Free Guides:
PPA Talking Points (download) [pdf]
PPA Guide to Meeting Members of Congress (download) [pdf]
Positive Aspects of Poker [from 2+2] (download) [pdf]

Short Talking Points:

• Technology has progressed to effectively combat problem gambling and ensure that players are of legal age.

• Billions in potential tax revenue from online poker are being lost under the UIGEA.
• Appropriate federal regulation can ensure that minors are kept out of sites, services are provided to problem gamblers and the proper taxes are collected. The current system does nothing to protect children, problem gamblers and it is allowing billions in tax revenue to go overseas.
• Prohibitions don’t work. The UIGEA effectively bans online poker in the U.S. and drives those players underground. Meanwhile, poker continues to grow in popularity nationwide. 75 percent of Americans oppose banning online poker. According to national polling, a vast majority of Americans oppose federal efforts to ban online poker.
• If Congress allows me to bet on horses and state lotteries online, why can’t I play a skill game like poker with other consenting adults?
• Please co-sponsor and support HR 2046 “Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act” and HR 2610 “Skill Game Protection Act”. Supporting an online poker ban can cost you an election. Exit polling has shown and the national media has noted that a leading advocate to ban Internet poker in the 109th Congress was negatively impacted by his leadership on the issue.

Expanded Talking Points:

Poker and Online Poker in America
UIGEA
HR 2610
HR 2046

Talking Points on Poker and Online Poker in America

Poker is a game of skill
Playing around a kitchen table or in cyberspace, the same talents and skills required to win at poker hold true. Observing betting patterns and watching when players fold are just as critical when playing poker over the Internet as when playing in person.

In addition, since poker is not a “house game” like blackjack and others, the game requires players to compete against other players. This characteristic is true whether someone is playing online or offline.

Poker is a game with a predominance of skill. Like chess, poker is a “thinking man’s” game which relies on mathematics, psychology and money management.

Billions of tax revenue is being lost.
According to an economic analysis, 3.3 billion in federal tax revenue and addition 1 billion in state tax revenue could be raised if the federal government were to regulate Internet poker.

Poker is a source of charity.
In 2006, millions of dollars were raisedfor local and national charities through poker tournaments. One event in D.C. featuring 15 Members of Congress raised more than $288,000 to fight cancer.

Poker is one of the great American pastimes.
The game has been enjoyed by presidents, generals, Supreme Court Justices, Members of Congress and average Americans for more than 150 years.

Playing Poker Online Is Simply an American Tradition Evolving into the 21st Century
Americans have played poker throughout history. Playing poker on the Internet is simply an example of an American tradition evolving into the 21^st century. It is unfathomable that poker, an American pastime and game of true skill, should be banned for the millions who enjoy playing responsibly.

75 percent of Americans oppose banning online poker.
According to national polling, a vast majority of Americans oppose federal efforts to ban online poker.

Online Poker can be safe and regulated.
Appropriate federal regulation can ensure that minors are kept out of sites, services are provided to problem gamblers and the proper taxes are collected. The current system does nothing to protect children, problem gamblers and it is allowing billions in tax revenue to go overseas.

Online Poker vs. Online Horse Racing Betting?
If Congress allows me to bet on horses and state lotteries online, why can’t I play a skill game like poker with other consenting adults?

Prohibitions don’t work.
The UIGEA effectively bans online poker in the U.S. and drives those players underground. Meanwhile, poker continues to grow in popularity nationwide.

Talking Points on UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act):

Prohibitions don’t work.
The UIGEA effectively bans online poker in the U.S. and drives those players underground. Meanwhile, poker continues to grow in popularity nationwide.

The UIGEA does nothing for effectively addressing:

Money laundering
The UIGEA forces law enforcement and financial institutions to redirect resources on blocking poker player’s financial transactions instead of tracking down terrorist financing. This creates an even larger hurdle for law enforcement to police for potential money laundering. The UIGEA does not help track down terrorist financing.

Children
The best way to keep children from accessing online gaming Web sites is to strictly require that all operators employ the best is class age-verification software. This can only be done through a licensing approval process and regulation. The UIGEA does not use the best way to prevent underage gambling and protect children.

Problem gamblers
The problem gambler perhaps is hurt most by the prohibition. Sadly, these people will continue to gamble and will become prey to unscrupulous operators that will work outside of the law. The UIGEA does not try to help problem gamblers.

The UIGEA does:

Lose Money for the U.S.
Billions of tax revenue is being lost. According to an economic analysis, 3.3 billion in federal tax revenue and addition 1 billion in state tax revenue could be raised if the federal government were to regulate Internet poker. This tax revenue made from American players is going off to other countries.

Allow Other Kinds of Internet Gambling
The UIGEA allows people to gamble online for horse races and state lotteries, but not for poker. Why can’t I play a skill game like poker with other consenting adults?

Quote from UIGEA:
(D) INTERSTATE HORSERACING-
(i) IN GENERAL- The term `unlawful Internet gambling’ shall not include any activity that is allowed under the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978 (15 U.S.C. 3001 et seq.).

Talking Points on HR 2610, The Skill Game Protection Act

UIGEA Unfairly Targets Games of Skill and Competition Amongst Individuals
The UIGEA unfairly targets skill games such as poker, chess, bridge, and mah jong by not providing the same protections as those provided to horse racing, lotteries and fantasy sports.

Against Players vs. Against the House
In addition to being games of skill, poker, chess, bridge and mah jong are true competitions among individuals where multiple people play against each other and not the “house” or Web site operator.The law should be revised so that it does not arbitrarily prohibit games of skill.

Poker Home games vs. Online Poker Games
There is no reason why the law should treat the Friday night poker game that folks play around their kitchen tables any different than the poker game that individuals play against others online.

The Wexler Plan Clarifies Existing Law, Provides Rightful Protections for Skill Games
Congressman’s Wexler plan clarifies existing law by rightfully providing the same treatment to poker and other games of skill that horse racing and lotteries receive under the UIEGA.

Equally as important, Congressman Wexler’s bill clarifies the outdated Wire Act of 1961 by codifying the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruling in November 2002, known as “MasterCard Re:” which says the law is limited to “gambling on sporting events or contests.” Thusly preserving the intent of the law to only disallow sports wagering, not games of skill.

Congressman Wexler believes that this clarification is necessary. Recognizing poker as a game of skill and as a game that involves true competition of player versus player would provide millions of American poker players with much-needed protections.

HR 2610 on Children, Problem Gamblers, Money Laundering
The legislation requires Web sites to use the most technologically advanced age verification procedures and abide by monetary controls to detect and stop money laundering activities.

Poker is a game of skill
Few people dispute the fact that the game involves mathematics, psychology, observation and money management. Numerous authors and academics have drawn analogies between poker and other endeavors that involve strategic thinking. Von Neumann and Morgenthaler used analysis of the game of Poker in their seminal book on game theory, “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior” as a method of modeling decision-making under incomplete information.

Two easy ways to distinguish a game predominately of skill from a game of pure chance:

1. Ask yourself, “Who are the top players of this game in the world?” You can easily name the top five or ten poker players in the world and chess aficionados can list their top three. Try naming the best bingo or roulette players—it’s not possible as skill does not bear out over time.

2. Who wins at the game over time? In a match of true intellect like poker, a skilled player will always win—over time—against a “lucky” player. But with games like bingo and roulette a skilled player and a non-skilled player have the exact same likelihood of winning or losing.

Talking Points on HR 2046 The Internet Gambling Regulation And Enforcement Act

Chairman Frank’s Plan Offers a More Sensible Solution than an Outright Ban

HR 2046 addresses all of the intended concerns of the UIGEA (minors, problem gambling, and money laundering) while providing a better alternative than an outright ban.

By creating a licensing and regulating mechanism that sorts out the legitimate, law-abiding sites from those engaged in unscrupulous activities and practices, the plan protects minors and problem gamblers while allowing the majority of adults to play poker and other games online.

We’ve seen how prohibitions don’t work, but meaningful regulation of online poker will. It will produce positive outcomes for the players, the protection of children, the economy, the tax payer and society in general.

New Technology Makes Licensing and Regulation Possible
The age verification technology tools that exist today to keep kids off of poker sites were non-existent even a decade ago. The industry has come a long way since then, and now is the time to license and regulate operators and allow U.S. poker sites to compete with off-shore ones.

Example:
The United Kingdom successfully regulates its poker industry. In fact, Internet gambling is now regulated in over 80 countries and jurisdictions. We should follow the lead of the UK for the best public policy approach for this industry.

Annie Duke, Mike Sexton and Michael Bolcerek discuss the signing of the anti-poker UIGEA on “On the Money”

Alternate QuickTime download

PPA President addresses impact of legislation on poker industry and regulation (Courtesy Bloomberg Television)

Alternate QuickTime Download

Poker Player Alliance fights for skill game exemption for poker in the 110th Congress

The new 110th Congress has an opportunity to right the wrong it created when it passed legislation that seeks to ban online poker. The bill, which was later signed into law, provides exemptions for online lotteries, horse track betting and fantasy sports but sweeps poker, an American pastime and a game of skill, into its net of prohibition.
Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON – They like to think of it as the green-felt revolution – the upset defeat of Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, father of the Internet gambling ban, in last month’s congressional elections.

Leach had been in online gamblers’ sights ever since Congress passed the ban as one of its final acts before the Nov. 7 elections. Stunned by the new law, the Poker Players Alliance rallied members to take their outrage to the polls and cast ballots against those who voted for the ban.

Now, the group plans to use Leach’s experience as an example.

A post-election poll commissioned by the poker players suggests that gambling may have helped do in the 15-term Republican congressman. The poll of 1,000 voters by RT Strategies showed that, among voters for whom the gambling subject was a pivotal issue, Leach’s Democratic challenger, David Loebsack, enjoyed a 5 percentage point edge. Leach lost by 3 percentage points.

As the group starts introducing itself to the new Congress that takes over in January, the poker players plan to highlight the poll as part of its lobbying effort.

The group wants Congress to exempt poker players from the ban and study ways of legalizing online play as a legitimate licensed and taxed business.

“It’s not a warning,” said Michael Bolcerek, president of the group that counts 125,000 members. “It’s that people care strongly about this issue and will consider that in their voting decisions.”

Online poker playing, he said, is an issue that members of Congress “need to deal with.”

Bolcerek said the group also urged its members to support poker-friendly members of Congress, including Nevada’s Republican Rep. Jon Porter and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, who authored legislation to study regulating online gaming.

Berkley was re-elected by a landslide in which the online issue likely was relatively inconsequential. And though Porter won by a narrow margin, the group did not poll to see whether the green-felt revolution helped sweep them to victory.

WASHINGTON — A new law aimed at curtailing online gambling in the United States has rattled major publicly traded Internet gambling companies but has done little to keep Americans from wagering online, industry experts say.

The changes have been a boon to smaller, privately held companies that may not adhere to the same level of standards public companies must meet, the experts say.

And while the rules may be keeping some casual gamblers from placing bets, those who really want to wager online have found ways to do so.
Ethan Ruby, who lives in New York City, is one such online gambler. While the new law signed by President Bush on Oct. 13 has made it a little tougher for him to play poker online, he says he continues to do so.

“It’s not going to stop people from playing poker,” he said. “They’re just going to go around it.”

Ruby, who uses a wheelchair, said Internet gambling leveled the playing field for him after an accident stripped him of his ability to walk.

“It’s a hobby for me,” said Ruby, 32. “This law is actually discriminatory to disabled people.”

The new law effectively bars online betting in the United States by making it illegal for U.S. banks and credit card companies to process payments to gambling Web sites. But gamblers can still place wagers by going through third-party sites such as Netteller.com that facilitate transactions.

The online gambling industry generated about $7 billion to $10 billion worldwide in 2004, with Americans making up at least half the market, according to the American Gaming Association.

It’s unclear how dramatically those figures have changed since the new law has been in effect.

But industry watchers say traffic to the publicly traded companies, which are no longer accepting U.S. customers, has slumped while traffic to privately held companies, which continue to cater to Americans, have gotten a boost.

PartyGaming, for example, has seen its share of daily players drop from about 16,000 before Congress approved the ban to about 6,200 the day after Bush signed it into law, according to Casino City, a magazine and Web site that follows the gaming industry.

On the other hand, the privately held Full Tilt Poker, has increased its number of daily players to more than 5,000 in late October from just more than 3,000 in late September.

Some major publicly traded companies like PartyGaming and 888 have seen their stock values slump in the past two months. The two companies are reportedly considering a merger to stay afloat.

“The largest, most financially transparent sites have left the market,” said Michael Bolcerek, president of the Poker Players Alliance, which lobbied heavily against the legislation. “You still have some private companies that are well known. But you’re seeing new sites pop up who don’t have the public interest at heart. They’re in unregulated areas.”

Bolcerek argues the measure infringes on Americans’ personal freedoms by requiring banks and credit card companies to monitor their customers’ online transactions.

He and others who support online gaming hope that the new Democratic majority in Congress may be more open to overturning the new law.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has said he does not support Internet gambling. But he said he would be open to a congressional study on the issue.

The law’s full impact likely won’t be felt until next summer when the new regulations actually go into effect.

So it’s still too early to tell whether the new law has been successful at curbing online gaming, said Greg Wierzynski, a spokesman for Rep. Jim Leach, who sponsored the bill in the House. Leach, R-Iowa, was voted out of office in November.

Meanwhile, the United States faces complaints from the island nation of Antigua, which argues U.S. gambling laws violate American free trade obligations. Antigua has challenged the American laws through the World Trade Organization. A decision is expected next year.

No matter what happens, Americans who want to bet online will find new ways to place their wagers on the Internet, said Lou Krieger, who has written several books on poker and gambling.

“Every time a new threshold is created, the least dedicated players will say it’s not worth it for them,” he said. “But there’s a million ways to do this.”

The
Poker Players Alliance, the national organization that represents the
concerns of poker players everywhere, is about to go local.

Sometime
this week, the PPA will send out letters to all its members letting
them know that it’s looking for regional representatives who are
willing to take the fight for poker legality into the nooks and
crannies of the country.

The PPA is asking people who are
interested in local politics and who have the ability to speak to the
local media and would be able to organize visits to offices of area
Congress members, and possibly trips to Capitol Hill in D.C., to
volunteer to fight for poker. 

Michael Bolcerek, the president of
the PPA, says many of its members have already shown themselves to be
motivated and interested in getting involved. The PPA constantly
receives emails from members asking what they can do to help
and Bolcerek says this is a way to do it.

Politics are run at a
local level, and politicians who don’t listen to their constituents
usually are shown the door, as in the case of Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa.
Leach lost his seat in November after serving in the House of
Representatives for nearly 30 years, and it was speculated that his
leadership role in drafting portions of the UIGE Act and also speaking
out against online gambling had something to do with it.

The PPA
wanted to verify that this was the case, so it conducted a poll in
Leach’s voting district. The pool showed that Leach’s role in banning
online gambling could’ve been the deciding factor that determined the
race.

The PPA phoned more than 1,000 households and asked them
if Leach’s position concerning the UIGE Act “strongly influenced” their
decision to either vote for or against Leach.

Of those polled, 15
percent said they were “strongly influenced” to vote against Leach
because of his role, while 10 percent said his role to ban online
gambling influenced them to vote for him.

Leach found himself
in a very tight race with Democrat Dave Loebsack, who wound up beating
Leach by only 3 percentage points. Leach lost the race despite
being one of the most liberal Republicans when he was in office. He
even voted against the 2002 Iraq War Resolution and favored abortion
rights, and his moderate stance helped him stay in office for three
decades. Because of these facts, Bolcerek believes that the Republican
discontent that swept many of them out of office across the country had
little to do with Leach’s defeat.  

The 5 percentage points from
those who were “strongly influenced” by Leach’s stance on online
gambling could’ve decided this election. This victory by the “Velvet
Revolution” (a label local media in Iowa and beyond created to describe
those who took offense at the UIGE Act and voted accordingly) was
reported in newspapers across the country, including the Washington
Post last week, and the PPA was mentioned in all of them.

“It
wasn’t surprising. Our members have been very vocal and have certainly
evaluated how people voted on H.R. 4411,” Bolcerek said. “We felt they
were taking it to the polls and this showed evidence that they did.”

Bolcerek
hopes plenty of interested people will step forward everywhere prepared
to help fight for the rights of poker players. The race between Leach
and Loebsack showed that poker players (or any determined group) could
influence politics by being well organized, passionate, and vocal,
goals that the PPA’s new local representative program has a chance to
achieve.

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. – A group of South Carolina poker players that want to challenge the state’s 200-year-old gambling law have been become celebrities of a sort.

The story of the so-called “Mount Pleasant 18,” who were arrested last April for playing Texas Hold’em, has been mentioned on various Web sites and other gamblers are offering support.

“A $20 game of poker shouldn’t be a crime,” said Michael Bolcerek, president of the Poker Players Alliance, pledging his support.

No trial date has been set, but the group’s spokesman, Robert Chimento, said they expect to be found guilty. The group will then challenge the state law through the appeals process.

Last April police raided a poker game that had been advertised on a Web site, handing out citations, seizing nearly $6,000 in cash and a small quantity of drugs. Four of those arrested paid a $100 fine.

The remaining 18 pleaded not guilty, wanting to challenge the state’s gambling law.

The law bans games with cards or dice. Chimento said that makes everything from bridge to games like “Monopoly” illegal in South Carolina.

The House of Representatives wastes no sympathy on defeated members. So at the beginning of this week, Jim Leach of Iowa sat in an office almost devoid of furniture, the walls stripped bare of the mementos of his 30 years of service — with just a few hours remaining before the painters moved in to prepare his domain for its new occupant.

Leach, who once was chairman of the Banking and Financial Services Committee, would have been in line to head the Committee on International Relations in the next Congress, had Republicans maintained their majority and had he been reelected.

But he lost, 51 percent to 48 percent, to college professor David Loebsack, as Democrats won top-to-bottom victories in Iowa this month.

Leach, noted for his independence, was the only Iowa legislator to oppose going to war in Iraq. That kind of record helped him prevail in past races despite his heavily Democratic district, which gave a higher percentage of its presidential vote to John Kerry than any other district held by a Republican.

But this year two special factors helped tip the balance against him. First, he became a target for crafting the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which passed Congress as part of a larger bill in October and was signed into law just before the election.

The Poker Players Alliance, which had fought the measure banning banks and credit card companies from servicing Internet gambling firms, targeted Leach and other sponsors with e-mails to its members and publicity in poker magazines. A post-election survey paid for by the gambling group found a net 5-point swing against Leach attributable to that issue.

John Pappas, the spokesman for the alliance, said it is putting together a presentation for the new members of Congress using Leach’s experience to show that “this issue is not a winner for them; in fact, the main proponent was hurt by it.” The alliance wants poker exempted from the Internet gambling ban or the ban lifted in favor of government regulation and taxation.

In addition, the Christian Coalition criticized Leach for his support of embryonic stem cell research and for his insistence that the national GOP drop a planned mailing attacking Loebsack on the issue of gay marriage.

“But the big force,” Leach said in a conversation in his nearly empty office, “was the accountability thing — the overwhelming dissatisfaction with the Republican Congress.”

Because he can understand and even sympathize a bit with that feeling, Leach said, “I am probably the least disappointed defeated member” of the vanished Republican majority.

On the other hand, the man who was known as “the conscience of Congress” because of his personal high standards — no PAC money or out-of-state contributions — said he regrets not being part of the policymaking at “a really critical moment for the United States in its relations with a changing world.”

And he worries about the political dynamics of a Congress that is more and more polarized — and therefore less and less representative of the American mainstream.

Leach was one of eight members of the dwindling tribe of Republican moderates who lost their seats this election, unable to separate themselves from the public rejection of a conservative-dominated White House and Congress.

In Leach’s view, while presidential races tend to pull candidates to the center, in Congress the abundance of “safe” seats, gerrymandered to guarantee victory to one party or the other, makes party primaries the critical elections. And in those low-turnout primaries, it is the activists — usually no more than “one-quarter of one-third” of the electorate — whose views prevail.

“The Republicans have been governing from within” their party base, rather than reaching out to the other party, he said, and now that Democrats have the majority, they will be tempted by electoral dynamics to do the same thing.

It is possible, Leach said, that a new president could change the pattern, and he is rather hopeful that his early picks for the nominations — Mitt Romney and Barack Obama — might do that.

Meanwhile, he is weighing academic offers from his alma mater, Princeton, and other schools and a possible diplomatic post from the State Department.

But given what he has seen on Capitol Hill in his 30 years, it is possible to believe Leach when he says, “I feel kind of relieved” to be moving on.

Washington, D.C. – Advocates of online gaming are taking credit for playing a role in the Nov. 7 defeat of longtime Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, a chief backer of a new law that effectively outlawed gambling on the Internet.

Leach, a Republican from Iowa City, lost his bid for a 16th term in a stunning upset to Democrat David Loebsack of Mount Vernon, as Democrats swept offices across the country and took control of the U.S. House and Senate.

Leach’s defeat by 2 percentage points came less than a month after President Bush signed a law making it illegal for financial institutions and credit card companies to process payments on Internet wagers. Aides to Leach dismissed the suggestion that online gaming advocates had anything to do with his defeat.

John Pappas, a spokesman for the Poker Players Alliance, said Thursday that his non-profit organization blasted out e-mails to 150,000 poker fans across the country with instructions on how to register to vote, as well as a scorecard on how members of Congress voted on the gambling bill.

While the alliance did not specifically target Leach, Pappas said he believes motivated poker players in eastern Iowa’s 2nd District turned out to vote, and word quickly spread online about Leach’s work on the new law.

“There were lots of stories in the publications online gamers read,” he said, such as CardPlayer, Bluff and Wicked Chops Poker.

While the alliance can’t take credit for Leach’s loss, “I can certainly say it played a very significant role in his defeat,” Pappas said.

Online gaming sites gloated after the election. “Online Gambling Ban Proponent Leach Booted,” was one headline. “A victory for Internet gambling as Jim Leach gets voted out,” said Gambling911.

In addition, following the election the poker group commissioned an automated poll of 1,033 voters in the 2nd District, asking how the poker issue influenced their decisions.

Among those who knew about the law, 15 percent said it influenced them to support Loebsack. Another 10 percent said that it influenced them to support Leach.

Online poker advocates contend that was enough to doom Leach in a race lost by just 5,711 votes.

“There’s enough evidence here to suggest it didn’t help him,” said Thomas Riehle of RT Strategies, a partner in the firm that conducted the poll Sunday through Monday. It had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, Riehle said.

However, Greg Wierzynski, Leach’s chief of staff, scoffed at the notion that the gaming ban was Leach’s undoing. “As we all know, when poker players have weak hands, they bluff,” he said.

Wierzynski said Leach’s congressional office received “a bunch of angry phone calls” from opponents of the gambling bill, but couldn’t tell whether any were from Iowans because the callers refused to identify themselves. The calls were “laced with four-letter words,” added Wierzynski.

Leach for years has pushed for an end to Internet gambling, saying large losses by gamblers destroy families, and Internet gambling was bound to spread.

“If Congress had not acted, gamblers would soon be able to place bets not just from home computers but from their cell phones while they drive home from work or their Blackberrys as they wait in line at the movies,” Leach said in September.

With Leach gone, the gaming lobby now is hoping to obtain an exemption from the new law for online poker.

Pappas conceded that Leach listened to poker players’ arguments, even sitting down for a hand of poker in his office earlier this year with three of the world’s top professional players so they could make the case it is a game of skill, not chance. “I wasn’t in the room, but I think one of the pros won,” Pappas said.

Reporter Jane Norman can be reached at (202) 906-8137 or at jnorman@dmreg.com