Home / Poker News August 2011 / The Poker Grapevine - Nevada Looking to Pass Poker Bill
The Poker Grapevine - Nevada Looking to Pass Poker Bill
Posted by: Randy Williams - Fri, 2011-08-26 03:40
Apparently, the first concrete steps towards online poker legalization have already been taken in Nevada. The Nevada Gaming Control Board has released a set of regulatory proposals which would make legal online poker possible under the provisions of Assembly Bill 258, already passed by the State legislature.
According to Mark Lipparelli of the Gaming Control Board, the multi-billion dollar business that internet poker has grown into world-over is something the State of Nevada needs to have a stake in. Given the fact that the technology supporting
online poker has evolved by leaps and bounds since the emergence of the online version of the game, Nevada will be able to offer players enough confidence and security to get things going when approval is eventually achieved.
The proposals mean little more than a starting point at this stage. They will be put through a public regulatory workshop starting September 26, which will revise them and provide amendments where needed.
According to Lipparelli, the proposals have been made flexible enough to suit any kind of potential national legislation well, in case online poker is ever legalized on a federal level.
In other news: according to statistics, online poker traffic has continued to decline over the past week. The overall action went south by about 3%. Nine out of the ten top online poker operators saw decline. The only network where player numbers were up was the Merge Network. This time of the year is traditionally slow as far as online poker action is concerned, given that this is when most players go on vacations or just decide to enjoy the great outdoors instead of grinding away at the green felt.
PokerStars have managed to retain their leading position as the battle for second place has intensified between
PartyPoker and the iPoker network. Last week, iPoker managed to edge out PartyPoker by a mere 5%.
Everest Poker and the Microgaming network have been tagged as the biggest year-over-year losers so far traffic-wise.
