US Gambling Updates for November 2007
News currently happening can be found at the US poker webpage.
November 30
11:35pm – J. Todd tears apart Bob Goodlatte in his Perspectives Weekly video. He also picks apart some more pieces of the Congressional hearing on internet gambling held earlier this month. Also there has been no changes/decisions in the Neteller co-founder sentencing.
November 29
6:31pm – It has now been approximately 2 months since the iMEGA case was supposed to be ruled on by Judge Mary Cooper. Still nothing. Also the Neteller co-founders were supposed to have their sentencing 2 months ago but that deadline passed 1 month ago and the second deadline passed today. Tomorrow I will call the press office to see if any news has been reported on that. I’m almost certain that will get a lengthy extension by the sounds of the press lady last time I spoke to her.
Also something I didn’t know was that Poker.com was dumped by epassporte not too long ago. The blackjack they offer must have done them in unlike at Absolute Poker where they work around it and only let epassporte users play at the poker tables. Too bad Poker.com doesn’t do the same thing, epassporte seems to be the deposit option of choice.
November 26
1:00pm – While I don’t really follow specific state issues on this page, Cardplayer just finished up an update for those interested in the Washington State online poker legal issue. In it are direct quotes from Washington State Attorney, Lee Rousso who is challenging the law.
November 24
12:30pm – Egaming Review has reported on the benefits of US internet gambling regulation and that it could raise $42 billion in tax revenues over a 10 year span. UC Group’s CEO, Kobus Paulsen suggested the regulation bill be tacked onto an Iraq’s veteran bill as a “tax raising measure”. McDermott continues to propose a 2% tax on all deposits to be paid by the online gambling operator, not the player.
November 21
10:17pm – Happy Thanksgiving everyone. There will be no updates tomorrow in light of the holiday.
November 20
12:28am – The 41st co-sponsor has signed onto HR2046, the bill to license and regulate online gambling. The Congressman is Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. Also a rumor with the prepaid teleco sites (nucharge, add-funds, gatorpay etc) is that the DOJ is forcing them to shut down.
November 17 – This is just a quick update on some deposit providers. Add-funds.com seems to be completely gone. It was in use at Absolutepoker but now just redirects to Absolutepoker’s deposit page. Nucharge, which is basically the same thing being used at Bodog also seems to be having technical issues. Gatorpay was also removed from the Full Tilt cashier screen. Looks like a lot of the pre-paid teleco sites are biting the dust.
November 16
12:15pm – Today’s weekly recap by J. Todd is titled, “UIGEA Falling Apart”.
5:47am – Two Harrah’s executives predicted when they thought online poker would be legalized in the United States. Terry Lanni and Gary Loveman, the chairman and CEO of Harrah’s predicted it would be legal possibly within 12 months. Lanni predicted 12-18 months while Loveman predicted 18-24 months. They weren’t too optimistic for the legalization of online casino games in the US, predicting 8-10 years before this happens.
November 14
2:00pm – The 3rd and final session is over. Annie Duke did a really good job despite Congressman Goodlatte trying to disprove her constantly. She held her ground and came back with legitimate facts to prove her debate and discount what Goodlatte was trying to say.
The quote of the day has to go to Cohen (for gambling) questioning McClusky (Family Research). Cohen asks if their organization was against online gambling. He said yes. He asked if they were against all gambling in general. He said yes. Cohen then asks, is there any “fun” your organization isn’t against. McClusky says…uh…..I’m here, thats fun.
The 3rd session was general information already covered in previous debates but in my opinion our side proved MUCH more competent in the hearing. Very good to watch. I will post a link to the video once one comes online if you’d like to watch. Hopefully someone does a snippet recap of the hearing on youtube. I’d do it but that’s out of my technical know how. 
Please see this link for the recap of what the speakers emphasized in the opening statements.
1:07pm – The Q&A is going ok. Hannaway of the US DOJ is getting bombarded with questions that you can tell she doesn’t like answering. When she was asked to admit that it wasn’t illegal for citizens to gamble online, only businesses to facilitate transactions and that money laundering wasn’t taking place it looked like she was getting a root canal.
The lady from the US Treasury also admitted that it will be very difficult if not impossible for banks to figure out what transactions are considered illegal and not illegal.
Goodlatte was hounding the WTO lawyer saying the committments of the US were from 20 years ago and were vague. He also tried to compare online gambling to crack cocaine and that if we made vague committments would we have to allow people to trade crack. The lawyer returned by correcting him that it was not 20 years ago (1995) and that extreme moral obligations like trading crack would obviously not happen and that online gambling is not life threatening and doesn’t threaten our existence thus these types of committments aren’t allowed to be withdrawn. Goodlatte looked pissed. 
They are on session again with more to come.
12:27pm – It looks as if the Q&A session is starting. Please see the Nov. 13 for the broadcast link. I will also take notes on the Q&A session and post them when finished.
11:46am – The hearing by the House Judiciary Committe is, for the most part finished except for the Q&A section. They are on break at the moment. Here is a recap of what the speakers emphasized. It was a live broadcast and literally just finished so please excuse any small errors in translation.
The hearing so far has gone really well. Almost all of the problems the opponents bring up are squashed by the pro-gambling speakers. Even the US Attorney representative was kind of stumped when a law professor asked a few questions regarding the WTO and what would happen if China did what the US did. Another important point was the representative of the US Treasury, whos name I missed, said it would take a very long time to go through the comments on the proposed regulations and couldn’t give a definitive time frame.
November 13
11:12pm – Here is the video link (removed) for tomorrows hearing by the House Judiciary Committe on internet wagering. If you don’t see the “broadcast button” click on the 14th on the event calendar. Also here is the list of people (removed) who will be on the panel. A late addition to the panel list is Tom McClusky of Family Research Council. Always good to have someone to tell us how to run our lives and families there right?
10:32pm – This post is mostly for the affiliates who read these updates/blog posts. I read a press release a few days ago about how Fulltilt Solutions was getting ready to sell the domain name, Fulltilt.com. If you notice it’s missing the -poker. According to the owners it gets 60,000 unique visitors a month from poker players. The guy who retained the domain, Michael Kogan thinks he’s going to get a 7 figure pay-day for it. Anyone who buys this domain for that much is off their kilter. Sure it might be worth that much if Full Tilt Poker allowed you to redirect the traffic to their site but there is no way Full Tilt Poker will allow this. I highly doubt Full Tilt Poker will even buy the domain because they lose no money by someone having a domain similar to theirs with a completely unrelated business on it. Anyways, sorry for the rant I just thought it was funny how the ex-President of Marketing for Doyles Room (the guy selling this domain) thinks it’s worth that much.
November 12
12:41pm – More good news was posted in the Antigua Sun last night in an article titled, “America is Wrong, US Congressman Speaks on Gaming Dispute“. It’s a short article with lots of quotes from Charles Rangel, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Congressman. Rangel expressed concern over the issue an will speak to the USTR by the end of the month. He even said what the US did in this trade dispute was “wrong”. He also said Franks bill does very little for this WTO dispute. The entire story is good, with no fluff so I’m not going to do cliff notes on it. Very optimistic article.
November 11
2:59pm – Here is the link (removed) for the upcoming hearing information by the House Judiciary Committee on November 14th regarding online wagers. As of right now it doesn’t look like the hearing will be available to watch live online. I’ll be keeping an eye out if it does become available online and will be sure to post it. Also I made a correction in my last post where it said Conyers became a co-sponsor of HR 2046 (Barney Frank’s bill to legalize online gambling). I meant to say HR 2610 (Skill Game Protection bill). 
November 10
10:41am – Here is J. Todds Perspectives Weekly video for November 9th. He goes over why the European Union trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, urged Congress to repeal the UIGEA yesterday. Swedish comply with EU laws, German court overturns gambling ban and France talks with EU.
I had some people in town so I couldnt make some updates for a few days but here are a few important things that happened in case you missed them as well.
1. J. Conyers, House Judiciary Committee agreed to co-sponsor HR 2610 and will hold a hearing to discuss internet gaming on November 14th.
2. A poweful organization called the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness came out with a report on the “proposed regulations” to enforce the UIGEA and said the regulations had “significant problems”.
3. Tons of pressure is being put on the WTO/online gambling issues in higher up media sources which favor our stance to legalize online gambling.
4. EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson urges the United States to change the law that discriminates against EU companies who want to offer online gambling. Mandelson said the compensation may not be as large as the $100 billion being reported but it needs to be substantial in regards to the US disregarding the World Trade Organization online gambling decision.
November 6
1:32am – It’s been about 2 months since we’ve analyzed cardroom traffic so I went ahead and did the numbers for the beginning of November and October. It is kind of interesting to compare October, right before the UIGEA, to 1 year later. As you can see, Pokerstars is pretty much trumping the field and is more than one third bigger than Party Poker prior to the US banning by Party Poker a year ago…. they are huge. I would also attribute the recent increase in Pokerstars.com numbers due to the re-introduction of echecks to most US players. The new numbers are highlighted in yellow. Please refer to the US poker site traffic report for the chart
November 2
7:03pm – The expansion of US accepted echecks at Pokerstars.com is continuing. It looks like they let out a new wave for players to use this as a deposit option as I noticed a new pop-up for me today. In the pop-up screen it says “plans to make echecks available to all US players in the near future.”
3:06pm – Here is this Fridays Perspectives Weekly video. He goes over some of the delayed court dates. Not that they really matter but J. Todd didn’t mention the delayed Neteller sentencings.
November 1
3:39am – Hopefully everyone had a good Halloween! No interesting news to report on but today is the sentencing for John Lefebvre, the second Neteller co-founder. It will likely get delayed as did Mr. Lawrences’ sentencing a couple days ago. Later today when it’s not 3am I’ll call the press office just to make sure. Can’t wait to feel dumb trying to pronounce that last name, Lefebvre? 
Update: Both have been delayed.
