A few things come to my mind when seeing this recent development:

1. Good first step all in all. It is encouraging that it passed  subcommittee by such a wide margin (about 2:1 in favor). Nearly all the Democrats voted for it. About 1/3 of the Republicans did. Would have liked to see more Republican support, but too many Republican Congressmen are still behelden to Bible thumpers. But a few years ago, this sort of bill would have been shot down by more than 2:1, so the tide is definitely swinging in our favor.

2. But let’s not get our hopes up too much. Bills attempting to ban internet gambling go all the way back to the mid 90’s. Most of the time, they would pass the House or the Senate but not both in the same session. Congress has traditionally not put a huge priority on internet gambling one way or the other. The only reason the UIGEA passed was because Senator Frist tacked it onto another bill that was bound to pass. Unless a Senator is able to do the same thing with this anti-UIGEA bill, we likely won’t see legalized internet poker in the US for awhile.

3. This development is great for Party Poker and the other non-US brands like 888, Titan, etc  (especially Party Poker since I think they would take off again in the US if this bill passed). Party Poker stock jumped 20% on the news. Of course, when the UIGEA passed, their stock dropped by 58%.

Conversely, PokerStars, Full Tilt, and the other US-facing rooms may publicly support the measure but are truly against it. The law would ban these sites from becoming regulated, legal websites since they have flouted US law for several years. Not only would they be shut out of being legal sites, regulated online poker would strengthen their competitors. Currently, Full Tilt/PokerStars have larger tournaments and userbases compared to Party and the other non-US sites. Once these other sites are strengthened, Full Tilt/PokerStars would lose a lot of their competitive edge, which would hurt their European traffic as well.  For instance, Europeans may start playing at Party Poker more due to its enlarged userbase and now larger tournaments.

4. Even if this bill became law, states could opt out of it. It’s almost certain many conservative states would. Most states, even more liberal states like New York, still ban casinos entirely, so why would they allow it on the Internet? It could be the bill ends up passing but is ultimately a non-issue since most states opt out and most Americans still end up playing at PokerStars/Full Tilt anyways. We could also have weird scenarios where in some states, it’s legal to gamble on the Internet but not in a casino and vice versa.

I think the main thing to take away from this bill is that the conversation in the United States is finally moving away from ‘how to ban online poker’ and more towards ‘how to regulate online poker.’ It took about ten years of ‘how to ban online gambling’ talk for anything to actually be done. I’m afraid it still may be another 3-10 years of ‘how to regulate online gambling’ before we actually see anything meaningful done.

Phil Hellmuth was spotted in the recently-released Ludacris music video for his song ‘Sex Room’. Yes, ladies and gentleman, Phil Hellmuth is in ‘Sex Room’. Here’s a still from his brief music video cameo:

Hellmuth makes his appearance at around the 2:08 mark in the Ludacris video that includes the lyrics, “Welcome to my sex room! Where your body meets my body it’s our private after party if you want it girl I got it in my sex room!” I know when I think about the private after parties in sex rooms, the first thing that comes to mind is Phil Hellmuth’s toned abs, so it’s only natural that he should appear in this video.

You can watch the new Ludacris music video below:

Phil ‘the Unabomber’ Laak will attempt to put his name in the Guinness World Record books by playing poker for more than 78 consecutive hours. Laak’s assault on Paul Zimbler’s world record will begin on June 2nd in a $10/$20 no-limit game at Bellagio. In an interview with Poker News Daily, Laak says that he expects this game to run uninterrupted through the duration of the WSOP making it a good fit for his 80 hour challenge.

Laak plans to sit in the $10/$20 game at Bellagio at noon on June 2nd. If he succeeds in his quest to play for 80 hours straight, he won’t leave the game until 8:00 p.m. on June 5th. Half of any money Laak wins will be donated to Camp Sunshine, which provides a retreat for children with life threatening illnesses.

In the aforementioned interview, Laak says that he’s hallucinated about floating poker chips during a 40 hour session, so it should be interesting to see how he’s doing after playing for twice that long.

One side effect of the global financial chaos are the zig zagging of  currencies. In mid-2008, the dollar got squashed; the pound and the euro strengthened greatly. The pound reached a 2:1 ratio for awhile against the dollar, and the euro held strong at around 1.5.

Then global financial markets collapsed in the fall. The dollar strengthened greatly against all currencies, as people made a flight to the dollar as a safe haven.

This eventually eroded, and the dollar weakened again in the latter half of 2009. However, the pound weakened too, mainly over fear of the budget deficits, so the pound did not move as well against the dollar as the Euro. The Euro got back to 1.5:1, but has since weakened, largely due to the situations in Greece, Portugal, and Spain.

With all the craziness in the currency world, I find it a bit odd that the dollar is still the primary currency used in games at non-US poker sites. Most of the time, the reason for this is the inertia of the pre-UIGEA world. Most now non-US poker rooms used to accept US players, so their games were structured in dollars.

Furthermore, the $3 max rake has become the unstated rake “price” in the poker world. Poker rooms may not want to risk players exiting for another site if they change to euros and then the dollar suddenly weakens (and their games thus becoming too pricey). I have my doubts how rake-sensitive most players, especially casual ones, are though.

For the past couple of years, I’ve expected a few of the major non-US sites to move their games to either pounds or euros and away from dollars. By moving their games and having all costs/deals made in a European currency, the poker room could limit their currency exposure and have everything in a more local-friendly currency. It’s been 3.5 years since the UIGEA and we’ve had several major currency movements in the meantime. So my guess is the trend will continue, and the dollar will stay king in the online poker world, even at sites devoid of American real-money players.

In a segment that aired this morning on ABC’s Good Morning America, Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke appeared to play poker with one of the show’s anchors, George Stephanopoulos. It’s “Living the Dream” week on the show where each of the anchors aims to cross one thing off of their bucket list. Stephanopoulos’ dream was to play poker against the pros.

He got his wish when Hellmuth and Duke, along with 2009 November Nine finalist Steve Begleiter and Jason ‘Jaspuduf’ Lee, sat down with him at a poker table in Harrah’s Atlantic City. On the line was the “Good Morning America” Poker Showdown trophy. Stephanopoulos outlasted Begleiter and Lee but succumbed to Hellmuth who went on to beat Duke heads-up.

After the recorded segment aired, Stephanopoulos told his co-hosts, “it was so much fun. They were all terrific.”

You can watch the 6:20-long segment here on ABC’s website.