I didn’t intend to go here, but while looking up where J. Todd got his information about the $5.2 million spent on online gambling lobbying in Q1 2010, I dug a little deeper into the Bola Verde report (“Business Intelligence for Intelligent Business”) on the IGaming Special Interest in Washington.

(Just a little deeper … the 96-page report itself, which was written in February and updated a week ago, costs $1,200.)

Click here for a detailed summary.

You’ll see that the online gambling lobbying spend is actually down from Q4 2009, but mostly because of cuts from the US Chamber of Commerce. (Had no idea they were even on our side … nor that they were allowed to lobby, lol! Go jobs?)

Also, a breakdown of who’s dropping the dough:

Harrah’s topped the list of spenders at $1.22 million followed by Poker Players Alliance ($785,000), UC Group ($717,239), USCC ($664,442) and the Interactive Gaming Council ($412,580).

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Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) is speaking right now just spoke a little while ago … he’s a friend of poker!

Jackson is one of four cosponsor’s to Rep. Pete Sessions’ (R-TX) HR 6663. That bill, of course, is the most straightforward fix to the UIGEA — simply limiting its reach to online sports gambling — yet one of the more controversial because of, um, politics.

Perhaps shockingly, he didn’t mention anything about the critical importance of being able to easily compete in online WSOP satellites in his five minutes he had to address the world … but hey, that’s where we stand: We have a young, pre-introductory Day 1 speaker to the Democratic party (his debut performance on such a stage) aware of our issues and philosophically on our side, though not exactly the way the PPA would like him to be.

Speech transcript / Video

DALLAS–I happen to be on my old stomping grounds … to play a little Batface poker and try to do the work that police can’t and get to the bottom of the string of robberies here. (Pokerati’s conclusion, despite declarations to the opposite a few weeks ago: the Dallas Poker Bandits are a single group of three or four people hitting one room after another … not random coincidental robberies by different sets of two black guys in ski masks.)

Anyhow, this post isn’t about robberies in Dallas or police raids in Houston — everybody wants the poker money, don’t they? … it’s about the April ’08 issue of Bluff. Though these articles aren’t online yet, three of the four they highlight are about Texans:

One is about how to be like Houstonian Sammy Farha. Another is about poker politics and ledes with a certain group of Dallas players wooing Congressman Pete Sessions to get behind pending poker legislation. And a third is about Gavin Griffin, a former Dallas underground dealer who became poker’s first “triple crown” winner.

Not only do I think that is Texas neato, but also I think it says something about the state’s continued super-relevance in the game. But hey, maybe I’m biased.

Congress is bucking up for a new legislative season — in a presidential election year, no less — and our representatives have to make calculated principled educated decisions about which bills to stand behind. On Monday, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) signed on to cosponsor HR 2610, aka the Wexler bill or Skill Game Protection Act, which would effectively remove poker (along with bridge, chess, backgammon, and mah jongg) from the aegis of the UIGEA.

Sessions is the second Republican to align himself with this bill, and he promises to lend more than just his signature to the poker cause. “If we decide to get in this thing, it’s not because we’re [just] gonna use my name,” Sessions explained, “we’re doin’ it to get it done. Otherwise it’s like a warm bucket of spit — it’s no good.”

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Before saying yea or nay, he wanted to hear more about the issues behind the legislation from the people it affects. So with the help of Lavigne in Austin, a small group of concerned constituents — including pros Clonie Gowen and Robert Williamson — joined lobbyists from the Poker Players Alliance in Sessions’ Dallas office last month for a roundtable discussion about this bill and online poker in general.

This was a real opportunity to inform an influential congressman in greater detail about the horrors impact of the UIGEA and plea for emergency humanitarian aid a federal bailout sensible government intervention. It also provided a privileged glimpse into how our system really works and a chance to see the new leadership of the PPA in action … But yeesh, 9 am is a little early, no?!?

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