In the ongoing drama over Internet poker regulations in the U.S., the Republicans are usually painted as the bad guys.
And with some justification: It was the Republican leadership who, back in 2006, snuck the UIGEA into the SAFE Port Act and ensured at least four years of Internet gambling regulatory confusion.
But now, some Internet gambling observers are calling the Republicans heroes for blocking efforts this year to change those UIGEA laws and further regulate Internet gambling.
That’s mostly because the proposed changes to Internet poker regulations by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may have been disastrous to the online poker industry, and ro poker affiliates. Because, as Ante Up Magazine colorfully put it, the bill “smelled as fishy as a postflop check from an under-the-gun raiser.”
Reid’s proposal, which caused a big stir in the online gambling industry a few weeks ago, included provisions that would basically turn all regulated online gambling in the U.S. over to Nevada interests. In the process, existing Internet poker rooms would have been shut out of the U.S. market for over a year. And that “would have left a lot of Americans without jobs come the new year,” as CasinoGamblingWeb.com puts it.
And it would have spelled chaos for American online poker affiliates, who would’ve had to radically alter their marketing strategies, and probably would have lost a ton of money in the process.
So, while it’s hard to stomach some of the more self-serving anti-gambling stances taken by Republican lawmakers, for the most part, poker affiliates can agree that conservatives are the heroes of this particular story.