The Government and Poker
With the American government doing battle with online poker players from all over the world in a bid to make online poker illegal within states in the United States of America, poker players all over the world have been looking to try to get as much power behind their fight to keep online poker legal, enlisting the help of the Poker Players Alliance, a group that has over one million members, all willing to fight to keep the game legal.
New events will certainly be great news for both the PPA and all of their members, with the European Commission now joining the legal case, question who the United States of America have dealt with the issue and their policies.
With the European Commission looking into the policies that the United States have in place, they have been quick to reiterate their concerns that the United States have consistently fallen short of the standards that have been set out by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by continuing to deny access to feign based gambling providers.
A full report was published on Wednesday that was created by the European Commission, revealing that they have established that the United States is violating a number of trade laws with their actions that they are placing into force.
The main issue that has been brought into question by the European Commission report is that the laws in which the government are trying to place into action surrounding the online gambling issues with online poker and the FullTiltPoker.net Download client, stating that it is a game of luck rather than skill, is proving to be inconsistent due to the fact that the government are still willing to allow horse betting.
Although the report mentions inconsistencies like these, the European Union Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton said “Internet gambling is a complex and delicate area, and we do not want to dictate how the U.S. should regulate its market, however, the U.S. must respect its WTO obligations. I hope that we will be able to reach an amicable solution to this issue.”
With this latest turn in the court case, the intensity of the legal bill is coming to a boil, with the government now deciding to pull rank, requesting that banks freeze funding that online poker players at PokerStar.com are withdrawing from their accounts at two of the biggest online poker rooms on the internet.
The Poker Player Alliance group were informed that the reasoning behind the freezing of the accounts was “because they constitute property involved in money laundering transactions and illegal gambling offences.”
How this case is going to end, nobody knows but one thing is for sure nothing is going to prevent this hitting high priority news for millions of people not only in the United States but all over the world.
Lets hope that the thoughts of the European Commission in their report will be used to get the right result in the case, online poker remaining legal.