No Poker Exception from Congress in New Legislation to Make Online Gambling Illegal

Looks like there will be more problems with legalizing online gambling in the US, as authors behind a new online gambling bill have asked Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey and any other state that potentially wants to legalize online gambling to come to congress with it.

“If you want to have online gambling, then come to the Congress. … If you want to have a poker exception, offer an amendment and see if it will pass,” Senator Lindsey Graham R-S.C. said after introducing the new bill yesterday with Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.

The new bill has a very simple purpose, which is to roll back the 1961 wire act to before the end of 2011, ensuring that all online gambling transactions would become illegal once again. But there are also other points in the bill that will create a political conflict.

Online poker has been the main subject in terms of legalizing online, lead on by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. He has argued that online poker is a game of skill and not luck as well as proven that online poker could increase the overall revenues of Nevada’s game operators. But in the bill presented even online poker would be banned and the sponsors behind the bill say that if they had the chance to exclude poker from the bill, they still wouldn’t do it.

Graham and Chaffetz believe that the way that the states have read and interpreted the 1961 wire act is completely wrong and they are furious over the fact that their decision to legalize online gambling went around congress, without getting their opinion on the matter. They will continue to try and get online gambling, including poker, made illegal in all states of the US.