Poker players battle Internet crackdown

WASHINGTON -- Online poker players are nervously awaiting President Bush's expected signature this week on legislation that would kick them out of their virtual casinos.

The measure, designed to block the financial transactions that have fueled Internet gambling, was quietly attached to a port security bill in a flurry of last-minute activity before Congress adjourned in late September.

The legislation threatens to cripple the $12 billion online gambling industry, cutting off about half of the world's Web-based gaming revenue. It has already forced the suspension of several Internet gambling companies' lucrative U.S. operations and has sent shock waves through the gaming world.

"Who is Congress to tell people what to do in their own home when it doesn't bother anybody else?" asked Mike Sexton, a professional poker player and commentator for the World Poker Tour. "We feel like our rights have been violated."

Most of the 2,300 gambling Web sites currently operating are based outside the United States, often on Caribbean islands or in Central America and Europe, to avoid U.S. law, which prohibits many types of gambling under the Federal Wire Act. Enforcement of the law is difficult, however, and the companies have made billions of dollars annually from American bettors.

The bill that Bush is expected to sign adds considerable enforcement muscle, prohibiting banks and credit card companies from processing online gambling transactions based in the U.S.

Chad Hills, a gambling research analyst for Focus on the Family, a conservative group, applauded the bill's passage, saying the laws in place had been flouted for too long. Online gambling operations, he said, "were making a mockery of our U.S. policy, they were making a mockery of our Congress, they were making a mockery of our ability to enforce this legislation."

But gamblers aren't buying in on the idea. On the gambling Web site Cardplayer.com, poker professional Thor Hansen called the passage "a bad day for poker" and Shannon Shorr, a professional poker player, called the measure "both frustrating and devastating."

News Added: 12 October, 2006

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