A new draft of a bill to legalize online poker in the state of California, written in collaboration between the sate’s Native American tribes, has just been released. The bill is called the Internet Poker Consumer Protection Act of 2013 and eight tribes in all have shown their support by signing onto the bill.
This is a poker only bill that does not include other forms of online gambling, like online casino gambling. The aim is to protect the revenue-generating interests of the land-based casinos that these tribes own and operate. The bill also omits the possibility of allowing international or even interstate online poker, which means that states like New Jersey and Nevada, which have already passed legal intrastate poker and are looking to partner with other such states to allow each other’s residents to play on their respective legal poker sites, would not be able to benefit from the immense online poker playing pool in the great big state of California.
In addition, the bill has what’s called a “bad actor” clauses, which means that any company operating online poker illegally before implementation of this bill would be forbidden from offering online poker legally in the state after the bill has passed.
Poker players around the country are decrying this bill as terrible for players as it restricts the entire California player pool to California sites only, and only sites other than those popular ones that most players elsewhere in the legal poker universe are playing.