This week, PPA executive director John Pappas told Poker News Daily that his organisation has approached online gambling’s arch enemy Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona for assistance, and is working on a petition appealing that peer-to-peer games be excluded from the final promulgation of the UIGEA rules.

“We need to get Jon Kyl to agree to this revision,” said Pappas. “It wouldnt seek to delay the law, but it would clearly exempt poker and pari-mutuel dog and horse racing.

The action suggests that Pappas is preparing an alternative strategy should Congressman Barney Frank’s attempt to legalise and regulate US gambling in general fail. That bill is accompanied by a companion bill, HR 2266, that seeks to delay the implementation of the UIGEA regulations for a further year, and is due to undergo another House Financial Services Committee hearing – hopefully in the near future.

Pappas’ strategy in approaching Kyl apparently turns on convincing the anti-online gambling senator to support an exemption. I dont think it comes down to Kyl having an axe to grind with poker players. I think hed be open to a legislative solution, but he wants to get his law enforced, Pappas notes.

Speculating on the impact of the UIGEA regulations come June 1st, Pappas told PDN: Its not going to have any effect on those who wish to miscode transactions and those who are not the most upstanding actors. Theyll continue to operate without fear of this law and players will continue to be able to wager on those sites.

“Its the larger, reputable online poker sites that will have to review their operations and make certain that theyre above board.

Writing under the banner “Public Hearing on Sports Wagering, Atlantic City”, Brennan remarks that there is no need to conduct a treasure hunt in order to find substantial funds in sportsbetting, which he notes is “everywhere, in full view, for all to see.”

He specifies the extensive coverage that sports betting achieves on a regular basis in both dedicated and mainstream media, describing it as
“…as common as information for the stock market – and probably more widely read, even on Wall Street.”

Brennan opines that the state of New Jersey, and in particular its currently struggling gambling mecca Atlantic City, would do very well by reaping substantial tax dollars, creating jobs and, most importantly, helping drive visitors and revenue at the local casinos, if it were to regulate sports betting. He examples this by pointing to the benefits accrued by Las Vegas, where sports betting is permitted and events occurring far away attract gamblers wanting to wager and spend money on other Vegas attractions in the process.

“Direct revenue from the wagers is magnified 10x by the economic halo effect of drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors – many from the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania – out to the middle of the desert to place legal, regulated wagers on the games,” Brennan points out.

“And here, in Atlantic City? Unfortunately, there will not be that same influx of visitors and revenue, because regulated sports wagering is not permitted in New Jersey.”

The iMEGA chief goes on to quote the final report of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which back in 1999, estimated that sports wagering in the US represented an underground economy approaching $380 billion, largely provided by organised crime, local street-level entrepreneurs and peer-to-peer, between friends.

“Since that report, all the way back during the Clinton administration, we have seen the explosion of the Internet, the boom of fantasy sports, and an ever expanding universe of televised sports. Given that, it’s hard not to imagine that sports wagering – as an underground economy – is approaching a Half-Trillion dollar market. And, Atlantic City and New Jersey is getting nothing out of it,” he comments.

But it could, he adds.

“Estimates peg a state-regulated sports betting marketplace to be in excess of $10 Billion. A sizeable chunk – more than $3.5 Billion – could be realized by Atlantic City’s casinos,” Brennan writes.

“Given the population density of the state, its position in the Northeast Corridor and less-expensive transportation options when compared to Las Vegas, Atlantic City could see a significant stimulus to its resort casino economy if state-regulated sports wagering were permitted.

“Instead of low occupancy levels during Super Bowl weekend or the NCAA tournament, Atlantic City would become the place to be on the East Coast during those periods.”

However, Brennan cautions that state regulated sports wagering is not a single, silver bullet remedy to all of the challenges facing Atlantic City. “But it can be part of the solutions needed to reverse the town’s fortunes by providing a stimulative effect. More traffic means more dollars means more jobs. Atlantic City’s casinos would be able to renovate their properties, and new properties being constructed would have an additional pillar on which to base job creation and ongoing success.”

Brennan then gets to the real meat of his argument – Internet gambling.

“Our association comes at this issue from the vantage point of the Internet,” he writes. “Online operators would like to find a home in the US, as it represents the world’s largest market for them. Enthusiasm for New Jersey as the world hub for Internet gambling is high, ironically, because of the state’s reputation as the toughest regulatory jurisdiction in the world.

“Operators that can meet NJ regulators’ standards and licensing requirements would become the most valuable companies in the sector, and be rewarded with consumer trust, access to capital markets to help them grow, and the opportunity to become public corporations offering shareholder value.

“Atlantic City and New Jersey, if it chooses, could become the global capital of “the Next Gaming industry”, a hub for online commerce, as well as the high-tech jobs and infrastructure investments it would create. The integration of this new, high-tech industry with Atlantic City’s resort casinos would be a powerful vehicle for driving foot traffic and revenue in this town.

“Some suggest that sports betting in New Jersey be limited to the casinos. That would be a fine plan if this were 1980, and not 2010. To suggest that sports wagering be limited in that way would be to ignore what the Internet and technology has accomplished in the last decade. Instead, we should work hard to integrate the online market with the offline, Atlantic City resort casino market in a way that drives growth for both, and significant tax revenue for the state.”

Brennan goes on to attack the arguments put forward by professional sports leagues that sports wagering could undermine the integrity of their games, saying: “That is an argument that cannot be logically sustained. So what the leagues are saying is, in effect, ‘leave this marketplace underground’.

“Does that make sense? Can anyone really believe that leaving this underground economy to organized crime and street-level operators would be preferable to state regulation? No. Precisely the opposite is true. Yet the leagues continue to make this illogical argument, and probably will all the way up until the point where they sign lucrative revenue sharing agreements with betting operators like they have in European soccer.”

Shulman is the Chief Executive Officer for long-time rival Card Player magazine but Bluff Europe insists that poker and not politics comes first when it comes to who appears on its covers.

“We thought it strange that no other UK poker magazine put Barry on the cover,” said Michael Caselli, Editor-In-Chief for Bluff Europe.

“We’re a poker magazine. Barry won the World Series Of Poker Europe so we’re putting him on the cover. We’re not afraid of Card Player.”

Inside, Shulman discusses his recent win over Daniel Negreanu for the coveted title while five-time World Series Of Poker bracelet winner Scotty Nguyen gives readers an insight into his life through the first part of his Propping Up The Bar With Scotty Nguyen column. Nguyen recounts his childhood and the dream of going to Las Vegas as well as how he escaped from a refugee camp in Taiwan.

A host of live tournament reports including all of the action from the World Series Of Poker Europe, European Poker Tour and the English Poker Open are also included in the November issue while there are top strategy tips from the usual suspects.

Bluff Europe is aimed squarely at the poker enthusiast and is distributed through European card rooms and poker clubs as well as on newsstands in the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia. Regular contributors include Phil Laak and Paul Jackson alongside a host of other poker professionals from the UK, US and Europe.

Just like the 2007 original, this version gives too much to the Seminoles, and doesn’t leave enough flexibility for the state.

There are way too many escape and reduction clauses, and a few new wrinkles that aren’t in the state’s best interests.

A new escape clause that caught my eye: A vague and confusingly worded passage that lets the Seminoles stop guaranteed minimum payments if the federal government allows online/Internet gaming and the tribe’s annual gambling revenue drops more than 5 percent.

Does this mean the Seminoles get an out if online poker sites are legalized?

If you’re a lawyer or a masochist, you can read the entire document by clicking here. And you can read the Sun Sentinel’s overview by Josh Hafenbrack here.

Will the Legislature go for this deal? I’ve given up trying to predict, but let’s just say there are enough stumbling blocks and “red flags” (in the words of legislative point man Bill Galvano) to send this deal into the muck.

That could leave things in the hands of Federal authorities — the Department of Interior and its Bureau of Indian Affairs — to sort out.

Here are a few more random thoughts about the deal I scribbled out:

–The compact’s definition of “covered games” only includes slot machines and table games like blackjack and baccarat. That means the Seminoles don’t have to share any poker-room revenue with the state. Pari-mutuel poker rooms give 10 percent of revenues to the state.

–The compact has a sliding scale that calls for higher revenue sharing percentages as gambling revenues increase, but it divides the threshold between Seminoles’ three Broward and four non-Broward casinos. That will make it harder to trigger the higher rates, which is good for the Seminoles and bad for the state.

In other words, if the Seminoles make $1.3 billion in Broward and $1.2 billion elsewhere, they don’t pay based on the $2.5 billion total (which would trigger a 25 percent rate) but on the two smaller amounts (which have a 15 percent rate).

–Limited oversight of Seminole casinos would be handled by the state Department of Revenue, which has no gambling experience, not the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (which oversees pari-mutuel racinos).

–The new deal has an escape clause if any current South Florida slot machine licensee moves, meant to prevent slot machines at the Miami airport or the Fountainbleu Resort. But that might not sit well with Mardi Gras dog track, whose license allows it to move anywhere in Broward.

–If blackjack is allowed at South Florida pari-mutuels, the Seminoles get to cut payments from its Broward casinos by half. That’s too much.

–If the Seminoles don’t make required payments to the state (an unsettling prospect), or if there are any other disputes, the tribe and state can go to arbitration, then federal or state court.

Your thoughts on the new deal? Should the Legislature ratify it? If no, then what?

Now, Kansas is poised for an unlikely distinction: It is about to get into the casino business, not merely by blessing gambling and taxing the profits but by becoming the legal owner of the casinos themselves.

Kansas is believed to be the only state with such an arrangement. It already has four Indian casinos, but its first nontribal one is set to open in December in Dodge City, the former cowtown and setting of television’s “Gunsmoke.”

It is all because the state, known for its conservative history and a vibrant right wing within its dominant Republican Party, needs the money.

Lawmakers in recent months have slashed money for schools and other state services, and the current state budget relies on $50 million in casino licensing fees to remain balanced.

“It’s terribly ironic, and disappointingly so. I never dreamed that Kansas would be the first to try this experiment,” said House Speaker Mike O’Neal, a Hutchinson Republican who fought unsuccessfully to block the 2007 law authorizing the new casinos and slot machines at racetracks.

Developers will build the casinos, install slot machines, set up tables and manage dealers, all under contract with the state lottery. They pay upfront privilege fees: $5.5 million for Dodge City and $25 million each for casinos planned in the Kansas City and Wichita areas.

The state will own the games and control software determining who wins and may overrule management decisions. Contracts spell out how revenues are divided.

“The whole ownership thing it always struck me as a little bit squirrely,” said Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political scientist. “You could imagine Louisiana owning the casinos, or New Jersey.”

But Kansas?

Voters here imposed prohibition in 1880 and kept it for nearly 70 years, well after the federal government repealed it. Afterward, the state constitution continued to condemn the “open saloon.”

The state school board went back and forth on evolution during the past decade, rewriting science standards four times and making Kansas the target of international ridicule.

The state has been at the center of the national debate over abortion, too. George Tiller’s clinic in Wichita was among a few in the nation that performed late-term abortions, spurring protests and laws designed to restrict his practice until the doctor was shot to death May 31.

All of it would appear to make the turn toward gambling unlikely save for the state’s troubled finances.

The American Gaming Association says the United States already has 179 commercial and 420 tribal casinos outside Nevada, as well as 700 card rooms and 44 racetracks with slot machines.

So, industry officials and analysts say, why not more casinos in Kansas?

David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, notes other seemingly conservative states Iowa is a frequent example are awash in games of chance.

Also, as Loomis noted: “When revenue is a consideration, old-fashioned morality sometimes goes out the window.”

Twelve other states have nontribal casinos and a dozen have racetracks with slots. Several own machines at tracks, but the American Gaming Association says Kansas is the first with the arrangement for an entire casino.

Clark Stewart, chief executive officer of Butler National Corp., the Olathe company building the Dodge City casino, said the real issue is the 27 percent share of revenues for state and local governments.

“We’re at the top end, percentage-wise, of what we can do,” he said.

The Kansas Constitution once banned any lottery a term courts interpreted broadly enough to cover slots and table games but resistance to gambling eroded over time. Constitutional amendments in 1986 made exceptions to the ban for the state lottery and betting on dog and horse races. Federal law allowed the Indian casinos to open in the 1990s, whetting some legislators’ appetite for commercial ones.

To get any constitutional change on the ballot for a vote, supporters need two-thirds majorities in the Legislature something social conservatives have blocked when it comes to commercial casinos.

But state ownership through the lottery didn’t require another constitutional change, only a new law approved with simple majorities in both chambers. In 2007, gambling supporters barely obtained the necessary margins.

The state hopes to choose developers for casinos for the Kansas City and Wichita areas before year’s end. The Dodge City casino plans to open with 575 slots and 10 tables, then expand within two years.

“I guess it doesn’t strike me as particularly odd,” said Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, an Independence Republican who voted for the casino-and-slots law. “Every state has its own historical contours.”