Despite Congress prohibiting online-poker playing nationwide last year, some students are still upset about being forced to fold.

UF sophomore Daniel Allison, a member of Poker Players Alliance, is one of many students who used online poker as his primary source of income until the ban passed in September.

“I’m not even making close to what I made before the ban was passed,” Allison said. “It takes too much effort to play, and there are thousands less people to play against – therefore, less cash payout.”

But students who depended on online poker for income or just enjoyed it as a recreational activity may still have a fighting chance.

Florida Congressman Robert Wexler and former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, who is also chairman of the Poker Players Alliance, are fighting to repeal the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, according to the Poker Players Alliance Web site.

The act prohibits the transfer of funds from a financial institution to an Internet gambling site, but “fantasy” sports, online lotteries and horse racing are exempt from the law.

Wexler gave a speech at the World Series of Poker asking to exclude poker from the online-gaming ban, classifying it as a skill-based game and “as much our pastime as baseball,” according to the Web site.

Many students have joined the Poker Players Alliance to support Wexler’s Skill Game Protection Act, according to the Poker Players Alliance’s Facebook group.

“I think the bill has a really good chance to pass, due to the fact that they are portraying it as a game of skill,” Allison said.

The Poker Players Alliance’s Web site urges people concerned to write letters to their representatives or senators to increase the bill’s chance of passing.

Many players are doing what they can, and meanwhile, they await the outcome of their efforts.

“Until something is done, I have applied for student loans,” Allison said.

Dear Fellow PPA Member:

Thanks to your efforts, we have made tremendous progress in our fight to protect the rights of poker players. More than 40 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have committed to clarifying federal laws to preserve your ability to play poker online. But we still need your help to get the attention of every U.S. Representative.
Read the rest of this entry »

Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) made waves at the 2007 World Series of Poker. He stepped into the Amazon Room on Day 1-D and was met with a mountain of applause. He came in support of the Skill Game Protection Act, known in the U.S. House of Representatives as H.R. 2610. The bill does something that should excite each and every person in the United States that enjoys playing online poker – It carves out an exemption for games of skill. In Wexler’s bill, that means games like poker and chess, where competition is between players and not against the house. Introduced last month, the bill awaits its time in committee and eventually debate on the House floor. Wexler took time to discuss the Skill Game Protection Act on the PocketFives.com Podcast.
Read the rest of this entry »

SACRAMENTO — An online poker player well known as a jokester in the Internet gaming community is wheeling and dealing for state government to set up an online version of the popular card game, with a huge pot on the table — Californians’ pocketbooks.

The secretary of state’s office late Friday cleared Anthony Sandstrom of San Diego, known as “Tuff Fish” in YouTube poker comedies, to circulate petitions putting his proposed initiative on a statewide ballot, where voters could create an Internet poker gambling agency.

By Monday, as they said in the Old West days of the game, the stakeholders had knocked over the table and were drawing their (political) six-guns over the proposal.

Fellow Internet poker enthusiasts were divided, with comments on numerous blogs ranging from “good work” to “give me a break.”

Flatly opposed were card rooms in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area, anti-gambling-expansion activists and educators, who fear diversion and loss of lottery funds.

Sandstrom acknowledges his initiative isn’t aimed at solving some big social problem.

It would mostly allow Internet poker gambling at a time when federal law has thrown the activity into a legal gray area, posing a possible court challenge in which the state would have to defend Internet gambling.

“I am just a guy who wants to play poker at home when I don’t feel like making an hour drive to a card room or casino,” Sandstrom said on his initiative Web site. “I am going to make a mighty effort to make safe, legal, and accessible online poker possible.”

Sandstrom, who did not respond to attempts to contact him directly, says the proposal also would provide money for repair of potholes on city roads.

“A pox on the initiative,” said Fred Glass, a spokesman for the California Federation of Teachers, whose members depend partially on the flow of funds from state-run lottery.

Analysts were cautious over whether Sandstrom could collect the required signatures — about 430,000 — by Christmas. One cited the kickoff day for recalling former Gov. Gray Davis, when most experts said the initiative didn’t have a chance.

The wild card in the game is the Internet. Sandstrom is trying to collect the signatures via the Internet, where he’s better known as “Tuff Fish.” Supporters can download the petitions for gathering of signatures.

Numerous Web sites addressing Internet poker and the “Tuff Fish” initiative included players asserting that his version of the game to be placed before voters is so flawed it would not be self-sustaining.

{more information at http://caonlinepoker.org/)

Although it is demanding $3.4 billion per year from the United States for outlawing Internet gambling, the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda would prefer a compromise that would allow Americans to gamble legally online, a lawyer for the Caribbean country said Wednesday.

The Bush administration announced in May it would withdraw the U.S. gambling sector from the jurisdiction of the World Trade Organization.

The announcement followed a ruling in March by a WTO appellate court in favor of the claim by Antigua and Barbuda that the U.S. ban on Internet gambling is illegal.

Mark Mendel, the attorney representing Antigua and Barbuda, said the U.S. withdrawal does not eliminate its obligation to pay for the Web gambling ban.
    
But after a four-year dispute, Mendel said he hopes the WTO ruling will convince the United States to negotiate a compromise.

“We have never taken the position that the United States should have to open its doors to unfettered Internet gambling to countries around the world or even to Antigua, as such,” said Mendel, an attorney based in El Paso, Texas, who also practices in Ireland.

“But we felt then and we feel now that there is very solid middle ground for some kind of compromise whereby Antigua companies could offer these services into America on a fair and very protected basis without impinging on fundamental objectives of the United States government,” Mendel said.

Gretchen Hamel, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, said her agency has met with Antigua officials on numerous occasions including as recently as two weeks ago. Another meeting is scheduled for next week in Geneva, Hamel said.

“We have made clear at every stage that we are open to considering creative solutions for the people of Antigua which respect to our legitimate restrictions on Internet gambling,” Hamel said.

Mendel made his comments during a panel discussion of Internet gambling at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Mendel praised bills introduced this year in the House by Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., that seek to overturn recent U.S. restrictions on Web gambling.

Berkley’s bill, which has 64 co-sponsors including Reps. Dean Heller and Jon Porter, both R-Nev., calls for a one-year study of Internet gambling by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We think that it is inevitable that this (Internet gambling) behavior will be legitimized in one way or another in the near term,” Mendel said.

Before the Internet gambling restrictions, there were more than 100 Internet gambling operations in Antigua and Barbuda employing more than 10,000 people, Mendel said.

Now there are 30 licensed Internet gambling operators employing about 1,000 people.

“The damage has been done,” Mendel said.

Mendel disagreed with John H. Jackson, a law professor at Georgetown University, who described the Internet gambling dispute between Antigua and Barbuda and the United States as an “oops case.”

The U.S. is “not thumbing its nose” at international trade obligations but simply made a mistake when it failed to exclude gambling several years ago from WTO jurisdiction, Jackson said.

Jackson also doubted Antigua and Barbuda would succeed in winning $3.4 billion a year in compensation from the United States, saying the WTO decision was a narrow ruling that focused on horse racing bets made online.

Next time you sit down to a poker game around the kitchen table, take a good look at your opponents.

Forget about trying to ferret out a bluff and instead ask yourself how well you know your fellow players.

Last week, as the Division of Special Revenue reminded Connecticut residents where they can and cannot legally play poker, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said games solicited through Web sites violate the “pre-existing social relationship” condition usually applied to home games.

“It’s the nature of the relationship between the players that really determines whether it is legal,” Blumenthal said. “If they’re coming together because they all answered an ad in the paper or on the Internet, there’s no social relationship.”

Paul Ulm, a Norwich poker player, disagreed with Blumenthal’s logic.

“I feel that the solicitation of poker players is no different than a Bible study,” he wrote in an e-mail Wednesday. “These people meet up through various media.”

According to Blumenthal, if a group of nurses who work together at The William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich gets together Sunday nights to play without the host profiting, there’s no problem.

However, if a game is made up of strangers who found each other through a networking Web site such as Meetup.com or HomePokerGames.com, the games become illegal, Blumenthal said.

Ulm said he likes to play low-limit cash games or small buy-in tournaments and believes everyone should be able to play as long as they are old enough.

“Poker is just another game that people like to play in a social and competitive nature,” he wrote. “If people choose to play poker and the house does not take a cut, it should not matter who plays.”

With the rise in popularity of poker, police are cracking down on tournament organizers who give prizes.

Jim Sawaya does pretty good for himself at a poker table, and he has plenty of T-shirts, jackets and hats to prove it.

As a regular competitor in Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments in the Milwaukee area, the 46-year-old insurance executive from Brookfield says prize winnings mean nothing to him.

“It’s pure sense of winning,” he says.

But the prizes mean a lot to law enforcement authorities, some of whom are cracking down on poker tournaments as the card game rides a new wave of popularity in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

West Allis city officials recently shut down tournaments at two local taverns, notifying the organizers that any prize of value would render their games illegal.

Many tournament organizers throughout Wisconsin have tried to comply with state law by keeping cash off the table and enticing Texas Hold ‘Em competitors with non-cash prizes such as T-shirts, cigars and electronic toys.

“It’s not an underground casino. This is for entertainment,” said Cindy Malin of C&C Gamblers, the organizer scolded a few weeks ago in West Allis.

Malin said player participation in her tournaments has fallen dramatically since she notified the regulars that nobody could win any prize. The city, she added, even cautioned her against ranking players based on who was doing best at the tables.

“We can barely acknowledge that somebody’s a winner,” she said.

According to state law, illegal gambling is defined as any chance game in which “one stands to win or lose something of value.”

In Waukesha County, another tournament with a box of cigars at stake drew a warning from the district attorney, even though it was part of a fund-raiser for the county sheriff’s department.

Capt. Karen Ruff, a sheriff’s department spokeswoman, called the state’s gambling law confusing. But the yearly fund-raiser tournament at a local country club no longer offers any sort of prize, she said.

“We just want to make sure that we’re not doing anything wrong,” she said.

When the current poker craze began with the emergence of Texas Hold ‘Em games on cable TV, police agencies in the Milwaukee area vowed to keep a close watch for illegal gambling. Some even sent out warnings to tavern owners and others.

Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments, however, remain hugely popular in the area, and they are perfectly legal as long as competitors are playing for nothing more than bragging rights.

“These games are not uncommon, and occur throughout the state,” said Kevin St. John, a spokesman for the Wisconsin attorney general’s office.

Typically, a tavern or other private establishment agrees to host a tournament and pays the organizer a fee based on how many competitors show up. Using that money to purchase prizes for the winners, the organizer then encourages players to patronize the tavern with food and drink purchases while the games are going on.

A tournament typically continues for several weeks, so the host establishment can sometimes enjoy a significant boost in business.

Badger Poker Tournaments, which conducts games at several locations in the Milwaukee area, is planning a championship on Saturday with a free trip to Las Vegas for the big winner.

Badger Poker organizer Jason Growel said the prize will be awarded in Las Vegas in an effort to avoid violating any laws in Wisconsin. Growel called gambling restrictions here vague and confusing, saying that he was unaware until recently that there might be a prohibition on any sort of prize.

“Until there’s a law saying ‘You can’t do this’ or ‘You can’t do that,’ we’re going to still do what we do,” he said.

Drawing as many as 80 people a night, Badger Poker organizes tournaments at taverns in Milwaukee, Waukesha, West Allis and elsewhere.
Enforcement is sporadic

With the state attorney general counting on local police departments to sniff out illegal tournaments, enforcement has been spotty, at best.

John Roth, an organizer of a tournament called Phatguyz Poker, was rebuffed two years ago when he tried to start a game at a private club in Sun Prairie. Club officials sought out the state attorney general’s office and were warned that Roth’s offer of $50 gift certificates to tournament winners would be illegal.

Roth ended up finding a host down the road at a Dodge County supper club, where he draws crowds of 25 to 30 people a night.

“I’m not standing here saying it’s legal,” he said. “It’s just something we enjoy. And I don’t see that anyone gets hurt.”

Dodge County Sheriff Todd Nehls said he lacks enough manpower to keep track of 15 or so establishments where he believes Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments are held regularly.

Nehls said he has notified organizers that he will not shut them down as long as they keep the stakes low, which he estimated at $20 a person for a seat at the table.

“It’s a balancing act,” he said. “It’s illegal, but it’s reasonable.”

We are alerting you to a meeting
taking place on Wednesday, July 25^th, 2007 regarding UIGEA, WTO and
Antigua. We are asking local D.C. PPA members
to attend in person if possible.

America’s
High-Stakes Response to the WTO Internet Gambling
Dispute

POLICY
FORUM
Wednesday, July 25,
2007
11:00 AM (Luncheon to
Follow)

 Featuring Mark Mendel, Lead Counsel
for Antigua and Barbuda in
US-Gambling, John H. Jackson, Georgetown University Law Center, and Sallie James, Trade Policy
Analyst, Cato Institute.

The Cato
Institute
1000 Massachusetts
Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001 

http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=3822

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After two thousand hands and countless “flops”, “rivers”, and “turns”, two elite poker players have narrowly defeated a formidable computer opponent. The result means that, while chess world champions have fallen to computers, humans still hold sway in poker, a game where psychology plays a huge role.

Phil “The Unabomber” Laak and Ali Eslami took on Polaris, software developed by researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada, in a set-up designed to reduce the role that luck normally plays in a game of poker.

The pair played Polaris simultaneously in different rooms, with computer and human playing opposite hands in each game. In other words, if Laak was dealt a full house, Polaris would have exactly the same hand, at the same time, in its game against Eslami.

The game was played at a meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Vancouver, Canada.

Hidden information

At the end of play on Monday, Polaris had tied the first round of 500 hands and triumphed in the second, finishing almost $1000 up against the humans. But two wins in Tuesday’s sessions earned Laak and Eslami overall victory. The pair, who said they were exhausted by the rapid rate of play, admitted to being impressed with the ability of Polaris.

Poker is harder than other games for computers to crack because of the importance of studying other players’ tactics and behaviour. In chequers, for example, a computer can work out the best move simply by knowing the rules of the game and the current position.

Earlier this month, computer scientists said they had created software that would never lose a game of chequers.

But poker is different because it contains “hidden information”, says Graham Kendall, a computer scientist at the University of Nottingham, UK.

‘Over for humanity’

A good player will look at opponents’ facial expressions in a bid to guess what cards they might hold, for example. Bluffing is also an important way of fooling an opponent, but the strategy behind this is hard to programme into a computer.

Polaris is, however, one of a few new poker-playing machines that have begun to master the tactics behind bluffing, although Kendall says a good human player can probably deduce a computer’s tactics more easily than vice versa. “I’d probably go for the humans,” said Kendall when asked to predict the winner before the match.

Yet Kendall and others admit that machines are catching up. Kendall predicts that a computer could become world champion in around 10 years, provided tournament organisers allowed machines to enter.

In a previous match against Polaris, Laak folded a hand and declared “if that is a bluff, it’s over for humanity”. Ominously, Polaris had indeed been bluffing.

Poker Players Alliance Chairman Alfonse D’Amato:

Video:
WSOP
CardPlayer
PokerNews
ESPN

Print:
Part 1: PokerNews
Part 2: PokerNews

Congressman Robert Wexler:

Video:
PokerNews
CardPlayer

Print:
Part 1: PokerNews
Part 2: PokerNews

Poker Players Alliance President Michael Bolcerek:

Audio:
PocketFives