2012 boom America would love them).

If it wasnt for the fact I know sod all about shares and such I would be filling my boots, I'll just wait to see what Camel does and +1 it

Could this be a good thing for non-US players re: softer games.

I think the average standard of Americans is so much higher than the rest of the world because the average punter is confused as to whether it's illegal or not over there, so the average player is at least someone informed about poker so more likely to be good...

Its probably going to make stars/tilt softer, assuming they do block out the yanks for 15 months, but traffic will be lower. Because stars/tilt wont be able to offer the same traffic/tourney guarantees it might mean the euro sites will have more of a chance of capturing some market share, so it wouldnt suprise me to see some very good promos/rb being offered on some of the euro sites soon. Party will probably rise from the ashes.

Bad news for you really MC, as the yanks do make up a huge chunk of sng traffic.

lol, just realised the most likely candidates to clean up with the 15 month blackout traffic is UB & Absolute Poker

Originally Posted by NoahSD View Post
Summary (not calling it cliffs cause it ain't so short):

The Congress is currently in a lame duck session. Basically a bunch of Dems got voted out, but there's a 1.5 month window where they're still in control. That window technically lasts until January third, but in practice they usually break for Christmas in mid December unless they're really fighting over stuff. For a number of reasons (very few of which have to do with idealogical differences), the general consensus is that the Dems are much more likely to help us out than the Reps, so most people view this as our best chance to get something done for the next 2 years.

Enter Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Senator Reid (majority leader of the senate, so quite a powerful dude) is considering attaching a bill to license and regulate online poker (only poker) to other legislation that's almost definitely going to pass. The most likely target is a bill to extend tax cuts that the Dems and Reps have been negotiating over since the election. Nobody's really sure how likely this is to actually happen, as it's likely to be an unpopular move if the Reps decide to make a big deal out of it. However, there's been very little resistance so far. The Dems also seem to be caving pretty hard on the tax cut debate, so the final bill might be very much to the Reps liking and therefore much less likely to garner complaints.

An old draft of the bill has leaked, and we've gotten some inside information from people who work in the senate and PPA members who are negotiating right now. In no particular order, here's a list of things about the bill that are probably true true. (REMEMBER THAT THIS IS BASED ON LEAKS AND AN OLD DRAFT OF A BILL THAT IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS AND WON'T NECESSARILY PASS.:

Blackout

The big thing that everyone's upset about is a fifteen month "blackout" period. No site will be able to get licensed until fifteen months after the bill goes into effect. Sites that want to get licensed that are currently serving US players will have to stop during those fifteen months.

It seems that Reid wants this provision for two reasons. First of all, they want some time to set up regulation. Second, they don't want to give sites that have arguably been ignoring US law for years to get a leg up over US companies that have been willing to accept the DoJ's argument that online poker was illegal in the US.

There's a ton of evidence that Stars and FTP will go along with this. So if this passes, there will probably be a fifteenish month period when US players are not able to play on Stars.

Sites that offered sports betting are pretty likely not to bother with this. Sports betting is clearly covered by the wire act, so there's basically no way that anyone who ever offered it could argue that they weren't blatantly violating US law for years. In particular, Bodog is likely to just totally ignore this law if it passes and continue serving US residents throughout the blackout.

For other sites the picture is less clear. I think Cake still serves Washington residents, so that would presumably be an obstacle for them if they wanted to get licensed, and it also suggests that they might be willing to ignore this law. Cereus still serves Washington as well and also obviously has a really sketchy past, so it's unclear if they'll bother to get a license. Cereus also spreads table games, which were already in less of a grey area than poker and will be even more unambiguously illegal after this law is passed, so that's more reason for them to not bother with this. I know nothign about any of the other smaller sites that serve US residents.

The current information from the PPA is that there will be thirty days after the bill passes in which basically nothing happens, then a thirty day grace period in which the sites can still serve Americans (so we get to play for sixty days total), and then another thirty in which the sites have to cash out all Americans. So, there's no reason to worry about getting money out now.

The PPA has been arguing that even though this sucks, it's necessary. They say that the current status quo is getting less and less stable, this is our best chance to fix things, and there's no way we get anything through without a blackout period. Players are split on the issue.. some saying that a fifteen month break (with Bodog and maybe some other sites still around) is worth it for eventualy legality and much softer games and some saying it's not.

A few posters have offered their souls to the devil in exchange for a bill without a blackout. So far, the devil has not commented.

Tax

The tax is pretty damn small. It's 20% on the poker site's revenues (aka rake). This works out to be much less than the current cost of getting around the US government's attempts to prevent Americans from getting money on and off. So, there's no reason to expect rakes to go up as a result of this. There's some reason to expect rakes to go down, but I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you.

(A lot of people are confused by the wording of the bill and think that this is a tax on deposits. It is not a tax on deposits. It's just worded a little funny because lawyers need work just like online poker players need work. It's a tax on revenues and it's quite low.)

The bill also has some provisions to make sure that poker players pay taxes on their winnings. You should pay your taxes anyway, so nobody here will have any sympathy for you if you have a problem with that.

No Penalty for Sites Currently Facing US Players

Stars and FTP come out smelling like roses. An old version of the bill (actually the one that leaked) said that they'd be penalized for facing the US market when it was arguably illegal. People who are in the know say that that has been removed.

No Euros for a While

Non-US players won't be allowed to play on US-licensed sites. So that would be something like the equivalent of Stars.fr and FTP.fr. The version of the bill that I have says that three years after the blackout (so over four years from now), they might be allowed in if some bureaucrats decide to let them in.

State-by-State Crap

There is no way that the federal government will force states to make online gambling legal. That's arguably unconstitutional, and it's just not something any senator would do. So, states have to have some way to make a choice about whether or not they want to participate. How exactly they are allowed to make that choice is pretty crucial.

The old draft of the bill that I have says that only states that already allow commercial poker in some form ("at least" California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia) would be involved automatically. The others would have to send a letter from their governor before the end of 2011 to be included. That would not be good as a lot of governors would choose not to send such a letter, preferring to just stay out of the issue.

Fortunately, the PPA has been saying that this has been improved. The best-case scenario is one in which all states are automatically involved and they can only get out if the state legislatures (which in most states have a lot of trouble getting anything done) vote to opt them out. The PPA has been saying that something like this is likely to be in the final bill, so that's pretty good for us.

21+

The bill is 21+. This probably isn't gonna change. Of course, with the fifteen month blackout, this will only really affect people who are younger than like 19.5ish.

Why is 15 months?  Not 12 or 18?

presumably thats the amount of time the ppl bribing the senators need to get their sites up and running.

Sigh, this sucks for an mttsng player like myself as I need the traffic the US players provide.

Latest draft of the bill on Google (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1MlKO5as4lPA4NyA6qVOwqbh-fA0DwDPMHpd-5PhglXrAhlDW20OzdKJRIUt4&hl=en&authkey=COaI7roJ)

Looks like US players would be ring-fenced - no playing on the new sites for us. After 3 years, this restriction may be lifted if the licencing authority thinks it won't do any harm.

Summary of the latest version

http://ftrain.blogspot.com/2010/12/quick-and-dirty-summary-of-version-2-of.html

Just seen this, Cliffs anyone? ;carlocitrone;

good cliffs via http://craakker.blogspot.com/2010/12/long-december-for-online-poker.html


More interesting thoughts http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/12/scratching-my-head.html

http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/policy-racket/2010/dec/08/harry-reid-online-poker-legalization-falls-agenda/

Cliffs- Harry Reid says new poker legislation won't be coming anytime soon.

Good news- short term

Long term this could lead to the individual states making individual decisions a la Washington in the upcoming months and years.

A little light reading


the third draft of Reid

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B6sKjUYL3e6LY2ZkYzZhZmEtZTU1NC00ZjM0LTk1ZjctOTE2NDU3NDk0ODgy&authkey=CPOt22A&hl=en&pli=1