Poker Legislation Commentary

Now that's a title that'll have the new readers diving into these blogs by the thousands, isn't it?

Eh, fiddle-faddle. It was one of those days yesterday --- it led to a short-term case of poker burnout and a call from Lou, wherein we ended up talking about a couple of recent legislative processes, and what their effects might be. All this after I'd crashed out of Lou's "Expert Series" on Royal Vegas Poker last night, declining my normal rebuys, so when the phone rang I ended up pseudo-sweating Lou over the phone as --- with the bounty on his head --- he ended up short-stacked, dumped 3-2 and 4-2 in rapid succession, then lucked into KK and tripled back up. He was still in the thing when we disconnected, but that's part of his tale, not mine.

So much for prelude.

What was more interesting to me, and led to this post, was the fact that we had reacted differently to a couple of recent bits of news concerning the ominous march of United States poker legislation. Lou had just made a lengthy post about the Goodlatte-led attacks occurring at the federal level, while I thought that the more interesting and greater threat was the State of Washington anti-online-gambling measure that will go into law next month. Lou opined that the lack of enforceability would make the measure a moot point, while I sensed a different method to the measure's madness. I think it's designed to be something that they can use to take a big slap at someone that they've already got their eyes on for other reasons.

What I think will happen, in the State of Washington, is that someone will get nailed under this measure at some point in the next eighteen months, and both sides will use that unlucky person's situation as a cause celebre that will test the merits, the constitutionality, and the viability of the measure itself.

And that's when things will get real-l-l-l-ly interesting, as other states explore variations on this type of legislation as a way of worming their way into a taxable piece of the online pie.

Normally I'd post about this sort of stuff over at the KAP blog, but I've had a healthy dose of legislative items on that forum lately --- so we'll do a bit of contrary spillover here.

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Here's a mindless photo of some ill-advised playground equipment at a Russian nursery school or somesuch. David Williams will not even be mentioned in this context. Enjoy!