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For Immediate Release                
March, 18, 2008                            
                                     
Contact:  
Taylor Gross
(202) 347-7943
[email protected]

Washington, D.C. (March 18, 2008) – Poker players from across Massachusetts today held a rally outside of the Massachusetts State House to protest a provision in Governor Deval Patrick’s casinos bill that makes playing poker on the internet with other adults a crime punishable by jail time. The rally was organized by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), the leading poker grassroots advocacy group comprised of almost one million online and offline poker players nationwide, and held in prior to a hearing before the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies focused on H 4307, the Massachusetts Casino Expansion Bill.
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The Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS), the group formed at Harvard Law School to promote poker as an educational tool, is co-sponsoring a rally Tuesday at the Statehouse with the Massachusetts chapter of the Poker Players Alliance to protest the criminalization of poker in Governor Deval Patrick’s gaming bill.
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There’s trouble brewing in the Massachusetts. Home to Congressman Barney Frank, one of online poker’s leading proponents and author of the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act, Massachusetts may have taken a turn for the worse on this critical issue. Luckily, Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society Founder and President Charles Nesson, Congressman Frank, and an army of individuals from the Poker Players Alliance are working to reverse a detrimental course of action the state is embarking upon. A hearing on Tuesday, March 18th will discuss H. 4307, a bill introduced by Governor Deval Patrick (pictured) that establishes the framework for construction of three casinos in Massachusetts, but at the same time makes playing online poker punishable by up to two years in prison and a $25,000 fine. PocketFives.com sat down with PPA Executive Director John Pappas to discuss the background to H. 4307′s introduction.

First and foremost, the bill was introduced not by any member of the legislature in Massachusetts, but rather by its Governor, Deval Patrick. PPA State Director Randy Castonguay sent out an e-mail to his comrades in Massachusetts that summed the PPA’s reservations with the bill up succinctly: “H.4307 is pro-casino gambling legislation, yet it makes Internet gaming a crime. This is an unacceptable double-standard!” Pappas agrees: “The bill is flawed in a number of ways, not the least of which is the provision that criminalizes online gambling. It’s outrageous that someone playing $0.05/$0.10 online poker could be thrown in jail.”

Recent news in Massachusetts regarding overcrowding in the state’s prison system complicates the matter and makes the bill even more ludicrous, according to Pappas: “Now we’re talking about 400,000 registered online poker players in Massachusetts potentially being labeled criminals. The bill has other problems; if it doesn’t pass, this will be just one of the reasons.”

H. 4307 is designed to bring revenue and jobs to Massachusetts. With casinos such as Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun nearby, the state finds itself losing potential sources of revenue. The text of the bill reads, “Revenue generated from resort casinos can be used to find critical needs in the commonwealth, including investments and upgrades to roads and bridges, and other important infrastructure.” Atlantic City is just a 350 mile hop from Boston, making for a range of gambling options for Massachusetts residents right now.

The big mystery weighing on the minds of the PPA and GPSTS has been who is responsible for placing the provision into a pro-gambling bill that criminalizes online gambling. Nesson even went so far as to send a letter to the CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, Sheldon Adelson, who had been rumored to be the impetus behind the inclusion of the provision. Adelson responded saying he had no hand in it and so the mystery continues. Pappas offers up an explanation, “It may have been a careless error made by an overeager staffer who thought that, perhaps by doing this, they’d mollify the concerns of the Christian Right who would oppose gambling. If that was their political calculation, it was naïve. People who oppose gambling oppose gambling.”

All the PPA and its Massachusetts members can do now is show up on Tuesday. Pappas explains the PPA’s game plan: “The PPA has been notifying its members regularly, updating them on what’s going on with the bill. There have been a few thousand letters written to state officials in the House, Senate, and Governor’s office with the message that online poker isn’t a crime. We’re organizing a rally on the statehouse steps on Tuesday. We hope to have 75-100 people in attendance. We have red shirts made up with the slogan, ‘Poker is not a Crime.’ We’re going to make our presence felt outside.”

Click here to go to the article and read more.

If you care about your right to play poker, we need your help!

On Tuesday March 18th the Massachusetts State Legislature will be holding a hearing on the now infamous Mass. Casino Bill. As you know, tucked away in this bill is a sneaky provision that makes playing Internet poker, or any form of internet gambling, a felony punishable by up to TWO YEARS IN PRISON and serious fines.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 14, 2008                                                                         
 

Poker is Not a Crime: PPA to Hold Rally and Testify in Massachusetts Legislature

WHAT:
A rally in opposition to H 4307 the Massachusetts Casino Expansion, bill in advance of a hearing on the legislation.
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While his casino bill’s overall prospects remain far from clear, Gov. Deval Patrick’s bid to criminalize online betting appears especially imperiled, with the administration treating that provision as incidental. Close observers of the upcoming gambling debate say the move to outlaw Internet gambling, with prison sentences of up to two years, could be a casualty. Administration officials concede that the ban is not central to the three-casino plan, which Patrick estimates could generate up to $450 million in annual state tax revenues.

Senate President Pro Tempore Stanley Rosenberg, designated by Senate President Therese Murray as her top adviser on gambling, called the ban “very, very difficult” to enforce.

Rosenberg said he recently spent three days in Quebec on a fact-finding trip, meeting with representatives from the government-sanctioned gambling industry there, visiting two casinos, and talking with social services officials. Asked if the trip had prompted him to lean for or against Patrick’s plan, Rosenberg smiled, “I am in an information-gathering stage of my work.”

With considerable opposition in the House from Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, the bill’s path to passage is challenging. The state Republican Party said Tuesday it had not received a response to Monday’s letter requesting the State Ethics Commission investigate DiMasi’s golfing trips with potential casino developers.

Current federal law prohibits online gambling, but targets the institutions that handle the money and not the bettors themselves. Patrick’s bill does not explicitly provide for enforcement mechanisms.

A Harvard Law School professor who studies Internet gambling said that, in talks with administration and industry officials, he’s been unable to determine how the clause found its way into the bill.

“I’ve been talking to just about everybody I can talk to, and it is really interesting to get to the bottom of how this provision actually got into the bill,” said Charles Nesson, William Weld professor of law at Harvard Law. “You start out thinking that it’s the casino interests, because they’re really the guys that wrote the bill, and then it turns out that the principal guys that were at the hearing didn’t even know it was there.”

Patrick’s press secretary, Kyle Sullivan, called  Nesson’s charge that lobbyists wrote the bill “outrageous and ill-informed.”

The criminalization effort also directly contradicts US Rep. Barney Frank’s effort to sanction online gambling. Frank, a Patrick political ally, has criticized the clause.

Industry experts say the Internet ban would sweeten the market for casino operators by eliminating one of the in-state gambling options that could drain the customer base of its potential. It was unclear how the provision’s removal would affect the proposal’s capability to bring revenue to state coffers. Patrick’s chief of staff, Doug Rubin, said, “It’s something that we thought was useful, but we’re willing to talk about all that stuff.”

The administration last week hired a New Jersey gambling industry consulting firm to inspect the bill’s estimates. The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce has a separate study due within weeks. Patrick’s point man on gambling, assistant secretary for policy and planning, is on unpaid leave, after being arrested for sexual battery in Florida. Patrick’s legislation, which lawmakers expect to come up before the Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies next month, creates an authority to regulate the gambling industry. But the bill holds no specific language for how to enforce the online wagering ban. Rosenberg said, “That’s a very difficult provision to implement, because how do you control Internet services that can come from anywhere in the world?”

In Quebec, Rosenberg said, he plumbed the government’s efforts toward “security, integrity, transparency, the vendors, the hiring of employees,” and controlling addiction and mental health. He spoke with social services officials who oppose gambling, and business people. He called the trip “fascinating.”

Rosenberg said he had visited casinos in Montreal and Gatineau, and the central gambling regulation offices. Legislative officials said concern over the online betting measure was premature until after the House-controlled committee began the formal deliberative process by holding a hearing. A DiMasi spokesman said Friday that the committee was working to set a date and that the speaker remained “skeptical.”

The state’s current, legalized system of gambling does not permit Internet transactions. Lottery spokesman Dan Rosenfeld said Lottery officials’ analysis found that current law would allow for online wagering if the agency could ensure that all players were in Massachusetts. The Lottery Commission has no plans to establish an Internet betting system, he said, adding, “We’re keeping our options open.”

But online poker advocates, including Nesson and the Poker Players Alliance, are actively resisting the effort to criminalize what they say is a pastime and personal freedom that should be preserved. “Right now because nobody wants to take credit for putting it in, there doesn’t seem to be anyone who would be significantly opposed to taking it out,” said Vin Narayanan, managing editor of Casino City, the industry publication.

After talking with casino developers Sheldon Adelson and Gary Loveman, Narayanan said, he’d concluded the provision’s origin was “a mystery to everyone.”

He said, “The thing is, it’s harder to undo things than to do things. Because it’s harder to undo things, it’s a fifty-fifty proposition. If this had been pre-mark-up, and word had gotten out that it had been in the bill, it would’ve been really easy to take it out.”

Dear Honorable Representative_______________;

I am a resident of Massachusetts a registered voter and a member of the Poker Players Alliance. I am contacting you because I am very concerned about the current bill (H.4307, s. 15(h)(2)(i)) that sits in the committee of which you are a member, The Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies.
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Recently, Governor Deval Patrick proposed a bill (H.4307, click here to read) that seeks to expand casino gambling in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This bill also includes a proposition that would make it a crime for you to play poker on the Internet (See: Section 15(h)(2)(i)). Under this provision, violators will be subject to a maximum term of 2 years in the house of correction, a fine of $25,000, or both. Ironically, H.4307 is pro-casino gambling legislation, yet it makes Internet gaming a crime. This is an unacceptable double-standard!
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