Winners and Losers: Back into the Legal Thick of Things

Topics: Epic Poker League, Winners and Losers, Jonathan Duhamel, PokerStars, Harry Reid, Online Poker, Legislation, Politics [+]

While the poker world waits for the WSOP and (more immediately) some resolution in the whole Full Tilt Poker/GBT debacle, there are other things going on to keep us busy. Some of the news is just more of the same, with PokerStars proving once again that it has the ability to distinguish itself from its competitors, and another state is taking a look at online poker. Other pieces of news are welcome stories, from someone revealing they have become more comfortable with themselves to a WSOP world champion finally recovering something he had taken from him. That said, not all is right in the world, as yet another attempt to get federal online poker legislation bites the dust, proving that you can’t have even one week where there are nothing but winners in the world of poker news.

Winners

PokerStars – Now, it’s not like the author of this column is on the Stars payroll, but there is a good reason they keep making the Winners list as frequently as they are recently. Ever since the rake debacle to start the year off, they haven’t really done anything wrong, and proved it again this week by releasing their mobile app to the United Kingdom. While this isn’t the first country that has managed to get their hands on the app (Italy had it first) this is the first country that plays on the .com site to get it, and all reports are that it pretty much runs as a fully functional client. Generally mobile apps have to sacrifice something, and while it’s true you can only multi-table a couple tables at a time as opposed to a couple dozen, the fact they even have that option is pretty impressive. If you live in the UK or Italy, it seems to be worth it to check the app out. It could make the ride to the bank to deposit your checks a little more enjoyable.

Iowa – We discussed Iowa a few weeks back as a state that was considering online poker legislation. Well, unlike some states that have held hearings but taken no action, or others that voted on it without reading the bills (seriously DC…really?), an Iowa subcommittee debated the merits of their bill on Monday. The result: a vote in favor of moving the bill up to the Senate State Government Committee, where it could get a hearing as early as this week. Now, the subcommittee was not that large, only three state senators, but it is still an important hurdle on whether this will become a law or not. If this bill gets fast-tracked through the Iowa Senate, Iowa of all places could become the second state to allow online poker.

Jonathan Duhamel – It took two months, but Jonathan Duhamel finally has a hold of his 2010 WSOP championship bracelet….sort of (pictured above). Most of the bracelet was found during street sweeping in Montreal and has since been turned over to police. How the bracelet was just tossed onto the street is…well...outside the scope of this column, but it has since been turned over to police as evidence in the impending trial of the four suspects in his home robbery case. Coupled with the prior news that a good portion of his cash had been recovered, it’s looking like all good news for Duhamel, and all bad news for the people that tried to rob him.

Jason Somerville – We’re giving Jason the Winner nod here less for the fact he came out, and more for telling us just how he wrestled with his identity and what it meant for him. As one of very few (now) openly gay poker players on the circuit, seeing how he became more comfortable with himself and how that was affecting his life before and after likely has lessons beyond his situation. In either case, at the end of the day, what Jason reminds us is that it doesn’t matter what you are away from the table. When the cards are in the air, you are just another poker player, and that’s the only thing that should matter.

Losers

Reid Bill 2.0 (and Fed-level poker legislation in 2012) –Harry Reid attempts to attach online poker legislation to a must-pass tax bill, and it goes up in flames in the eleventh hour. Sounds like December 2010 right? Well…it just happened again in just last week, after Reid tried putting online poker legislation in the payroll tax bill as a rider. It caused a fair amount of buzz in the poker world…until it failed due to a fear the payroll tax bill would not even pass with the rider in place. While some may view it as some sort of poetic justice that legalization would occur in the same fashion as the UIGEA did, the political climate seems to have struck down that notion not once but twice. On top of this, it seems unlikely that the Senate will even revisit the concept until after the US elections, which means waiting for the lame duck session, and while that seems like the best time to pass politically charged issues like expanding “gambling”, it’s by no means a guarantee. It may take some more time than we’d like, but it almost seems like it’s better to get online poker in an up-or-down vote than try to sneak it in, since, as proven more than once, it does not seem to be working.