- PPA will still be active on the federal level.
- PPA Executive Director John Pappas: “the fight for Internet poker is moving to the states.”
- “[W]e will be largely focusing our efforts on passing player-friendly bills in the states,” remarked Pappas.
After federal poker legislation failed to pass in 2012, the Poker Players Alliance is turning its focus to the states.
Executive Director John Pappas says he has no plans to abandon his headquarters in Washington, DC, but he acknowledges “the fight for Internet poker is moving to the states.”
“[W]e will be largely focusing our efforts on passing player-friendly bills in the states,” Pappas wrote in The State of Poker in 2013.
In late 2011, after the Justice Department revised its stance on Internet gambling, states started “sending strong signals that they intend[ed] to push for Internet poker legislation,” Pappas stated.
However, in spite of efforts by Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) to include a carve-out for online poker in a federal bill that would have sought to ban other forms of online gambling, no legislation was formally introduced in 2012.
“[I]t has become clear that last year’s dysfunctional Congress was a huge obstacle in our mission to secure safe and regulated Internet poker,” Pappas remarked. “Sadly, the prospects of the partisan Congress working together in 2013 does not look promising.”
