This Year in Poker 2015

As a difficult but interesting and sometimes fruitful year draws to an end, let’s take a look back at some of the highlights of the poker year away from the tables.

January

Mid-January saw Washington – one of the most anti-online poker states in the USA - take a huge stride towards regulation when Democratic Rep. Sherry Appleton introduced House Bill 1114 for consideration by state legislators. The new law aimed to reverse the current ban on online poker -a ‘crime’ punishable by prison time.

The Bill stated: "Despite a lack of regulation due to prohibition, playing poker over the internet remains popular with Washington state players. To better protect the people of Washington from potential danger from, and to maintain oversight of the systems used to carry out internet poker, the legislature finds it to be in the interest of the people to establish a regulatory framework by which entities, as authorized by the Washington state gambling commission or a tribal regulator, may offer poker games to players within Washington state over the internet."

Although the bill stalled the following month, Curtis Woodward – an advocate for ipoker legislation in the state – said, “Make no mistake, we took a huge step in the last year, and HB1114’s demise should not be viewed as a failure. It was just the beginning, and players must continue to make themselves heard by engaging in the process.”

February

In Europe, Portugal's Council of Ministers approved a bill to regulate online poker in the country, in the belief that the new gambling legislation would generate additional fiscal revenues of €25 million. As with many US states, the fiscal attraction is a major motivation for introducing legislation and taxation of ipoker.

Back in the US, Pennsylvania’s regulatory battles were just starting when John Payne’s House Bill 649 was introduced.

“We are currently facing a projected $2 billion budget shortfall,” said Payne in a statement. “I think it’s important we consider all responsible options to boost revenue before we consider asking our taxpayers for more money to fill that deficit.”

By the end of the year, the Bill had survived several attempts to defeat it, and according to OPR, “Payne noted that it was recently brought up for second consideration on the house floor. “It’s physically alive and well and on the calendar for second consideration, so that literally within two days time we can run the bill,” said Payne.

March

In the US there was a smaller but highly significant event, with Nevada and Delaware launching their long-awaited interstate network – bringing the online poker pools together, with a marginally positive effect.

According to Pokernews, “The dynamics of the Nevada online poker marketplace is expected to change not only due to the shared liquidity compact with Delaware, but also with the expected introduction of Treasure Island into the marketplace. Treasure Island will also be running on the 888poker software platform and is expected to form the All American Poker Network (AAPN) in conjunction with WSOP.com Nevada.”

In Europe, March was pretty much a tale of online sites fighting over a slightly reduced market, with PokerStars in Italy and Spain (.it and .es) taking the lion’s share, while in France Winamax were the number one.

April

This month saw the beginning of what might have been a massive boost for the poker world, with Japan looking ready to legalise and regulate casino gambling. The country’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was reported to have the strong support of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and if approved, it could have launched “what analysts estimate will become the world's third-biggest gambling market after Macau and the US.”

Unfortunately, the push for legalisation foundered when national security funding issues took centre stage, and it seems like it will be well into 2016 before the chance arises again.

Back in the USA, both Visa and Mastercard added a new Merchant Code Category (MCC) which differentiates between legal online gambling and unregulated online gambling. The result of a year or more of lobbying from online gaming companies, the move has reportedly had very little effect.

May

California was to the forefront of this month’s regulation debates, with various committee hearings, state assembly votes, casino deals and even a PokerStars arranged demo to coincide with the biggest hearing.

With the main stumbling blocks appearing to be the ‘bad actor’ clause (which would disallow certain huge companies and individuals who had continued to operate in the US after the UIGEA Act was passed) and the fact that a strong lobby of native tribes opposed the idea of racetrack gambling being legalised.

PokerStars threw Daniel Negreanu and Jason ‘jcarver’ Somerville into the melting pot, in a high-profile show. The Press release stated: “Efforts to authorize and regulate online poker have more momentum this year than ever before. To give people a better idea of what exactly online poker looks like and to better understand the consumer protections in place, PokerStars is hosting an online demonstration.”

By August, the push for legislation was still being described as a ‘Herculean task’ by those involved.

June

Romania hit the poker news headlines when their National Gambling Office (NGO) introduced an incredibly strict new frameworks for online operators to obtain licences. William Hill responded to the new rules by withdrawing from the country on June 2nd, with all Romanian accounts being suspended and affiliate partners instructed to remove William Hill-branded marketing materials.

The new framework for a regulated online Romanian market would see operators having to pay 20% back tax for 5 years on all Romanian players and also provide an “in-depth breakdown of revenue by online gambling channels” to initiate the licensing process. Ladbrokes and Bet365 had previously left the Romanian market in view of the proposed guidelines, now in effect.

Elsewhere in Europe, the online gambling regulatory bodies of the UK and Denmark joined forces to share information from June onwards.

Spillemyndigheden and the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) are working together to allow the Danes to “better understand how to provide a higher level of protection to Danish gamers.”

In addition, Spillemyndigheden spoke of how the UK and Denmark were “working to address international money laundering.” Information will be shared between the organisations in what is set to be “a two-way relationship”, according to igamingbusiness.com.

July

California again started the month off with some bad news. Assemblyman Mike Gatto gave up his attempt to pass a bill which would regulate online poker in California, saying that a consensus on how to proceed had not been built.

Also, the American Gaming Association showed signs that it was moving away from its ‘no to online poker’ stance when AGA President Geoff Freeman warned that "the industry must ‘be cautious’ about ’the role of the federal government in our business" and insisted that "the industry should look ‘cautiously, suspiciously’ at bills that invite the federal government to play a greater role.”

This statement was a big change from the AGA’s usual ‘no comment’ on such matters.

August

The first of the month saw the Irish government begin taxing online gambling operators, having passed the Gambling (Amendment) Act 2015 last month.

Following a tortuous 4-year process to get the act through, the government estimates that Ireland could gain “an additional €25 million per year from taxes and licensing fees in its coffers from gaming operators that wish to legally service the country's residents.”

The Act also “contains provisions to punish gaming operators servicing customers in Ireland without a license.” A fine of €300,000 for illegally providing gaming services in the country will be levied on repeat offenders.

Paddy Power, one of the biggest operators in Ireland and the UK gave the news a cautious welcome, stating: "We have worked closely with the authorities in Ireland on the Betting (Amendment) Bill, ensuring that there is a level playing pitch for all companies who operate in the Irish marketplace irrespective of if they are based in Ireland or not."

In other August news, PayPal’s policy of not accepting payments even from legal online gaming sites was reversed and they started to accept both deposits and withdrawals. The policy had been in place since 2006 in the USA.

September

In what appeared to be a relatively quiet month, with only the ongoing California saga punctuating the silence, the last day of September brought the news that everyone had been expecting for a long, long time, PokerStars were back in the USA!

They returned to New Jersey to be precise, where the long-awaited ‘yes’ to Amaya Inc. - which operates both sites - was seen as a major step-forward in New Jersey’s burgeoning online betting industry. This was PokerStars' first appearance in the US after a 4-year absence.

The NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) confirmed that it had ‘issued waivers’ to six subsidiaries of the gaming giants to operate both PokerStars and Full Tilt through a partnership with Resorts Digital of Atlantic City.

David Baazov, the chairman of Amaya, was pleased that New Jersey had finally found his company’s sites ‘suitable’ for offering real-money online gambling. “We look forward to bringing our popular brands, innovative technology, marketing prowess, world-class security, and game integrity to the growing New Jersey online gaming market,” he said, adding, “I want to thank the DGE for their thorough and fair review of our business.”

October

The majority of the headlines in October were not about poker at all, but rather the DFS scandal which broke when a DraftKings employee released sensitive data prior to the deadlines for team postings.

The resulting furor led to calls for regulation of the burgeoning industry, and several investigations were launched – the main results of which were DFS being classified as gambling in the states of Nevada and New York, with the resulting complications such classification brings.

In Europe, the German research organization Statista revealed that the world-wide online gaming market would reach a staggering $41.4billion by the end of 2015, exactly tripling in size since 2005. The European market is the biggest of all, accounting for about 1/3 of the annual revenue which covers all forms of online gambling including poker, casino games, sports-betting, lotteries and bingo.

The Amaya Inc. acquisition of PokerStars was seen as a major boon to the growth in the sector’s profitability and both PaddyPower and WilliamHill– big players in the UK market - were singled out for 20%+ revenue growths among the leading companies. Bwin.party, acquired by GVC Holdings in late-summer, were less impressive.

In other news, the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) chose this month to announce a peer-to-peer review of online networks to assess whether 3rd-party software, bots, etc. add to cheating and collusion.

The move came in the wake of several scandals, the most recent case this summer seeing PokerStars launching an investigation into Russian and Kazakh players allegedly winning $1.5million in the sites PLO games by using sophisticated playing robots.

November

The state of Pennsylvania took a huge step towards formally legalising and regulating online poker on Wednesday when the House Gaming Oversight Committee voted to pass a bill – officially known as House Bill 649 – that will see online gaming legalised if it is passed.

According to Bruno de Paiva for PokerTube.com “the bill would see online gaming offered by Pennsylvania’s existing bricks and mortar casinos, and people over the age of 21 who wish to play on an online gaming network would be required to register with a casino.”

Eighteen of the 26 Committee members voted in favour of the bill, in what was a sign of solid, but not unanimous support. The tick of approval from the Committee was met with support from those from the pro-poker lobby, including the Poker Players Alliance, who said it was “a step in the right direction for online poker in Pennsylvania.”

In other news, the Global Poker Index CEO Alex Dreyfus’ vision of sportifying poker took another step forward following the announcement of a partnership with USA TODAY that will see the publication post poker-related content pertaining to the GPI in print as well as online.

December

Regulation-wise, it would have been a quieter month were it not for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform meeting which saw the supporters of RAWA licking their wounds after a heavy defeat in debate.

The Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) is the main tool used by opponents of online gambling, and is fiercely backed and funded in various ways by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. However, the debates did not go his way as several of his supporters stumbled their way through testimony.

Casinonewsdaily reported that, “According to proponents of a federal ban on Internet gambling, the legalization of online casino options may result in increased criminal activity and may pose more challenges to gambling customers. However, RAWA opponents said that with proper regulation, in-state online gaming would not be more challenging than existing brick-and-mortar casinos.”

In other news, it was left to the banks and the Justice department to take a swipe at poker players, with Daniel Negreanu having a couple of his bank accounts frozen courtesy of Operation Choke Point.

The controversial program is a hotly-debated initiative launched by the Justice Department in 2013 as “a way to combat consumer fraud by working with multiple government agencies”, primarily designed to discourage banks from doing business with “high risk” industries.

The Justice Department initiative has come under fierce fire recently, with lawmakers this summer approving the ‘de-funding’ of it, critics stating that

The extent of its knock-on effect on poker remains to be seen, though targeting high-profile players such as Negreanu is unlikely to do it any favours in the long-run.