New leadership at PPA

The PPA is still heading down the road with the position that online poker is illegal but the government should treat it special and ignore it since it's a game of skill.

There are two alternative positions that they just reject outright.

1. Internet poker isn't illegal. That would be consistent with the findings of federal courts.

or

2. The United states doesn't have jurisdiction to regulate foriegn companies who do business on the Internet. That would be consistent with the WTO.

Those two alternatives don't contridict each other, you can logically take both positions. But taking the position that PPA takes rules out two strong positions that have been given support by both federal and international courts.

I don't know why PPA takes the position they do. The only possible reasons I can think of don't really imply many good things about PPA.

Antiga has been successful with prosecuting the US in the WTO. Although the US tends to ignore International Courts who rule agaisnt them, Antiga could make a valuable ally for poker players. PPA doesn't think so, they take a position against the progress that Antiga has made.

Promoter Linda Johnson has been carrying the banner for PPA as it's Chairman until recently. Linda has stepped down (she's still on the board) and they've turned to a failed politician from NY to serve as Chairman. Former 3 term Senator from New York, Alfonse D'Amato.

The Poker Blogs have been reporting the official press releases about it. Here.

Except for one sleazy stock deal, D'Amato doesn't seem to be much of a crook. I'm not sure what deal making talents he has though. When a Senator he was known as Sen. Pothole, it seems he did a good job of making the voters think he was looking out for them. Kind of like the old Cook County Machine.

I'll have to write more about D'Amato in a future post. He seems less than top notch to me, but I might be wrong.