A few headlines you may have missed in the past week if you don't get incessant gambling phrase Google alerts (but hey, that's what you've gotme for, right?):
The Utah Transit Authority, which manages public transportation in the Beehive state, offers free Wi-Fi to its riders. However, the UTA announced that any passengers using its service to access gambling sites, legal or otherwise, will be fined $300 for the first offense and $500 for the second. Just so it's clear that the moralists running the UTA don't discriminate against gamblers, anyone using porn sites while riding the bus or train will get pinched in the pocketbook, too.
Getty ImagesPoker players such as Chris "Jesus" Ferguson have been lobbying Congress for years, trying to reopen the ease of access to a still legal online game.
The European Union released the findings from its three-month investigation into whether U.S. Internet gambling laws violate World Trade Organization rules. What kind of conclusion did the EU come to? Well, the United States' strict laws negatively impact European gambling sites trying to do business here. In other words, yeah, the EU thinks the U.S. is sticking its thumb in the eye of the WTO.
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank's bill to regulate and tax Internet gaming in the United States -- the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act -- picked up four more co-sponsors, bringing the total number of congressmen supporting the proposed law to 30. It's expected that Congress' Finance Committee, which Frank chairs, will begin debating the bill in mid-July.
Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Arlo Devlin-Brown seized more than $30 million won by online poker players in the United States as the money sat in four different banks and payment processing centers, waiting to be paid out. Most of the cash was won by people using Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker (take a look around ESPN.com and you'll find some Full Tilt Poker ads, by the way).
Oh yeah, a little thing called the World Series of Poker is taking place right now at the Rio in Vegas. (Congrats to Phil Ivey, who just won his seventh WSOP bracelet).
All of these stories are intertwined.
To read the rest of this Behind the Bets, you must be an ESPN Insider.
To poker players -- from the big names like Greg Raymer to the sit-and-go duffers -- the news that mattered most was losing all that cake to the feds. Online poker is legal in the U.S. -- despite the hopes of the Utah Transit Authority -- so why did a U.S. attorney go after this poker pot? No one seems to know, including me, since the rep for Devlin-Brown didn't return my calls. When I called the mouthpiece at the U.S. Department of Justice he cut me off mid-question and said, "I don't mean to be short, but did you call the Southern District?"
"We don't know if this is just a money grab by the U.S. attorney or the start of a national thing targeting poker," says WSOP champ Raymer, who is admittedly no fan of government. "We just don't know the motivation."
All this action in favor of and against online gambling points to one thing: This is the summer when the fate of Internet gaming in the United States, specifically how the government should address regulating online poker, will finally be decided.
But, to me, all this action in favor of and against online gambling points to one thing: This is the summer when the fate of Internet gaming in the United States, specifically how the government should address regulating online poker, will finally be decided.
It's been in limbo since 2006, when Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act, which banned Web sites that offer games such as poker from doing business in the U.S.
But the reality is that ever since then, poker pros have felt under siege. That's why Raymer is so concerned. Because, in the United States, the true effect of the UIGEA has been how it changed the public's perception of online poker. Three years ago, casual players and those who never played at all read headlines that went something like "New Law Bans Poker Sites" and automatically assumed online poker was now a no-no. Truth is, playing poker online is as legal as reading ESPN.com. And there's no legislation in the works to make it illegal (again, sorry, Utah Transit Authority).
Now with Frank's bill pending and gaining momentum; an Obama administration that, unlike the previous president's that pushed for the UIGEA, has said it would like to keep the Internet free from government intervention; and a prickly EU that the U.S. would rather not poke during an economic crisis, I predict gaming's proponents will go all-in, sometime before the winner of the WSOP main event cashes his chips.
And by the end of the year I wouldn't be surprised if my inbox is flooded with Google alerts about how much online poker is blowing up. Again.
Except if you're riding the bus in Utah.
Read more Behind the Bets. Or you can e-mail the author. Chad Millman is a senior deputy editor at ESPN The Magazine, and once wrote a book called "The Odds." His column takes a close look at the culture surrounding the bet.
