A Web site promoting campus gambling and containing links to online poker sites uses the University of Massachusetts name and logo to promote itself, and school officials are demanding that it be taken down.

UMasspoker.com contains the trademarked UMass-Amherst lettering and Minuteman athletic logo and depicts the Minuteman peering over stacks of cash, dice, cards and poker chips. School officials will send a cease-and-desist demand to the site’s operators.

“If they don’t comply then we go to court,” school spokesman Ed Blaguszewski told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “The UMass name and logo are university property, and they cannot be used without the university’s permission. This Web site is not an appropriate use.”

The site appears to be operated by students and recent graduates, billing itself as an information exchange about poker strategy and cash games and tournaments on and off campus.

Brett Burdick, who graduated from UMass-Amherst last spring, said he’s been the site moderator for the past year.

“We never got any grief over it,” he told The AP in an interview. “There’s sites just like this all over the country on college campuses.”

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Westmoreland County attorney Larry Burns refuses to fold and insists his for-profit poker tournaments are legal in Pennsylvania.

But it wasn’t in the cards Tuesday for him to get back more than $11,000 in cash confiscated by police this summer.

Attorney Larry Burns told a judge yesterday that money he earned from organizing Texas Hold’em tournaments in Seward and Hempfield was not the proceeds of an illegal activity.

The 63-year-old Burns was charged earlier this year with misdemeanor gambling counts for running tournaments for a profit. Authorities confiscated about $11,000 in cash during raids of the Seward Volunteer Fire Department and Burns’ Derry Township home in August.

Prosecutors agreed to return to Burns about $2,000 in cash seized from his bedroom as well as nine books about poker and gambling.

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PPA Member Sean Webb is helping the fight for poker with his film “Underground Home Game”

Underground Home Game is a new documentary film that is entering into production to follow a small group of poker players as they struggle to improve their play with their favorite game of skill. The intriguing slant is that from their home base of Georgia, playing poker for money is illegal, and the home games at which they practice and play in the South are being raided by SWAT teams, with the players being hand-cuffed and sent to jail for playing cards in private homes.
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We have some excellent news for PPA members. But first, let’s take a look at how we got to where we are today.

Everyone knows the back-story. One year ago on Oct. 13, 2006, the Internet poker community was hit hard when the president signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) into law as part of the Secure Ports Act. This misguided and overly restrictive legislation was snuck through at the 11th hour, with little or no review, and was thrust upon U.S. banks and an unsuspecting general public.
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Although a company wanting to run legal poker games has found locations in Milford and Brookline, it’s still betting it can find a suitable location in the city.

“We’ve always been interested in Nashua. We just want to find the right place,” said James Rafferty, president of New Hampshire Charitable Gaming.

That right place looks like it might be on Northeastern Boulevard.

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A Westmoreland County attorney already facing charges of unlawful gambling for holding Texas Hold’em poker tournaments at area fire halls was charged this week with holding three other tournaments in Seward.

State police are accusing defense attorney Lawrence J. Burns, 63, of 16 Romar Ave., Derry Township, with several counts of violating state gambling laws for holding illegal poker tournaments April 27, May 4 and Aug. 3 at the Seward fire hall.

Last month, state police charged Burns and his business partner, James L. Hricko, 41, of 1400 Swede Hill Road, Hempfield, with violating state gambling laws for holding tournaments in Hempfield and Seward. The first set of charges were filed before Hempfield District Judge Mark Mansour.

Since early August, state police have executed three search warrants in connection with the case, seizing almost $43,000 in alleged gambling funds, according to court records.

The Hempfield and Seward tournaments were advertised on a sign outside the fire hall and a Web site, www.riverloc.com, registered to Burns, the affidavit states.

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The PPA Will Bring Members Face-to-Face with Elected Officials

In a little more than two weeks, the Poker Players Alliance will host a two-day policy conference in Washington, D.C., that will bring its members right to the people who will ultimately decide poker’s fate in the United States.

John Pappas, the PPA’s executive director, recently sat down with Card Player to talk about the conference. His interview follows the story.

PPA members who head to D.C. from Oct. 22-24 for the conference will attend seminars outlining the legality of poker and the ways to go to battle for poker at local levels. Then, PPA members will head over to Capitol Hill and meet face-to-face with their elected officials and staff members to tell them exactly how they feel about current laws concerning poker.

Some of the speakers already confirmed include Charlie Nesson, a law professor at Harvard; Sallie James, policy analyst for the Cato Institute; Keith Whyte, executive director for the National Council on Problem Gambling; and poker players Andy Bloch, Chad Brown, Barry Greenstein, Howard Lederer, Chris Moneymaker, Vanessa Rousso, and Victor Ramdin.

So far, just under 100 PPA members have registered. The PPA is hoping for 150, but isn’t going for just sheer numbers. Although the conference was announced to all PPA members, the PPA has been specifically targeting its members who live in what the organization has defined as key Congressional districts. The Congress members in these districts sit on the House committee for financial services as well as the judiciary committee, and are some of the most powerful members of Congress thanks to their seats on these committees.

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taken from Riverloc.com:

Go to Riverloc.com to see recent articles on the case.