The Poker Players Alliance continued its assault on Capitol Hill today with a forum featuring six men who talked to a room full of media, poker advocates, and congressional aides about the state of online poker in America and the current political atmosphere surrounding the game.

The hour-long forum, which was titled “Poker: Public Policy, Politics, Skill and the Future of an American Tradition,” lived up to its billing. The speakers touched on each of the subjects in the title, while news cameras rolled and Congressional aides furiously scribbled notes on large yellow legal pads.

The forum was the main event of the two-day “fly-in” sponsored by the PPA. About 95 PPA members from states across the country showed up in Washington on their own dollars to learn how they could be active for the game of poker on a local level. Those members also attended the forum and met face to face with their regional members of Congress.

The PPA organized all of the meetings between PPA members and members of Congress, and John Pappas, the PPA’s executive director, was confident that the meetings did what he hoped they would do: give poker a face to the lawmakers and encourage them to support bills that would pave the way for regulation and taxation of online poker in America.

“It’s been tremendous. We’ve had nearly 50 meetings with key lawmakers,” Pappas said. “The pros have been a fantastic resource for us, but beyond that, just the ‘Average Joe’ poker players who have come out here and are participating in these meetings have made an impression on me that we have a real organization that is very interesting and can be politically motivated.”

Pappas and PPA lobbyists have been talking to members of Congress to try to convince them to support both Barney Frank’s bill, which would basically wipe the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) off the books, and Robert Wexler’s bill that would install a carve-out in the UIGEA that would provide protection for games of skill (poker included), but Pappas said it was imperative to match the PPA members with their representatives.

Simply put, when constituents talk with their specific members of Congress, the members of Congress listen more closely.

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