US Congress To Consider Online Poker

Next week the United States Congress will have a meeting to consider the idea of regulating online poker on a federal level. The meeting, entitled “The State of Online Gaming”, will be held by the House Subcommittee for Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade on December 10th and according to data from the congressional website, “The Subcommittee will examine the current regulatory landscape for online gaming after the Department of Justice’s reinterpretation of the Wire Act. The Subcommittee will review H.R. 2666, the “Internet Poker Freedom Act.”

Invited to this meeting and one of the mst prominent pro-poker voices amongst his peers, is John Pappas (director of the Poker Player’s Alliance) as well as Geoff Freeman who is the CEO of the American Gaming Association. One question that John Pappas hoes to bring into the meeting is that of poker being considered a game of skill and thus not being grouped to gether with games of chance like casino games or bingo.

According to the background memo from the Subcommittee, other questions and issues to discuss during the meeting include:

– Is Federal legislation necessary to address the developing patchwork of State regulations?
– How effective is enforcement of remote gaming in jurisdictions that have legalized it?
– How are States preparing to deal with the issue?
– What consumer protections exist for online gaming?
– How should the differences between various forms of online gaming affect how they are regulated?

This will not be the first time that Congress gets together to discuss this topic, there have been in fact other such meetings before. This one might be different because its the first one to happen after Delaware and New Jersey launched their own online gaming regulations and can serve as examples of success.