Dark Days for American Online Poker Ending?

The Poker Players Alliance, or PPA for short, has long been advocating a return to sanity when it comes to online poker legislation within the United States. For a long period of time, the UIGEA has starved players in the United States of online poker options, lumping poker into the same category as other forms of pure gambling when poker has more elements of skill than luck to the overall game.

Now, it looks as though the change people expected to start happening in 2006 when Democrats took over Congress has finally started to materialize, but not in the expected direction that most analysts had.

Up until the present, many people thought that the House of Representatives would be leading the charge to overturn the UIGEA, legalizing, regulating and taxing the online poker industry in the process. However, Barney Frank’s bill in the House has stalled. While it has over 50 cosponsors now, it has become clear that it will take some time for that bill to become a realistic contender for getting passed by the house.

At the same time however, the PPA was delighted and said as much when New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez introduced the Internet Poker and Games of Skill Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act. Instead of a roundabout and dishonest ban on online gambling along the lines of the UIGEA, this particular act establishes a framework for legalizing and regulating the game of online poker and other similar games of skill that were banned under the UIGEA that was passed in 2006.

The bill does many common sense things that should certainly help clarify a large portion of this debate going forward. For example, the bill charges the government with specifying a list of unregistered online gambling operations for enforcement and it also mandates the use of technology to prevent underage gambling online. It increases funding to help with gambling counseling and it also allows for the collection of taxes from online poker operations. It also calls for clarification of the Wire Act in order to prevent unlawful fund seizures from ever happening again.