Former Senator Alfonse D’Amato is passionate about poker. Whether he’s talking about regulating Internet poker in the United States or telling a story about hitting his first royal flush, the excitement is his voice is palpable.

The Poker Players Alliance is betting that D’Amato’s engaging personality and political connections will help the organization spread its message on Capitol Hill. D’Amato was named the Chairman of the PPA two weeks ago.

There’s no doubt that the guy has flair. He calls Howard Stern a friend, and when asked to name four people he’d like to play poker with, he lists Stern, Donald Trump, Rosie O’Donnell (to “make the game really interesting”), and Ray Romano (to “provide comic relief”). He’s even played poker while he was stuck in an elevator in New York City.

The PPA’s membership has surged by nearly 40 percent to 220,000 since D’Amato signed on as Chairman. But D’Amato, who represented New York for three terms in the Senate, isn’t satisfied.

“Our goal is to (reach one million members) sooner rather than later and grow it as quickly as possible,” D’Amato said. “We think we can do it in the next two or three months.”

D’Amato’s role will be to lobby on behalf of the PPA in his former colleagues’ offices on the Capitol. It’s a role he’s held for Park Strategies, a public policy and business development firm he founded in 1999.

“You don’t win these battles simply because someone says ‘He’s a former colleague, let go support his client or point of view,’” D’Amato said. “You do it by having an opportunity that may be difficult for others to sit down with the staffers on the Hill on both sides.”

D’Amato is clear that he’s planning on talking to anyone who will listen, from those who railed against the UIGEA like Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), to those who were instrumental in its formation, like Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.).

“It will be our job to visit key members of the Congress, people like John Kyl, and to tell them, ‘Look, we think you can achieve your goals and do it in a better, more effective way.’”

D’Amato, former Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a onetime member Senate Finance Committee, believes that he can convince even the most ardent fans of the UIGEA that the unintended consequences of the legislation leave the government in worse shape to deal with the problems the legislation’s supporters are hoping to prevent.

“If they want to curb underage gambling, you’re certainly not going to curb it with this kind of thing,” D’Amato said. “You will simply drive people to offshore facilities that may not have, or who won’t be inclined to have the kind of regulatory controls that will see to it that there’s an honest game that can be put in place to prevent underage gambling and deal with problem gamblers.”

With the UIGEA already on the books, it will be an uphill battle, but at least now the PPA has someone on its side who knows how to win at the poker table and in politics.

Prominent Las Vegas-based gaming attorney Anthony Cabot has voiced strong support that the Poker Players Alliance (the “PPA”) is the one broad grass roots organization that will best represent U.S. online poker players’ interests with regard to Federal legislation. He also noted that PPA dues go directly to fight the fight.

On their website at www.theppa.org, the PPA states it aims to overturn, or at least get online poker exempted from, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) that Congress passed last October in an attempt to block online gambling by making it illegal for financial institutions to handle transactions between online gambling sites and US residents.

Cabot posted a memorandum in the forum of major poker information portal 2+2 this week. In it he urges players to join the PPA so their voices will be heard in government.

“If poker players want to regain their rights, they need to ban and act together,” stressed Cabot. “Congress will not act to protect your rights unless they think by not doing so it may impact their ability to get reelected.”

“I know of no other organization other than the PPA that has the capability of uniting the poker world in this cause,” he continued.

The PPA has a goal of having a million members; a number it thinks will make politicians take note of the voting power the PPA represents.

“..the PPA needs a million members to begin to have such an impact,” Cabot surmised.

A large part of Cabot’s post highlights the impact PPA already has had.

“Several reporters, including David Broder of the Washington Post, who is considered the Dean of the Washington Press Corps, gave partial credit to the PPA for the defeat of Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA) in last November’s elections,” he noted.

Cabot points out that since 2005, the PPA has retained the highly effective lobbyist group the Federalist Group, a subsidiary of Ogilvy Public Relations, to represent the organization in Washington. The Federalist Group was rated by National Journal as one the Top 10 lobbying firms in Washington. It’s the same lobbyist group that represents the influential National Rifle Association (NRA).

“In retaining The Federalists and in its other work in Washington,” says Cabot, “the PPA has expended substantial time, effort and financial resources in protecting the legality of the American game of poker.”

Another effort of the PPA, Cabot noted, has been to educate Congress that poker is a game of considerable skill and to make the case that online poker should not be banned. The PPA sponsored the visit of WSOP Champions Howard Lederer, Greg Raymer, and Chris Ferguson to Washington to meet with various legislators, journalists and bloggers to make that case, figuring it would have most impact coming from some of the most skilled players in the world.

On their website, PPA president Michael Bolcerek credits Linda Johnson as being the inspiration behind the PPA. Cabot was the one who then set up the organization. So Cabot has been familiar with the PPA from its beginnings, when Linda Johnson served as its first Chairwoman.

Cabot also highlights the excellent PPA Board of Directors that includes poker enthusiasts: Linda Johnson, Jan Fischer, Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Greg Raymer and Greg Dinkin. The most recent addition is the new chairman of the Board and another poker enthusiast, three term U.S. Senator from New York, Alphonse D’Amato.

Poker Player Alliance Cabot ended his post by remarking, “I think the PPA deserves the support of the poker world.”

Visit the PPA website for information and to join, at www.theppa.org. There you can learn about the poker laws in your state. You will also find the resources and tools to directly contact your federal, state, and local elected representatives so that you can help deliver positive messages about the game and why it should be protected.

Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the powerful House financial services committee, is working on legislation to repeal the sweeping ban that was passed in Congress last year against online gaming, he told the Financial Times in an interview.

Mr Frank called the ban, formally known as the Unlawful Enforcement Gambling Act, one of the “stupidest laws” ever passed and said he wanted to “repeal” the law.

“I am working on legislation to cut back on this internet gambling thing. I think it’s preposterous,” he said, adding that he was considering some “innovative ideas”.

“I’m looking for ways, maybe we can make some money off of it,” he said, signalling that he could be considering a proposal that would make online gaming legal by both regulating – and taxing – the industry.

Mr Frank declined to comment further on his proposal. A spokesman for the lawmaker said he had not yet drafted any legislation and was still at a “thinking stage”.

“I am not ready to get into specifics yet. People have come to me with some ideas. Not Al D’Amato. ..and I’m looking at it,” Mr Frank told the FT at an event at the US Chamber of Commerce.

Mr D’Amato, the former New York senator, was recently named chairman of the Poker Players Alliance, a lobby group that is fighting to legalise online poker.

Hopes that the US ban might be overturned helped lift shares in UK-listed online gaming groups on Wednesday, with PartyGaming up nearly 10 per cent in a falling London market. Shares in 888 Holdings and Sportingbet were also higher.

The Democratic victory in the Congress last year was an important victory for pro-gaming interests because Mr Frank, along with John Conyers, chairman of the House judiciary committee, are both considered sympathetic to the industry.

They are understood to believe that the legislation passed last year went too far by putting restrictions on a hobby – gambling – that millions of Americans enjoy.

However, while both Mr Frank and Mr Conyers represent powerful potential allies in the fight to roll back last year’s ban, which hit non-US gaming interests, particularly in the UK, it is far from clear that the lawmakers would have enough support to pass any meaningful legislation.

One industry lobbyist yesterday expressed deep reservations about the possibility that the ban would be repealed.

“Though the Democrats are in charge it is not clear that the votes would be there for a regulatory bill. Having Mr Frank and [John] Conyers [chairing congressional committees] is a positive development, but it doesn’t make it a slam dunk,” this person said.

Mr D’Amato said in a recent interview with the FT that he believed Congress should create a regulatory structure to police the industry that would be funded by licensing fees.

Separately, the industry is keeping a close eye on the US Treasury, which is currently drafting the regulations that will, in effect, implement last year’s ban. One lobbyist said that Treasury’s deadline to present the rules for public comment period had slipped and is not now expected until April or May.

[Financial Times]

This Is a Sneak Peak at Card Player’s Next Cover Story

The following is roughly the first half of a cover story by Allyn Jaffrey Shulman, Card Player’s legal expert, with the newest member of the Poker Players Alliance, former New York Senator Al D’Amato. The entire interview will appear in the next issue of Card Player Magazine, which is due out later this month. Shulman sits on PPA’s board and was granted the first official interview with D’Amato after he took the position.

Please click here to view Shulman’s article on D’Amato that ran on the site Monday.

Allyn Jaffrey Shulman: Welcome to the PPA. We’re very excited to have you sit as chairman of the PPA board. Congratulations on your unanimous appointment. Senator, when did you first hear about the PPA?

Alfonse D’Amato: In October. I heard about the PPA from Wayne Berman, a friend of mine who was my partner at one time, and who was also in our regular Thursday night game, every other week. He mentioned to me that the PPA existed.

I thought that the legislation being proposed was using a cannon to kill a gnat. What really needs to happen is to have a legitimate house, a fair game, and a fair operator, and not take away from 20-plus-million citizens who play poker the opportunity to play poker on the Internet. Why should they be deprived of Internet play and …(Interruption: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the phone …)

AJS: I understand that you have two different roles in the PPA. Besides being chairman of the board, what is your other role?

AD: Well, after serving in Congress for 18 years, in 1999, I began Park Strategies LLC. My role in the PPA includes myself and my firm. We will be lobbying to reform the UIGEA. Although the Act was well-intentioned, it will fail to achieve its goals. We all want to protect kids; we don’t want money laundering, and we don’t want our citizens cheated. But, we don’t want to waste our resources, either

…read more

excerpt:
“For years, Alfonse M. D’Amato, the former Republican senator from New York, was the host at a Thursday evening poker game at his Capitol Hill office, playing with other lawmakers, staff members and lobbyists late into the night over pots that ranged from a few dollars to a few hundred.

Once New Yorkers collectively informed Mr. D’Amato that it was time to find a new line of work, he graduated to a higher-stakes game, playing with Howard Stern, among others. He is now a stalwart of a weekly game on Long Island where a bad night might mean that a player drops $5,000 or more.

As Mr. D’Amato tells it, and as his card-playing cronies confirm, he rarely leaves a game a loser. Yet it is a safe bet that his love of poker never proved so lucrative as it did last week, when he signed a lobbying deal with the Poker Players Alliance, a nascent group that hopes that Mr. D’Amato will help them become players in Washington politics, too…”

read more….

Internet gambling, once considered a certain bet as a business with global prospects, instead finds itself in a protracted high-stakes poker game with authorities in the US – which the industry sees as unblinkingly imposing their mores on the world.

The outcome could help shape the future of online commerce, because it tests the extent to which one country can control what people outside its jurisdiction buy and sell.

The US has long had laws against internet gambling, so sites set up shop away from its shores and millions of Americans flocked to use them. All that changed last July, when the US Department of Justice ordered the first in a spate of arrests of executives from those companies who chanced to set foot on US soil.

Then, in September, Congress passed a law barring US banks and credit card issuers from processing internet gambling transactions. Suddenly, online gambling groups were locked out of the US market.

Online gambling companies are convinced the crackdown has been driven by a few Republican senators in tandem with lobbyists working for influential voices in the US leisure sector – onshore casino groups and the horse racing industry among them – seeking to protect the status quo.

US authorities say they are simply going after unlicensed gambling in every form. In New York, federal prosecutors cite half a dozen recent offline cases, including charges they have brought for operating illegal gambling parlours or Mafia-run numbers games.

But gaming executives and experts on electronic commerce say the effort should also be seen as part of a battle by various countries to restrict what happens in cyberspace. While China and Iran, for instance, try to weed out political and sexual content, other countries worry about defamation and invasion of privacy and the US fights gambling, spam e-mail and identity theft through “phishing”.

“We are creating a Balkanised internet where states are exerting more authority,” says Jonathan Palfrey, a Harvard University law professor. “The online space is getting more complicated.”

Cross-border legal clashes date back at least as far as 1999 when iCraveTV, a Canadian company, began rebroadcasting US and Canadian television signals on the internet. Though the site was legal in Canada, a US judge found it violated copyright and ordered the company to block access by US viewers. The site shut down almost immediately.

Conversely, Dow Jones, the US publisher, hit a snag when an Australian court gave Joseph Gutnick, a mining investor, the right to sue there for defamation, where winning such a claim is easier than in the US – even though the article in question had appeared in the online version of Barron’s, a US weekly it owns. Two years on, the parties settled with a clarification by Barron’s and a contribution to Mr Gutnick’s costs.

Even in a crackdown on gambling, the US is not alone. France, where the state has a monopoly on gambling, last year arrested the two leading executives of Bwin, an online gambling company based in Austria. The two, later bailed protesting their innocence, were on French territory to promote Bwin’s shirt sponsorship of AS Monaco, football team of the adjacent principality.

Bwin, listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange, was already among online gambling groups that had suffered big hits to their share prices and earnings outlook from the US clampdown. Gaming companies had blithely floated on London’s Aim and other European exchanges. Though their offer prospectuses contained clauses highlighting the dangers inherent in the existing American ban, most in the industry assumed that if the US were truly serious about online gambling, its enforcement agencies would have taken action long ago.

Then came last July’s arrest of David Carruthers, at that stage the high-profile chief executive of the UK-listed Betonsports, in the transit lounge of Fort Worth airport en route from London to Costa Rica, where the company is based.

Federal prosecutors in New York in January detained the Canadian founders of Britain’s Neteller, which processes gambling transactions. The US authorities have also issued dozens of subpoenas demanding bank records, documents and e-mails in connection with a wide-ranging investigation. Mr Carruthers as well as Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre, the Neteller founders, are on bail awaiting trial on charges relating to illegal online gambling – which, along with others implicated, they deny. Betonsports faces court proceedings and Gary Kaplan, its founder, is sought by US authorities.

Cases like these “will hasten the development of technologies and practices that geographically carve up the internet”, says Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor of internet governance. “Innovative content distribution models might have to be negotiated one state at a time, at the risk of, say, US citizens being told, ‘Sorry, you can’t see this content that everyone else can – it’s not licensed in your jurisdiction’.”

But the experience of MGM Mirage highlights the problem of doing business without access to the lucrative US market. In 2001, the big American casino operator set up an offshore internet gambling site with security in place to screen out US residents. The site shut for lack of customers after less than two years.

Some countries are fighting back. The Caribbean island of Antigua has been pursuing a case with the World Trade Organisation that claims the US law is protectionist because it forbids foreign online gambling companies from serving US consumers.

The WTO has provisionally ruled the US law inconsistent because it allows domestic internet operations for horse racing and lotteries while banning overseas gambling sites. A final ruling is expected within weeks.

Antigua has little leverage, but the European Union has declared itself an “interested party” in the dispute. This week Charlie McCreevy, the internal market commissioner, said the “protectionist” US legislation might prompt a separate action by the EU.

As the US cracks down on internet gambling, the UK is moving to regulate it. Tessa Jowell, culture secretary, last year hosted a conference on global gambling regulation that attracted 31 nations. This September Britain will begin licensing gaming sites.

That is a position to which many in the industry expect the US will eventually move. They point to November’s congressional elections, when Democrats won the majority and Jim Leach of Iowa, a proponent of the 2006 law, was a surprise loser. Some also predict that the law will prove unworkable.

Las Vegas Sands, the biggest casino company by value, is to set up an online gaming site this year in the UK and then continental Europe. It assumes that the US will eventually permit online gaming.

Europe’s gambling industry has learnt its lesson not to be too confident about reading between the US political and judicial lines. But one UK executive, predicting that the US will at some point relent, reminds America of its own history by saying: “Prohibition won’t work.”

Instead, what is happening now could be “the start of a process that will lead to legalisation, regulation and taxation in the US”.

Gambling interests hope the Democratic takeover of Congress will mean better odds for success than last session when the Republican-controlled Congress targeted the industry in a flurry of last-minute lawmaking.

In the political maneuvering leading to last fall’s election, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., inserted into an unstoppable port security bill a long-stalled provision clamping down on Internet gambling.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act owed its momentum at least partly to a desire by Republican leaders to eradicate the specter of corruption lingering over their party from the gambling-tinged Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Still, the new law will loom over the gambling industry and its occasionally conflicting agendas this session.

The segments of the industry most impacted by the law are eager to chip away at it — if not reverse it — through rule-making and legislative lobbying. They’ll also seek to build political influence so they can head off any congressional efforts to regulate gambling.

Some parts of the gambling industry — among them lotteries, fantasy sports, horse racing and tribal gambling interests — emerged unscathed in the last session. Congress carved out exemptions for them, and they’re likely to keep a low profile this session, concentrating on initiatives primarily related to taxation and federal rule-making.

Gambling isn’t expected to be the subject of the rigorous oversight that Democratic leaders have promised of other industries. And most gambling interests generally anticipate more receptive audiences in the new Democratic-controlled Congress, thanks partly to the diminished influence of religious conservatives who oppose gambling on moral grounds.

NEW CONGRESS, NEW ATTITUDES?

Some leading gambling opponents were defeated or lost power in the Democratic takeover, including Frist, who retired from the Senate; Rep. Jim Leach, the Iowa Republican who authored the last session’s gambling law; and Rep. Richard Pombo, a California Republican who unsuccessfully pushed to prohibit Indian tribes from opening casinos off their reservations. Another powerful member who tried to restrict off-reservation gambling, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., lost the reigns of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

Gaining clout were industry allies or sympathizers, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., a former chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who represents a bastion of the horse racing industry; and Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., who represents the Gulf Coast, where casinos are a major industry.

On the flip side of the partisan shift, gambling interests could face opposition from empowered liberals who oppose gambling because they believe it preys inordinately on the poor and elderly.

“It just brings it into a discussion of social morality instead of just personal morality,” said Tom Grey, spokesman for the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling. “We don’t lose either side.”

Perhaps the most significant obstacle to action on gambling issues may be political inertia, because Congress is typically reluctant to revisit recent controversies.

“It’s going to be difficult for someone to do something on Internet gambling — or maybe gambling as a whole — because there was just major action on it,” predicted Greg Means, a lobbyist for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.

The increasingly powerful Indian gambling lobby also survived attempts to restrict off-reservation gambling.

“The outlook is definitely better,” said Jason Giles, an attorney for the National Indian Gaming Association. He predicted that Congress would pay more attention this year to other pressing issues on the nation’s Indian reservations, such as health care and illegal drugs.

BEYOND CONGRESS

Other gambling interests will also look beyond Congress, thanks in part to disagreements over the application of the Internet Gambling Act and other federal, state and international gambling rules.

Cash-strapped states are continually eyeing new forms of gambling, as well as expansions or tighter regulations on existing forms. And there are likely to be behind-the-scenes skirmishes over the crafting of rules to implement the Internet Gambling Act. That could get tricky because the law doesn’t penalize gamblers, but rather banks and credit card companies that process online banking transactions.

The rules must be completed by mid-July. And the Department of Justice, which will help the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury implement the law, asserts that the horse racing, state lottery, fantasy sports and tribal exemptions are trumped by prohibitions on all Internet gambling.

Those prohibitions, it contends, are included in three laws that predate the modern Internet by more than 30 years, including the Wire Act of 1961. The horse racing industry counters it would welcome a legal challenge on those grounds, because it says the 1978 Interstate Horse Racing Act extends explicit protection for gambling.

The Internet gambling lobby would like Congress to legalize and regulate online gambling.

One of the leading groups in the lobby is the Interactive Gaming Council. It represents foreign companies, some of which abandoned U.S. markets or saw their stocks plummet after the passage of the Internet Gambling Act.

FUTURE OF INTERNET ACT

In the new Congress, the Interactive Gaming Council is expected to focus on lobbying for a narrow amendment to exempt online poker from the new law.

“You get less support when you start adding other games,” said Keith Furlong, the council’s deputy director. “Poker to me has a better chance when you sit down with legislators because the players are playing against each other, and you have the element of skill and you have the element that poker is American,” he said. “It’s like apple pie.”

The council will be joined in pushing for the poker exemption by the Poker Players Alliance. It argues that poker will proliferate even if it’s prohibited, so it’s safer and more profitable to legalize and regulate it. The group intends to take that message to state legislatures as well as Congress.

The American Gaming Association, representing large, publicly traded casino operations, is taking a more measured approach, in part because its membership is divided on Internet gambling.

The group, which has opposed Internet gambling for years, officially took no stance on the issue last year. And this year, it will ask Congress to study the feasibility of legalizing, regulating and taxing Internet gambling.

“We’ve got to be convinced that it can be regulated and it can be controlled,” said the association’s president, Frank Fahrenkopf.

In the meantime, he said, “Don’t anticipate that the gambling industry is going to be going to this new Congress asking for anything huge.”

When it comes to winning on Capitol Hill, poker’s got nothing on horse racing.

The horse racing industry has cultivated strong ties in Congress, which it has used over the years to pass legislation protecting its interests and to block potentially harmful bills. Last year, it won an exemption in legislation cracking down on other forms of Internet gambling.

Now, a group representing poker players is seeking to play a stronger hand in Congress, in part by replicating elements of the horse racing lobby’s strategy: convincing lawmakers to treat it not as just another form of gambling, but as popular, even wholesome, entertainment that could bolster government coffers.

“We’d like lawmakers to look at poker the same way they look at horse racing — that they’re both American traditions,” said Michael Bolcerek, president of the 135,000-member Poker Players Alliance. Formed in 2005 and funded through member dues, the group has engaged in aggressive public relations, voter education and lobbying.

Bolcerek touts a study showing regulated and taxed online poker could raise $3.3 billion a year for the U.S Treasury, plus $1 billion for states. He said 23 million Americans play poker online and 70 million play it in person, and his group is working to turn those players into a recognizable voting bloc.

In addition to hiring a top public relations firm, the alliance has spent more than $720,000 lobbying Congress, Senate records show.

But slick PR and lobbying aren’t as important to the horse racing industry’s success on Capitol Hill as its longstanding ties with politicians from horse racing and agricultural states, said Keith Furlong, deputy director of the Interactive Gaming Council, which, with the poker alliance, unsuccessfully opposed last session’s Internet gambling crackdown.

The Poker Players Alliance is hoping that grass-roots momentum can make up for its lack of institutional power. It’s recruiting local, regional and state directors to help mobilize poker players. After Rep. Jim Leach, the Iowa Republican who wrote the Internet gambling bill, lost his re-election bid in November, the association conducted a poll in his district that it says showed that his opposition to online gambling could have cost him the election.

Leach’s former spokesman, Gregory Wierzynski, called the poll “silly” and expressed doubts that the poker players could build such a potent lobby.

A powerful selling point for horse racing, which online poker lacks, is the number of agri-business jobs it supports, said Greg Means, a contract lobbyist for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.

“We don’t really care about the poker players,” he said, nonetheless wishing them well “if they have enough political clout to go and get themselves legalized in one fashion or another.”

Michael Bolcerek would be the first to admit there are a lot of good causes out there—fighting poverty, saving the planet, curing AIDS. But he thinks he’s found one that, while not as important in the grand scheme of things, still deserves his attention: protecting the rights of poker players.

Bolcerek, 44, is the president of the Poker Players Alliance, an organization dedicated, as its slogan says, to “protecting the freedom to play America’s game.” Representatives of the group, which claims 75,000 members, lobby in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals across the country, fighting government regulations that would make it harder to play the game they so cherish.

Bolcerek, who lives in San Francisco, is himself a casual poker player, gathering with friends about once a month to play. His background is in corporate finance—he’s worked for Oracle, Nokia, and Hyundai—and only joined the PPA at the urging of a friend in 2005. He forked over his dues, but then found himself so upset about various efforts in California to regulate poker that he began to dedicate more and more of his time to the cause. He became president last February. Bolcerek sees his future in politics, but for now, he says, “I’m just trying to make the world safe for poker players.”

According to Bolcerek, “There’s a political backlash going on right now against a very popular activity . Politicians are legislating morality.”  Exhibit A, he says, is a bill recently passed by Congress and signed by President Bush that threatens to wipe out the $3 billion U.S. online gambling market. The new law prohibits banks and credit card companies from processing checks and electronic payments involving Internet gaming sites. “If the goal of Congress is to protect people from the possible dangers of gambling, a prohibition is the worst way of achieving it,” Bolcerek said in a press release issued right after the bill was passed in September. “All it will do is push poker underground, essentially creating online speakeasies.”

Then there’s the crackdown on poker at the state level. California recently shut down several casino nights hosted by charities, as officials enforced a state law that for years had gone ignored. In Cincinnati last January, Bolcerek says state agents went undercover as players at a poker tournament sponsored by local residents to raise money for a cancer patient to find out if the organizers had obtained the necessary permits. And a year earlier, in Palmer Lake, Colorado, a SWAT team of fifty-two officers raided a local restaurant where two dozen gamblers were playing Texas hold ‘em. Witnesses told the press that the cops entered with guns drawn. “Put your hands up,” they yelled, “This is a raid.”

Though the PPA is an independent nonprofit organization, it was started with contributions from the gambling industry along with annual dues payments from its members. Bolcerek also says he is “currently courting U.S. casino interests with regard to supporting other initiatives we’d like to accomplish,” though he won’t detail what those are. Nonetheless, Bolcerek insists that the PPA comes up with its positions independently of any outside influence.

“It’s a special interest,” he argues, “but so are guns, so are environmental issues. The fact is, it’s about personal freedom and the freedom to enjoy a game of skill wherever you want to play.”