New Nevada Bill to Mark the End of WSOP Staking?

...accepting or facilitating a bet or wager on the result of any race, sporting event or future contingent event, without having first procured, and thereafter maintaining, all required gaming licenses SB 40;

While it is quite clear that SB 40 probably wasn’t created with poker in mind (or not too much, at least), its effects could easily spill into poker economy due to ‘future contingent event’ stipulation, which can be translated into a poker tournament.

What does this mean for poker economy?

Shortly after the text of the Bill had appeared online, a 2+2 thread was started, discussing the potential harm this could bring to the live poker economy. As mentioned in the first paragraph, it is no secret that a lot of live players sell a percentage of their action, and if this option is no longer available, the WSOP numbers could easily see a significant decrease.

This Bill could also potentially outlaw a well common practice of swapping percentages between the players (for fun and to decrease the variance), so quite a few usual routines could come to an end. Some, however, believe that even if this bill is passed, it will not have that big of an influence on poker, simply because those in charge will not put so much focus on poker players (and staking).

There are, of course, those who believe that outlawing the poker staking good be a good thing, but this could be a shortsighted view, as the fact remains that a big part of today’s economy is dependent on staking even if it sometimes creates somewhat unusual scenarios at the tables.

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One way or the other, this Bill is still just a proposal and it will take some time before it either accepted or rejected, so nothing should change super fast. If passed, it will certainly influence the numbers for the World Series; it is, however, hard to say how big of an impact it would create exactly.