Home / Poker News March 2012 / The Poker Grapevine – Mississippi Online Gaming Bill Scrapped
The Poker Grapevine – Mississippi Online Gaming Bill Scrapped
Posted by: Jo Martin - Thu, 2012-03-15 12:30
The state of Mississippi was one of the many US states considering legalizing and regulating online poker, until the Ways and Means Committee as well as the Gaming Committee tossed aside a legal proposal aimed at achieving just that. The bill titled the Mississippi Lawful Internet Gaming Act of 2012 would’ve made it legal in the state to play online poker as well as to engage into gambling online. Submitted by Rep. Bobby Moak, the bill would’ve allowed licensed gambling companies like MGM and Caesars to offer online poker to Mississippi residents. Moak may yet re-introduce his proposal, but it is clear now that Mississippi will not join frontrunners in the race to have online gambling and poker legalized, regulated and turned into a reliable source of revenue for state budgets.
In other news:
PokerStars’ own Daniel Negreanu has just won the WPT’s Playing for a Better World charity tournament. The event drew quite a selection of poker celebrities and sports stars. Negreanu was joined at the felt by Vanessa Rousso, Maria Ho, Liv Boeree, Vanessa Selbst and Barry Greenstein. Pau Gasol of the Los Angeles Lakers and actress Maria Bello also played. There were of course hundreds of other players involved in the event too, which was an invitation-only affair.
The buy-in was $500. A raffle and a silent auction were also parts of the event.
In still other news: online poker traffic has registered a 1.1% drop last week, marking the 5th straight week of traffic loss for the online poker industry. Obviously, the adverse legal environment in the US and in several other parts of the world has finally begun to get to poker players.
PokerStars have once again finished at the top of the traffic ranking, followed by PartyPoker and the iPoker network.
One of last week’s biggest losers was Bodog. Despite the fact that the actual operations of the brand had been moved to Bodog.eu last year, the seizure by the US authorities of the bodog.com domain had a massive adverse effect on the site’s traffic to the tune of a 13% drop.
