Home / Poker News May 2011 / AGA to Put Its Weight Behind Federally Regulated Online Poker
AGA to Put Its Weight Behind Federally Regulated Online Poker
Posted by: James Carter. - Sat, 2011-05-14 12:54
The American Gaming Association (AGA), an organization well known for supporting the interests of the American gambling and poker industry, as well as for its supportive stance regarding the DoJ’s Black Friday actions against
Full Tilt Poker,
PokerStars and the Cereus poker rooms, has recently crawled out of the woodwork, ready to help US gambling and poker interests pounce on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take center stage in a potentially new online poker status-quo that may emerge from the ruins left by the Black Friday indictments.
The AGA is apparently looking to hammer out the basis of a bill that would legalize online poker on a federal level instead of a state one.
Not many specifics are currently known about the proposed bill, except for the fact that it will likely be introduced to congress within a month and that it will – in one form or another – give states the choice to opt in or out of regulated online poker.
According to Frank Fahrenkopf, AGA president, state-level legislation concerning the regulation of online poker doesn’t really make any kind of sense except for populous states like California and Florida, where online poker is popular too. Other than that, finding the kind of player liquidity that would justify legalization and regulation would probably have to be done on a federal level.
Fahrenkopf also said that the AGA was not concerned with any kind of State-level initiatives: their job was to push through a federal bill.
What could one expect from an AGA-sponsored online poker bill? Given the fact that the organization represents the interests of the US gambling industry, probably legislation heavily favoring US-based online poker interests. In a word: an AGA sponsored bill would create the framework for a newly emerging online poker industry, with radically different top players, and different bottom-feeders as well.
According to the AGA, their present efforts are focused on legalizing online poker. Online gambling will have to wait.
