Shortly after the opening of last week’s charity poker tournament to aid the Paralyzed Veterans of America, Ben Affleck goes all-in with a flop of Ace-Nine-King and two diamonds. He squirms when two of his challengers call the bet. He yells “Re-buy”, but the turn is a seven of hearts. Affleck is upset when a jack of diamonds is dealt on the river. He took the hand seriously even though there was no real cash at stake. This is just the kind of thing that Affleck and several other poker enthusiasts are pushing for.

Over $100,000 was raised for the paralyzed victims, but this was not the only function of the celebrity poker tournament held in Coors Field. Members of the Poker Players Alliance are working very hard to legalize internet poker in the United States. As part of their agenda, they are pushing to repeal the 2006 legislation Congress passed which prohibits U.S. Banks and credit card companies from processing transactions related to online gaming websites.

John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance, is optimistic about the direction that the new congress will lead this decision. Pappas says that the alliance is pushing for a licensed industry, just for internet poker, and not for all internet gaming. Pappas is interested in having a safe, regulated industry that all Americans can enjoy. The group is fighting for the rights of people and the privacy they deserve in their own home.

“There are misconceptions about poker and about internet poker,” poker pro Andy Bloch said in between hands during the charity poker event. “Some people think that internet poker is gambling like a slot machine, and it’s not.”

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With all of the attention that the United States government has brought to bear on the Internet -based gaming and gambling establishments and the Internet gambling laws that exist there, it has become nearly impossible for online casinos to do any kind of business at all. With the popularity of these types of gaming and gambling establishments on the Internet since even the early days of the industry, the popularity of these types of websites has been overwhelming and fortunes were made almost overnight. But as more and more extremely difficult to interpret laws and legislation have hit the Internet and the online casinos that depend on the overwhelming amount of incoming traffic to generate the revenue that is needed to continue operating, players and proprietors have both come under attack by the government and have since moved on to greener pastures in many cases. While there are still a small amount of diehard gaming and gambling enthusiasts that continued making use of the extremely popular online casinos that exist on the Internet still, it is certainly a far more difficult task due to the extremely unpopular regulations that prohibit players from easily funding their online casino bankrolls.

With the legislation that makes it impossible for online gambling institutions to conduct any types of transactions with American banking institutions, it becomes apparent that the government has no intentions of allowing players to easily compete in the multitude of gambling facilities that are based on the Internet. With this extremely hostile attitude, the government has shown again and again that there is little logic to this decision, as more effort is continuously poured into the attempts to stop online poker room casino players altogether as well as the tremendous amounts of participants in the venerable sports betting websites that populate the Internet in such tremendous numbers. As the government shows no sign of letting up, many casinos on the Internet have gone the way of the dinosaur and simply shut down their operations altogether. In other cases, online establishment proprietors have set their sights on increasing the amount of international visitors and traffic to the poker room in an attempt to alleviate the reduced amount of revenue being generated overall. With these ongoing attacks by the United States government, it remains to be seen how long these online casinos can stay in business.

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