What Is to Come?

Although it is definitely the silly season for poker right now, PartTimePoker.com presented their usual compilation on the week ahead in poker – and things don’t seem to be as bad as I thought they would.

To begin with, after the successful broadcast of the Player’s Championship, Tournament of Champions airs today on ESPN, ’starring’ among others Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth. Regarding live action, we also entered into the second week of The Legends of Poker tournament with Events #3-12; meanwhile, three international events commence this week: the $2,600 Main Event of the Latin American Poker Tour Florianopolis (Brazil), the €2,000 Russian Poker Tour Riga (Latvia) as well as the $2,750 Scottish Poker Open. Also, FTOPS XVII with 34 events and a guaranteed $19 million prize pool launches tomorrow.

Finally, there is unfortunately some bad news as well: even though expectations are high regarding the freshly passed HR 2267, it will probably take much longer for the bill to become a law than to fall into our current scope. However important step the result of the House Financial Services Committee vote was, it is a long way until it becomes a regulation. First, Jim McDermott's additional bill to tax the industry needs to be passed by the Ways and Means Committee for which the closest possible period is between 13 September and 8 October: "There's a very short window in September we can try to get this done," Poker Players Alliance Executive Director John Pappas told pokernews.com. The site also adds: “For Internet gambling legislation to pass this year, McDermott's bill would need to clear the committee, combine with Frank's bill and pass through the full House. Then the Senate would need to pass a similar bill, beginning from the committee stage. And all this would probably need to happen in the month from September 13 to October 8.” This means there is hardly any chance to legalise online poker this year, but a Congress with a Republican majority after November might halt it even longer.

Anyway, I believe this should not worry us too much right now, an important step has been made and there is little the community can do right now. We should rather tune in for ToC tonight and enjoy what is to come.