The Poker Players Alliance Introduced
Online poker is very popular almost everywhere, the one big exception is the United States. This is not because online poker is not popular but rather because the government has made it virtually impossible to play online poker. Because of that the Poker Players Alliance was founded in the hopes of getting the laws changed so that Americans can play online poker just like people in the rest of the world.
The Poker Players Alliance is an advocacy group for American poker players. It was founded in 2006 after laws were introduced that made it nearly impossible for Americans to play online poker. The laws made it illegal for American financial institutions to transfer funds to online gambling sites. This made it virtually impossible to open an account and greatly reduced the number of Americans playing online. Since then the US government has shut down quite a few poker sites which has made it even harder to play online. The Poker Players Alliance was founded to get these laws overturned.
It did not take long after its founding for the Poker Players Alliance to collect a huge membership, it took just a matter of weeks to get over six hundred thousand. There are now well over a million members which does give the group a pretty strong voice in Washington. That being said they have met with fairly limited in success in getting online poker back into the United States.
The Poker Players Alliance used two strategies in the hopes of changing the laws. The first is by lobbying Congress to get laws passed or overturned so that online poker will return to being legal. The other strategy that they have been using is to make legal challenges of the laws that are in place. Given how little interest Congress has in changing the laws this seems like the most likely approach. The fact is that the laws about online gambling are far from clear and most legal experts seem to agree that the federal government has overstepped its bounds. The problem is that using the courts to challenge laws is a slow process that can take years before there are any results.
The other thing that the Poker Players Alliance has been doing is launching media campaigns that support the rights of people to play poker. They realize that the best chance of getting anything to change is to get enough support that the politicians will have no choice but to overturn the laws. Again this is a slow process and it will take years before there is enough support that it will force the politicians to act. That being said there has been good progress made so there is hope that in the not too distant future Americans will once again be able to play poker online.
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