Coming off a resounding defeat in Congress a year ago, the country’s top poker players are trying their hand at a time-honored Washington parlor game: lobbying.

Nearly 100 leading card players are flying into the nation’s capital this week to urge lawmakers to roll back a ban on Internet gambling. They are led by Senator D’Amato, the New York lawmaker turned lobbyist who serves as chairman of the Poker Players Alliance.

The group is pushing a bill that would legalize and regulate online gambling through the federal government, effectively reversing a law that President Bush signed last year making it illegal for American banks and credit card companies to process online bets.

“We shouldn’t be making criminals of people who want to play poker in their own home. It’s ridiculous,” Mr. D’Amato said in a telephone interview.

The former three-term Republican senator brings added political clout to an industry that says it was broadsided by last year’s legislation, which was added to an unrelated port security bill and passed overwhelmingly. “They snuck the bill through,” Mr. D’Amato said.

The poker professionals in Washington this week include Chris Moneymaker, Howard Lederer, and many others who have become celebrities thanks to ESPN’s exhaustive televised coverage of the “World Series of Poker” events. They have scheduled dozens of meetings over two days with members of the House Financial Services and Judiciary committees, along with a public forum on Internet poker.

While Mr. D’Amato said this is the first organized lobbying effort by the group, he envisions the poker alliance having a much larger political presence in the months to come; he said he wants to create a political action committee and start voter registration drives.

“There is a growing constituency and a voice that cares about their ability to enjoy poker on the Internet,” he said. “We’re going to demonstrate to the members that this awareness translates into votes.”

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Recovered from the Poker Players Alliance archive index. This is the archived item as preserved.