Washington — America’s 70 million poker players say they aren’t bluffing in
their resistance to the latest congressional efforts to ban online casino
gambling.
To dramatize that determination, their leader, San Franciscan Michael
Bolcerek — president of the national Poker Players Alliance — staged some
unusual events on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. He brought three big-name
professional poker stars to court the press, lobby members of Congress and
attend an evening reception for members and their staffs at which a few hands of
Texas Hold ‘Em were probably played. Not for money, of course.
Congress is considering legislation that seeks either to get banks to block
customers’ transactions with overseas Internet gambling sites or force Internet
service providers to block access to poker Web sites. Poker players say the
proposed bans attack nothing less than the American way of life.
"I’d hate for 70 million poker players to wake up one day and learn that
their game has been made illegal," said pro Howard Lederer, who with his sister,
Annie Duke, forms a sister-brother pro duo in a sport that has become a TV
staple the last few years.
Bolcerek, a Cow Hollow resident who says he plays in a weekly game with
friends, portrayed poker as a game of skill that’s as American as apple pie and
motherhood.
"Poker is an American tradition. It has its roots in New Orleans, just like
jazz. Many presidents played, including Gen. (Ulysses S.) Grant, Harry Truman
and Richard Nixon. So did Chief Justice William Rehnquist," said Bolcerek, a
longtime high-tech executive who took up his post as paid president of the
20,000-member alliance a few months ago.
His group estimates that of the 70 million Americans who play various forms
of poker, 23 million do so online. Of that figure, 3 million play for money via
the Internet, said Bolcerek, whose group has opened an office in Washington and
plans a presence in Las Vegas and San Francisco.
Although Bolcerek said the alliance doesn’t have direct financial ties to any
of the online casinos, he won’t disclose the names of the few wealthy
individuals he said provided the organization’s seed money.
Instead of banning online gaming, the alliance says Congress should regulate
and tax it, turning it into a profitable domestic business that can create
jobs.
At least three bills are pending in Congress that seek to ban Americans
playing poker or other casino games online for money. It is already illegal for
online casinos to operate domestically, so the multibillion-dollar business has
moved overseas. Credit card companies have also been ordered not to allow
customers to use their accounts for the offshore gambling, so players have
switched to online payment services that are also based overseas and pay with
checks, debit cards and electronic funds transfers.
Sponsors of the legislation cite several reasons for their proposed
crackdown, an idea that has been approved by both houses in Congress in the
past, but not in the identical form required for sending legislation to the
president. They say the lure of games that people can play at home on their
computers is addictive and could be financially ruinous.
The bills’ supporters also say the games present unfair competition for the
regulated, taxed and legal bricks-and-mortar casinos and card clubs. And they
say prosecutors have tied online gambling to money laundering and even
potentially to terrorism financing. They also say the ease of online betting
makes it all too easy for underage players to get deep into debt.
"This is the most addictive form of gambling that’s even been invented," said
David Robertson, of Cody, Wyo., former chairman of the National Coalition
Against Legalized Gambling. "You’ve got a casino in your home now. You don’t
have to get in your car or go somewhere."
Nothing in Congress is ever straightforward, and the poker proposals are no
exception.
The bills, while trying to ban games like poker and blackjack, carve out
exemptions for some online betting on horse races and state-run lotteries. The
poker backers call those exemptions hypocritical and say they show that powerful
lobbies have managed to protect some forms of gambling at their expense.
That brings in Jack Abramoff, the convicted lobbyist whose influence-peddling
schemes are at the heart of scandals that have already nabbed several
congressional aides and threaten several lawmakers.
Among Abramoff’s clients was eLottery, a company that opposed earlier
versions of the bills that made online lotteries illegal. Abramoff helped block
those bills. Although Abramoff is gone, the bills moving forward allow some use
of the Internet by state lotteries.
The advocates of the bills now paint their bills as part of lobbying-reform
efforts, and say the Abramoff affair has boosted prospects for their legislation
to finally become law in 2006.
"The Abramoff scandal proves that gambling corrupts. It wasn’t anything other
than gambling money that funded Abramoff," Robertson said.
But the poker fans say Abramoff is a smokescreen for proposals that would
lead to new government intrusions into Americans’ private lives.
"Monitoring what American citizens do in their own homes on their own time
with their own money is not the federal government’s business," said Radley
Balko, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.
Balko said Congress was putting itself in the position of reacting to the
Abramoff scandal "by limiting the civil liberties of Americans. … This is
insane."
By Edward Epstein
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