PPA HAS AMBITIOUS PLANS FOR 2008

22 February 2008

Top priority is to continue growing a membership that now passes 800 000 Americans


The U.S. online poker pressure group the Poker Players' Alliance has some big plans for 2008, starting with a drive to increase the 800 000 player membership of the body, says executive director John Pappas.

"First off, we want to continue to add to our membership. We are near one million members now, and there doesn't seem to be a plateau," Pappas said. "If there are a million supporters for the game of poker, why not 1.5 million?"

The organisation is also continuing its efforts to get State Directors for every US state. "In January, we sent out an e-mail to see which members might be interested in working for the PPA's efforts in each state," Pappas said this week. "We expected maybe three to four hundred responses and got over 1 000! These State Directors are going to be at the forefront of many of our efforts across the U. S., from recruitment to legislative efforts."

With an election year in full swing those efforts will also include focusing on the Congressional races taking place and trying to motivate the PPA's membership to get involved in the elections, Pappas said.

"We also have aggressive plans for continuing our work on Capitol Hill," he said. "We are working heavily on fine tuning Congressman Frank's bill to overturn the UIGEA, and regulation of the industry." Pappas added that the PPA maintains an interest in Representative Wexler's efforts to legalise poker by making it a game of skill.

"We are also supporting Representative Shelly Berkley's continued drive for a study into the proper action of the United States regarding online gaming.

Pappas said that good progress has been made in educating and communicating with legislators. "While we have excellent support in the House of Representatives, we need to earn some support from members of the Senate and find sponsors there to support the bills on the record," he said.

A strong presence is planned for this year's World Series of Poker in Las Vegas in June, Pappas says: "We want to have a booth presence there at the event, but we want to go a bit further than we have before. While we want to increase our membership, we also want to provide the ability for poker players to register to vote. We want to provide the poker community with the ability to contact their representatives through an electronic mail drive as well."

The regulation of online poker in the United States remains the central goal of PPA strategies, reiterates Pappas: "Some of the events in the online world last year clearly demonstrated that a regulated industry is the best avenue," he opines.

"It's not a question of if it will happen; it is only a question of when it will occur. It's a political impossibility to ignore the realities, that we need a regulated industry to protect the players and the game itself."

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