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Copyright © 2006 San Francisco Chronicle

HEADLINE:
Poker players fight online gambling ban

Body:
Washington -- America's 70 million poker players say they aren't bluffing in their resistance to the latest congressional efforts to ban online casino gambling.

To dramatize that determination, their leader, San Franciscan Michael Bolcerek -- president of the national Poker Players Alliance -- staged some most unusual events on Capitol Hill Tuesday. He brought three big-name professional poker stars to court the press, lobby with members of Congress and attend an evening reception for members and their staffs at which a few hands of Texas Hold 'Em were probably played. Not for money, of course.

Congress is considering legislation that seeks either to get banks to block customers' transactions with overseas Internet gambling sites or force Internet service providers to block access to poker Web sites. Poker players say the proposed bans attack nothing less than the American way of life.

"I'd hate for 70 million poker players to wake up one day and learn that their game has been made illegal,'' said pro Howard Lederer, who with his sister Annie Duke forms a sister-brother pro duo in a sport that has become a TV staple the last few years.

Bolcerek, a Cow Hollow resident who says he plays in a weekly game with friends, portrayed poker as a game of skill that's as American as apple pie and motherhood.

"Poker is an American tradition. It has its roots in New Orleans, just like jazz. Many presidents played, including Gen. Grant, Harry Truman and Richard Nixon. So did Chief Justice William Rehnquist,'' said Bolcerek, a longtime high-tech executive who took up his post as paid president of the 20,000-member alliance just a few months ago.

His group estimates that of the 70 million Americans who play various forms of poker, 23 million do so online. Of that figure, 3 million actually play for money via the Internet, said Bolcerek, whose group has opened an office in Washington, and plans a presence in Las Vegas and San Francisco.

While Bolcerek said the alliance doesn't have direct financial ties to any of the online casinos, he won't disclose the names of the few wealthy individuals he said provided the organization's seed money.

Instead of banning online gaming, the alliance says Congress should regulate and tax it, turning it into a profitable domestic business that can create jobs.

There are at least three bills pending in Congress that seek to ban Americans' from playing poker or other casino games online for money. It is already illegal for online casinos to operate domestically, so the multi-billion-dollar business has moved overseas. Credit card companies have also been ordered not to allow customers to use their accounts for the offshore gambling, so players have switched to online payment services that are also based overseas and pay with checks, debit cards and electronic funds transfers.

Sponsors of the legislation cite several reasons for their proposed crackdown, an idea that has been approved by both houses in Congress in the past, but not in the identical form required for sending legislation to the president. They say the lure of games that people can play at home on their computers is addictive and could be financially ruinous.

The bills' supporters also say the games present unfair competition for the regulated, taxed and legal bricks-and-mortar casinos and card clubs. And they say prosecutors have tied online gambling to money laundering and even potentially to terrorist financing. They also say the ease of online betting makes it all too easy for underage players to get deep into debt.

"This is the most addictive form of gambling that's even been invented,'' said David Robertson, former chairman of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling.

"You've got a casino in your home now,'' added Robertson, of Cody, Wyo. "You don't have to get in your car or go somewhere. ''

Nothing in Congress is ever straightforward, and the poker proposals are no exception.

The bills, while trying to ban games like poker and blackjack, carve out exemptions for some online betting on horse races and state-run lotteries. The poker backers call those exemptions hypocritical and say they show that powerful lobbies have managed to protect some forms of gambling at their expense.

That brings in Jack Abramoff, the convicted lobbyist whose influence-peddling schemes are at the heart of scandals that have already nabbed several congressional aides and threaten several lawmakers.

Among Abramoff's clients was eLottery, a company that opposed earlier versions of the bills that made online lotteries illegal. Abramoff helped block those bills. Although Abramoff is gone, the bills moving forward allow some use of the Internet by state lotteries.

The advocates of the bills now paint their bills as part of lobbying reform efforts, and say the Abramoff affair has boosted prospects for their legislation to finally become law in 2006.

"Chances are very good this year,'' said Robertson, of the bills moving through committees now.

"The Abramoff scandal proves that gambling corrupts. It wasn't anything other than gambling money that funded Abramoff,'' Robertson said.

But the poker fans say Abramoff is a smokescreen for proposals that would lead to new government intrusions into Americans' private lives.

"Monitoring what American citizens do in their own homes on their own time with their own money is not the federal government's business,'' said Radley Balko, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Balko said Congress was putting itself in the position of reacting to the Abramoff scandal "by limiting the civil liberties of Americans. ... This is insane.''

E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com

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