PPA asks goverment officials to exempt Online Poker from UIGEA Regulations

As the deadline for the implementation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act gets closer, the Poker Players Alliance has petitioned the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Board to clarify Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act regulation and exempt peer-to-peer games such as poker from the UIGEA regulations.

The petition was sent to Federal Reserve Board's chairman Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury Department, and was supported by a cover letter signed by 22 members of Congress. The letter specifically states that no extension of the June 1st compliance date is requested, instead, the PPA is asking government officials for an amendment to the paragraph that deems the term ‘wager’ or ‘bet’ as one that does not include “certain peer-to-peer games where the outcome is determined predominantly by the skill of the players, such as poker, chess, bridge, mahjong, and backgammon.”

“In the absence of a clear definition of UIGEA regulations, regulated financial institutions and payment processors are tasked with parsing decades-old federal and state laws that never contemplated the internet, and their application to activities that may or may not be gambling. We believe that Congress should clarify what is and is not unlawful internet gambling, and there are bills before Congress that do that.

There is settled federal law that internet sports betting placed by individuals in the US violates the Wire Act. There also seems to be some consensus that accepting bets on house banked games of chance such as roulette, blackjack and virtual slot machines from the US violates state law. We believe the best way to clarify the regulation is to have the regulation apply only to those two forms of gambling, about which there is some consensus, and to exempt from the scope of the regulation peer to peer and pari mutual wagering.” states the letter issued by the PPA.

The UIGEA enforcement is set to go into effect on June 1, 2010. The UIGEA will prevent banks and other financial institutions such as credit card companies from processing transactions related to "unlawful Internet gambling" activities. However, the UIGEA does not define exactly what type of activities can be considered illegal, instead, the act gives financial institutions the responsibility to determine what constitutes unlawful Internet gambling.

"We don't think this is a doomsday scenario. It's not gonna be unlawful for you, the poker player, to play internet poker, nothing in the UIGEA makes illegal for an individual to play. Second, nothing should stop you from getting money from an online poker site. In fact, the UIGEA prescribes in it that it would not affect pay outs to players” says Poker Players Alliance Executive Director John Pappas in a video released by the PPA.