Robert Williamson wobbled wearily into the conference room thirty minutes late for a 9am meeting and sat down without making an excuse. He didn’t need one. He’s a professional poker player.

For someone in his line of work to be out of bed that early in the morning usually means an all-nighter at a juicy table full of tourists with money to spare. Detesting or even having a phobia of the 9-to-5 routine and confi nes of an office is what drives many pros to take up playing cards for a living. Williamson’s motivation to wrestle himself awake and rush out of the house on this day never would have happened before the events of Sept. 30, 2006.

He had an appointment with his congressman.

Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican who serves the 32nd district of Texas, had voted for the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act on that day that shook the poker world.

He could hardly be blamed. Only 2 of 501 members in the House and none of 100 senators opposed when the UIGEA was attached to the completely unrelated SAFE Port Act and snuck through Congress by then-Senate majority leader Bill Frist in the dead of the night just before Congress adjourned for the 2006 elections. The UIGEA didn’t bar people from playing online poker but tried to choke the industry at its throat by prohibiting banks from performing transactions with online gaming sites.

Eleven months later, Williamson sat at a conference table in Sessions’ Dallas office next to fellow poker pro Clonie Gowen, Poker Players Alliance executive director John Pappas, and a variety of poker enthusiasts from in or around Sessions’ district. There was a psychiatrist and addiction specialist there to discuss the concerns of online poker being dangerous, a man who ran a small business making poker tables, poker blogger Dan Michalski, and one of his home game participants.

“We wanted to show him that these were regular folks — his voters — and not just degenerate wackos pushing for more gambling,” said Michalski, who runs the website pokerati.com. “We had to realize that, though this was the biggest outrage to us, it was something that wasn’t even on his radar before. It was kind of baf- fl ing to him that this little provision of a relatively small spending bill affected so many people.”

Williamson and Gowan tried to convince Sessions of the skill component of poker. “The bottom line is if poker isn’t a game of skill then I’ve been getting lucky for 36 years,” Williamson told Sessions. “This one issue is so important that I changed all my travel plans to be here today.” A month after the meeting, Sessions signed on as a co-sponsor of the Skill Game Protection Act, which would exempt poker from the UIGEA. He has championed the right of US citizens to participate in online poker ever since.

Click here to go to the article and read more.

Author Contact Info: Bluff Magazine