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Poker to Become Harder to Play Online

July 29, 2009

With the legal case still being battled out within the legal court rooms, online poker is set to become harder for players to play due to the banks set to roll out a new tougher stance on internet gambling, in line with the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act.

The governments are seemingly overlooking the potential for taxation purposes should they have opted to tax the online gambling companies, instead deciding that they were going to make it harder for online gamblers to stake their own money at the virtual tables.

The 2006 Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act was passed in October 2006 and sees the transfer of funds for online gambling within the United States of America become illegal.

Currently the only country that is been affected by this act is the United States but this will have a huge effect on the public based within the country due to the huge number of online poker players within the country.

Texas Hold’em Poker has been about since the early 1900’s and after research was done into the game and its history the Texas State Legislature recognised that Texas was the birth place of the game that is proving to attract millions of players every year.

Many U.S. players and online poker rooms have been looking to create new ways in which they can transfer the funds into the players accounts that will keep both the site and the player within the legal legislation set out in the act.

This could become increasingly more difficult once the full compliance deadline is reached on 1st December 2009.

Although the act was passed back in 2006, a 1,000,000+ strong team known as Poker Player Alliance has fought hard for the game not to fall within the guidelines of the act, claiming that the game is more skill based than luck, something that is outlined within the act.

The Miami Herald wrote:

The poker alliance, meanwhile, has launched a legal counteroffensive to the ban. Last week the group staged a massive lobbying effort on Capitol Hill aimed at tweaking the nation’s gambling laws to make on line poker completely — and clearly — legal.“John Pappas, executive director of the alliance: “Internet gaming, particularly Internet poker, is an industry that’s not going away.” Pappas’ pitch to lawmakers is this: don’t lump poker into the same “gambling” category as other casino games, and use legalization to both protect U.S. consumers and raise tax revenues for the federal government.

Pappas’ group has spent $400,000 in the past three months on lobbying efforts. Last week’s intense legislative push included more than than 100 meetings with members of Congress and their staff, as well as a charity poker tournament in which some lawmakers took part. The alliance says it has assembled a petition with more than 375,000 signatures supporting on line poker.

The Poker Player Alliance seems to be getting heard too in their fight for exception, with the U.S. congress having to look over 2 bills that will keep the online poker industry available to the players based within the United States.

One bill would see that poker is made exempt from the act  and the other would see that the bank’s full compliance deadline is extended, creating more time for online players to be able to play the game.

The legal case that is still ongoing has definitely drawn alot of attention, with the news that 2 of the major banks within the United States were willing to withhold funds that players had withdrawn from any online gambling site until the case comes to a close after been asked to do so by the government.

Until the court case comes to a close and the final ruling is made on the future of online gambling, online gambling sites and players must continue to jump through hoops in order to keep their games alive.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Do you feel that the government should be able to restrict how you are about to spend your own money?

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Written by admin · Filed Under Gambling News