Even though I’ve gotten hooked on two-minute video interviews and have kinda taken a personal change-of-interest-pace and started paying attention to actual tournaments … big names are starting to win at the LAPC, WSOP-Circuit Tunica is kicking it old school, everyone wants to know how the Venetian Deep Stacks is gonna shape up with PokerStars heading to town, and I really gotta make it over to the M Resort to check out this whole PartyPoker Premier League thing … I still tune in almost-weekly to APCW Perspectives Weekly for a little catch-up on the international poker and online-gambling-related political scene for 10 minutes at a pop:

This week J Todd keeps us abreast of California and New Jersey’ desires to get in on the online gambling game from a state-size perspective, updates us on the online gambling fund-transfer cat-and-mouse game with MasterCard and Visa getting more serious (just three months before they are legally required to do exactly what they are trying to do), fingers the Eldorado Casino as a potentially shady site to avoid, and tease me with some affiliate business stuff that I don’t really care about but am interested to watch because of the hidden-camera + foreign-accent nature of the upcoming interview.

Here are a few other semi-related newsy links about how things are going elsewhere in the poker world:

The Mayor of Baltimore is pushing for poker+table games despite the governor of Maryland having less of an interest in making expanded gambling a priority.

Michael Barnier, the newly appointed EU Internal Markets Commissioner, promises to straighten out inconsistencies in European online gambling laws.

Police in suburban Alabama are cracking down on / raiding the real-money tournament scene there.

A report from CTV in Canada is reporting that Loto Quebec has received approval from the province’s Cabinet to allow online gambling, including poker. The Quebec site, expected to launch in fall 2010, would be restricted to residents of Quebec, but they would be able to play with players from the BC lottery and the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, which handles the lotteries of the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island in offering a common platform for the players in the six provinces, similar to what the government of Sweden offers with the Svenka Spel site, which offers legalized online gambling to its residents.

It really is amazing, when you think about it, that 10s of millions of people worldwide are competing in games (whether they be sports or shoot-em-ups) on XBox Live, and they’re doing it for no money!

But with Sega opening up a real-money poker room (and casino), you gotta wonder if the likes of Microsoft wouldn’t try to get in on the real-money gaming/gambling action if the UIGEA were suddenly to go away. ** (You also gotta wonder how the guy in the picture even saw the flop. Can you imagine how soft these Xbox games must be?!)

I don’t mean to overstate anything here — because poker is just a game, after all, that we know plenty of people enjoy playing for free.net — but the new Hoyle Texas Hold’em for Xbox Live leaves you wondering if they aren’t preparing themselves for a future where they stand to make more than $10 per download.

And looking at the key features of this new release …

Gamers can play as their Microsoft Avatar.
* Single player games against up to 9 AI players.
* Mixed Multiplayer games with any combination of up to 9 AI and/or human players.
* Fully customizable games let the player decide game type, table minimums, mix of AI vs. human players and much more.
* Ability to reserve seats for private custom games.
* Deep statistic tracking covers over 50 key stats categories found to be the most important to professional poker players.

You gotta wonder if any new players stepping onto the online poker landscape might not have a different outlook on things like bots and datamining than current industry leaders.

** The makers of Hoyle Texas Hold’em have slot machine games, and handheld iPhone versions, too.

ALT HED: Hoyle Sounds a Lot like Doyle

Sonic the Hedge-bettor.

More new players trying to get in on the online poker game … SEGA, the what-happened-to-them video gaming pioneer just opened its interactive online gaming/gambling sites … SegaCasino and SegaPoker … with more TK in 2010 they say.

At least we think the sites are live. With players from the US and Japan forbidden to play, I get a 403-Forbidden error when trying to access SegaPoker.com.

A clip from the CNBC program:

And here’s the CNBC press release:

CNBC Original Reported by CNBC’s Melissa Francis to Premiere on Wednesday, December 16th at 9PM ET/PT on CNBC

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., December 10, 2009-Beyond the Las Vegas strip there’s a thriving underworld of illegal gambling. It’s a multi-billion dollar business and millions of Americans are in on the action…

On Wednesday, December 16th at 9PM ET/PT, CNBC presents “CNBC Investigates: The Big Business of Illegal Gambling,” a CNBC Original reported by CNBC’s Melissa Francis that takes viewers inside this high-stakes business that brings some people immense wealth, while others pay the ultimate price.

More…

More kids and poker, man … it was gonna be an issue anyhow, and Joe Cada’s WSOP win maybe made it even more so. I got an email from a student at Rollins University who’s doing a paper for his English Composition class on something that has indeed become if not a hot topic, a warmer than usual one on college campuses across the U.S.

Below are the questions Tyler in Winter Park, FL, sent me. While #1 is probably the hardest to answer — and ahh, the memories brought back by #2 — I think it’s interesting to see where his thinking is coming from … how the internet is obviously part of the issue, but not nearly all of it … and in general, the starting perception that gambling is a “problem”.

Questions

1.What is your profession?
2. Did you gamble in college?
3.How do you feel college administrations should address this problem? Do we need more awareness or intervention programs on campus?
4.Do you think this is a serious/risky problem for college students today? Why? Does the internet play a major role?
5. Can you comment on these areas of my argument
-Gambling can lead to addiction (colleges already educate on alcohol and drug addiction)
-Gambling can lead to risky behavior (financial problems, crime etc)
-Gambling can negatively affect academic progress

Finally, someone asked President Barack Obama semi-directly about gambling legalization. The college-student questioner didn’t specify online gambling, and he lumped us in with drugs, prostitution, and other non-violent crime with revenue generating potential.

But it does give a little insight suggesting that we probably shouldn’t expect President O to wholeheartedly support the efforts of Barney Frank et al.

ALT HED 1: Come on, Flip-Flop!
ALT HED 2: Is that Isildur?

Free Pokerati T-shirt to anyone (college student or otherwise) who can get an on-the-record audience with the Prez and can ask essentially the same question, but being a little more specific about “online gambling”. Throw a few government stats in there, too, and phrase it in a way that allows less generic wiggle room.

(Or not. Maybe now we know we don’t want Obama getting involved in our issue?)

In case you missed it … an LA Times business columnist (different than the guy who did the Matt Savage piece) brought “our issue”â„¢ to the non-poker fore the week before last:

Calling America’s bluff on Internet gambling
The U.S. approach to Internet gambling, which is legal in much of the rest of the world, is absurd. The activity is unstoppable, so let’s regulate it.

Writer Michael Hiltzik lays it out pretty good — right down to who has what interest in the billions of dollars at stake, the historic political principals in play, and the impracticalities associated with the unregulated, semi-legal status quo. Gotta like the quasi-wholesome, subconscious message the picture sends, too — seeing online poker positioned with Starbucks (manageable addiction) and golf balls (recreational pursuit).

While “our issue” hasn’t fully arrived until Glenn Beck starts chalking up a connection between Ace-Queen and Al Qaeda … this kinda ink does help the poker industry’s efforts to win hearts and minds of Americans who will give five seconds of thought to the matter or more revenue via safer+better online gambling/poker.

Freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) fears online gambling, but hopes his TV show does as well as 2 Months 2 Million.

I’m not sure how much we’re supposed to be sayin’ about this … it seems like a major change in online-gambling law could still be in play in 2009 … but if so, our peeps in DC may be trying to keep it all on the downlow. At least that’s what a staunchly anti-gambling Republican in Utah is trying to suggest.

“I’m raising the red flag,” Chaffetz told the Deseret News on Wednesday. “I feel the imperative to get this organized before it is too late.”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz is speaking to his constituents sounding the warning bells that the billions and billions from online gambling that government just may not be able to say no to could dramatically alter everyone’s way of life. And he doesn’t just mean the positive stuff that we see from being able to play in safe and secure US-based games …

Chaffetz says a chance meeting he had with Frank makes him worry that unlike similar past efforts that went nowhere, Frank is deadly serious about legalizing online gambling this year, and it could come up quickly without much time to organize opposition.

“I saw him in the airport in Salt Lake a number of weeks ago,” Chaffetz said. “I said, ‘Barney, what are you doing here in Salt Lake?’ He was traveling back from Las Vegas, which led to our discussion about his Internet gambling bills.”

Chaffetz said, “He assured me that come this fall, he would be getting these bills through his committee, and I believe him … He may be bluffing, but we can’t afford to take that chance.”

[...]

“This has an unfortunate and real potential of happening,” he said. “This is a big deal. I can’t impress upon you how big of a deal this is.”

Wow. Cool. Awesome. We know we have public support for “our issue” and in general our facts fall on the right side of the law … so I gotta think we only stand to benefit if a guy like Chaffetz is using Frank’s efforts to rally his own base in preparation for 2010 … because really, isn’t that his game here?

Link props: @TheEngineer2008.

UPDATE: Chaffetz is on Twitter, too, as @JasonintheHouse. And he’s also star of a new reality series on CNN called “Freshman Year”.

It is TV ratings season … and mainstream media folks tend to figure a few times a year that gambling stories are “sexy”.

I kinda thought interest in pushing through the Barney Frank bill (in 2009 at least) had waned … but the Wall Street Journal has an article on the tens of billions available to US coffers by lifting the perceived (if not ill-conceived) online gambling ban, theoretically keeping “our issue” on the table:

Bill Lifting US Online Gambling Ban Seen Raising $42B In Rev

More…

People may not realize this … because we have gotten along just fine even with the UIGEA for more than three years now … but December 1st is something of a D-Day for online poker. If no bill or procedural measure undoes the status quo in the next six weeks … well it’s not clear how the game will change, but it will. Dramatically.

That’s why the PPA has partnered with many groups to get this enforcement deadline extended — including the horse racing people, who should LOVE the UIGEA, since it specifically singles them out as A-OK. But even they know the law itself, as it was passed in 2006, is whack … and potentially will mess up their business big-time.

The PPA’s John Pappas gives a brief explanation:

More on BetonSports honcho David Carruthers’ surprising change of plea (in the UK press). Carruthers, of course, was the executive arrested in Dallas in 2006 — where the American government stepped up the level of their online gambling crackdown, showing the intent of not just confiscating hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, but also putting a new breed of white-collar criminal in prison.

We have two major news stories in online gambling. The first is that former BetOnSports CEO David Carruthers has withdrawn his guilty plea in Missouri. And the second is the closing of Pitbull Poker, with rumors of criminal activity and arrests in Costa Rica. Those stories and other industry news.

The idea of using online gaming tax revenues to help fund elements of health care reform became part of the Congressional conversation this weekend. On Saturday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a possible amendment to the Baucus bill (America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009) that would rely on the passage of Rep. Barney Frank’s HR 2267 to set up a regulatory structure that would provide health care revenue.

According to the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, the tens of billions of dollars collected by the U.S. government from online gaming could offset health care costs going forward:

An increased focus on the benefits of Internet gambling regulation are expected as the Senate Finance Committee considers a proposal introduced on Saturday to use Internet gambling revenue to offset the costs of health care reform. The amendment offered by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) would dedicate Internet gambling tax revenue generated through implementation of the currently pending Internet Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act (H.R. 2267) to increase low-income subsidies provided through the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. A PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis shows that collecting taxes on regulated Internet gambling would allow the U.S. to capture up to $62.7 billion over the next decade.

Wyden is a chairman of the Senate Finance subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness.

The Feds have made another grab at money in US banks that at some point passed through online gambling and/or poker sites — seizing three more accounts held by payment processors with claims that the undisclosed sums in them are “forfeitable”.

This time it was the Maryland district going after accounts in California belonging to HMD, Inc.

In late July, Maryland-based federal authorities seized six other bank accounts from Electracash, Inc., also a payment processor alleged to be involved in laundering “proceeds of an illegal gambling business”.

Click here for a little more detail in the Baltimore City Paper, along with the latest seizure warrants.

In all these cases, the US District Court in Maryland has kept investigators’ affidavits calling for the warrants under seal. The New York Southern District handled their June payment processor seizures the same way, until the folks behind Gambling911 filed a motion that forced the courts to unseal them (with redactions).

A year ago, Maryland authorities charged (but did not arrest) two men — Edward Courdy and Michael Garone — with money laundering connected to $24 million seized from various bank accounts during an ongoing investigation of Bodog. The charges against Garone and Courdy stem from two specific transactions they allegedly facilitated — one from Germany to Georgia (for $1.5 million), the other from Dublin to Nevada (for $2.4 million).

G911 claims the most recent payment processor seizures involve online gambling and operations other than Bodog.