On Saturday, June 30 at 12:15pm local time, the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), the main voice for poker players on Capitol Hill in the U.S., will be holding a special Town Hall at the Rio in Las Vegas. The casino is home to the ongoing World Series of Poker (WSOP), so plenty of concerned poker players will likely be in attendance.Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), who has sponsored legislation to legalize online poker in the United States, along with Poker Hall of Fame member Linda Johnson and 2004 WSOP Main Event champ Greg Raymer will be in attendance in the Belize Room on Saturday for the Town Hall. Executives of the PPA will join them.
PocketFives caught up with PPA Vice President of Player Relations Rich TheEngineer Muny to discuss the PPA's recent Town Hall tour and preview the Sin City event.
PocketFives: Thanks for joining us, Rich. Talk about the rationale for holding your recent Town Hall meetings around the United States in places like Cincinnati and Tampa.
Rich Muny: We're a grassroots advocacy group, so we feel it's important to go around the country wherever we can and meet members face to face. We can't go to a new spot every day, so we've tried to cherry-pick locations and do the important work for the organization that we need to in order to keep the effort going forward.
In Florida, for example, we met several active Two Plus Two and PocketFives posters. Getting to meet them in person was definitely worth it, but it's also helpful to energize them going forward. These are good events for the poker community. We can see how our message is penetrating and get data we can't get in other ways.
Setting each Town Hall up involves getting a room and getting our presentation together. The next step is reaching out to the poker community via social media, poker news sites, and the weekly news update we send to our membership to let them know a Town Hall is happening.
PocketFives: Can you talk about a few of the Town Hall events so far?Rich Muny (pictured): The Tampa and Ft. Lauderdale meetings were similar. We had the same presentation and issues for both stops. What we're finding is that the people who come to our Town Halls understand the issue as far as advocacy goes, so they're not asking what the PPA is or anything like that.
In Cincinnati, there was a little more interest in the brick-and-mortar game. There were a lot of people who cared about the both the regional and national components of the issue.
We're expecting a big turnout in Las Vegas. We're going to talk about what the PPA does. We'll talk about how we're structured and if people have questions about what's going on in their own states, we'll field them too.
PocketFives: What are your observations on whether online poker legislation is likely to take place at the Federal or state level in the U.S.?
Rich Muny: Nevada wants interstate arrangements of some sort and most of the business interests there are supportive of a Federal bill. California is promoting it as "by Californians, for Californians." Illinois is questionable as to what direction it could go and New Jersey is also a bit of a wild card. The PPA endorses New Jersey's legislation and we've been supportive of it in the Daily Action Plan on PocketFives. The state bills could help break the logjam at the Federal level and allow those bills to push forward.
PocketFives: In Illinois, the Lottery seems to be the frontrunner for offering online poker, although there is some question as to whether Governor Pat Quinn would support a bill. What kind of competitive environment is optimal, in your opinion?Rich Muny: I'd prefer to see a system with maximum competition between sites. I think that's best for the consumer, especially when you have a monopoly whose goal is to maximize revenue like you'd have with the Lottery. Monopolies have to charge what the market can bear, but we have concerns about what would happen to the rake if the Lottery started offering games. That's not seemingly the ideal way to get what we want in place for players.
We have people complaining about the rake at the existing sites that offer services; imagine if there's a government-enforced monopoly. The threat of that happening could help spur the Federal Government to act.
It's a bit different of a situation than what you'd find with your local electric company, for example, which is a monopoly. The electric company sees its product as something you need, so it offers services at a reasonable rate, which gets it a reasonable return.
There used to be competing electric companies, but the government had them combined into single electric companies. They're not allowed to charge what the public can bear because the government told them they can't. There's an agent in each state that regulates what utilities can charge for their services. It won't be like that with online poker.
Visit the PPA's website for more details about Saturday's Town Hall.
