Iowa Looking at Online Poker

Lawmakers in Iowa a trying to decide is online poker and gambling would be a good option for their state. Suggestions about legalizing online poker in Iowa were being tossed around in the legislature recently with Rep. Doug Struyk saying the timing to make online gambling legal is now.

Struyk, a supported on online gambling says there are more than 50,000 Iowans who are regular visitors to online wagering sites.

Struyk referred to problems facing these players, including his opinion that certain offshore online poker sites use planted players to bluff and win money off unsusceptible poker fans. Let me be the first to give that a triple, WTF. Anyway, Struyk noted that “people in our state lose thousands of dollars on this.”

Struyk gave the proposal, which would allow Iowans to open an online account at state casinos and fund it with cash, a one in four chance of passing in 2010. The success of the proposal, according to Struyk, lay in the ability of lawmakers to educate the public about the concept of online poker and gambling, without turning it into an emotional circus.

The House Majority Leader, however, was doubtful that the state would be ready to pioneer the idea of online gambling in the United States.

“I will tell you that in my judgment, that would be the largest expansion of gambling in the history of the United States of America,” said Kevin McCarthy, (D-Des Moines). “There never has been a state that has done it and knowing that gambling bills historically are bipartisan and it takes a lot of work to get to 51 votes on a fairly limited bill, moving to the potential of allowing every home in the state to be licensed as a casino to gamble at home seems to me to be a fairly heavy lift.”

News Added: 01 March, 2010

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