Home / Poker News September 2010 / The Commerce Casino and its peculiar attitude towards online poker
The Commerce Casino and its peculiar attitude towards online poker
Posted by: James Carter. - Fri, 2010-09-03 02:00
The PPA (Poker Players Alliance) has deemed it necessary last week to address the issue of the Commerce Casino’s attitude towards legal
online poker in a letter forwarded to the officials of the above named operation. To give it real weight, the letter was signed by over 7,000 people, among them a long list of poker professionals who are by no means strangers to the casino’s poker room.
The reason why the LA Casino, considered the World’s Largest poker room, was singled out, was that its representatives have testified against Barney Frank’s bill in the House Financial Services Committee, siding with Rep. Spencer Bacchus on the issue of legal online poker in the US.
The attitude of the company – which is obviously really only trying to protect its interests by having all potential competition nipped in the bud – was at least puzzling for the supporters of the bill, who went to great lengths to appease the issues that Tom Malkasian – the official representing Commerce Casino at the hearing – had brought up. The bottom line was that all his objections heard and properly addressed, Mr. Malkasian and the company on behalf of which he acted, still refused to change their stance on the matter, making it obvious that the technicalities they brought up, were mere nitpicking and a cover for the true agenda they were trying to push.
In a rather unfortunate attempt to lend his statement some weight, Mr. Malkasian compared online poker operators
PokerStars and
Full Tilt Poker to drug cartels, thus implicitly suggesting that the professional players officially representing those sites were some sort of drug mules. Unfortunately for the operation he represents though, those same poker players are the ones who carry the bulk of the high stakes play in his very casino, so talking about double standards in this case is like the understatement of the year.
In response to the company’s direct assault on legal online poker, the PPA has decided to stop promoting events taking place at the Commerce Casino. No outright boycott has yet been called though.
