Yesterday marked the anniversary of online poker’s Black Friday. Anyone who ever clicked a raise button remembers the fateful day, and many are reminiscing about how their world changed on April 15, 2011.

Here’s a best-of list of links, tweets and general brooding from over the weekend:

The cold anniversary was, of course, trending on Twitter Twitter hashtag #BlackFriday … From Ben Lamb wondering if anyone would tweet about it to Dan Fleyshman posting this sad picture http://instagr.am/p/JcjU9BJT1C/

The legal landscape

Reminding people they really do represent the players (especially since Black Friday) the PPA urged them to continue to contact their political representatives. http://www.lvrj.com/business/poker-lobbying-group-marks-black-friday-anniversary-147424325.html

As legislators grapple with the future of online poker, Nevada officials want to host the first legal sites. http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/13127-black-friday-the-day-that-changed-online-poker

Poker affiliates reflected on lessons learned since being forced to admit that the whims of authorities are a legitimate risk for anyone doing business in a legally gray world. http://www.casinoaffiliateprograms.com/blog/black-friday-lessons-learned/

On the casino side, Frank Fahrenkopf, president and CEO of the American Gaming Association, pushed for amendments to the Wire Act and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) that would “unambiguously eliminate illegal Internet gambling.” http://www.americangaming.org/newsroom/press-releases/statement-on-the-anniversary-of-black-friday

And FairPlay USA has Greg Raymer reminding you to sign their petition while former FBI Director Louis Freeh cites the anniversary of Black Friday as a call for federal action and continue the fine worl of the DOJ. http://fairplayusa.com/blog/fairplayusa%E2%80%99s-judge-louis-freeh-statement-black-friday-anniversary

Meanwhile, lawyers of all stripes took note, with a new class-action lawsuit filed against Full Tilt filed just before any anniversary parties. 
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/04/13/45602.htm

Thanks for the memories, DOJ

QuadJacks.com did a special anniversary live podcast, which included “original Black Friday audio.” Ah, the memories.
http://quadjacks.com/poker-radio/

Short-stacked Shamus gives a thorough write-up of the drama to that would befall so many in different ways. http://betting.betfair.com/poker/poker-news/black-friday-one-year-later-130412.html

Wicked Chops Insider talked with poker industry leaders about where they were when they heard the news for an oral history of that fateful day (worthy of free distribution). http://insider.wickedchopspoker.com/543/an-oral-history-of-black-friday/

Many pros, like Shane Schleger here, had to share their thoughts and perspective from a day they won’t forget. http://shaniaconline.blogspot.com/2012/04/black-friday-one-year-later.html

Like a moment frozen in time, here’s the original 2+2 Black Friday thread, which received more than 6,000 replies in the first 3 days: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/reuters-full-tilt-poker-pokerstars-absolute-poker-charged-illegal-gambling-1020606/#post26050483

The guys at pokerfuse.com produced a bomb-ass timeline, tracking all the major events since that dark day, including their own birth. http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-depth/one-month-black-friday-timeline/

Michael Gentile, a former online pro, interviewed Poker Players Alliance board member Patrick Fleming to (re)assess the online poker legal landscape in the US. http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-depth/us-legal-landscape-one-year-after-black-friday/

Here’s another sharp timeline at PokerStrategy.com. http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/world-of-poker/One-Year-Since-Black-Friday:-The-Complete-Timeline_58551/

And another by-the-minute timeline at PokerNews.com. http://www.pokernews.com/news/2012/04/the-black-friday-timeline-one-year-without-online-poker-12445.htm

Poker still has a future

A bunch of pros, like Matt Waxman, told PokerStrategy.com that this year’s WSOP Main Event should hold steady. “It’s like so prestigious and like world renowned, you know, so everybody’s gonna just make it out cause this is the one tournament that like if you’re the guy who plays the nightly home game for 100 bucks, you’re gonna splurge your 10k just so you can play in the main event,” he said. Like riiiight. http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/world-of-poker/Daily-Rewind-Black-Friday-Anniversary,-New-Gambling-Film,-WSOP-2012-Thoughts_58570/

CalvinAyre.com looked at the companies “making noise” about bringing online poker back to the United States. http://calvinayre.com/2012/04/15/poker/how-to-make-it-in-america/

QuadJacks put out a new music video by Sonny Caine and Dennis Rybaczewski (DRybes) to inspire a little hope for the future.

And our own Dan Michalski summarizes it all as simply a “big, industry changing day” in All In – The Poker Movie, which is available April 24, 2012, on iTunes. http://mashable.com/2012/04/13/online-poker-black-friday/

The Poker Players Alliance continues to evolve, with Rich Muny, aka @TheEngineer2008, appointed Vice President of Player Relations. Now it is officially The Engineer’s job to communicate for the PPA on various blogs and social media forums, from Twitter to 2+2 — pretty much as he has been doing since long before April 15, only now he’ll be the guy responsible for filtering through internet noise to make sure the PPA is hearing poker players’ legitimate concerns as various bills and political stuff moves forward.

Read the full press release below:

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The House Committee on Financial Services released an official statement this evening which announced the awaited introduction of a new federal internet gambling bill by Rep. John Campbell (R-CA).  The new <shall-we-say> #campbellbill is, at the moment, identical to the last amended HR2267, whose most recent version can be found-> here.

From the press release:

WASHINGTON – The Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act was introduced in the House today by Congressman John Campbell (R-CA) with Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) as a leading sponsor. Congressmen Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) and Peter King (R-NY) are also leading co-sponsors.   The bill is identical to H.R. 2267 that was passed out of the House Financial Services Committee on July 28, 2010 with bi-partisan support.  The bill would establish a federal regulatory and enforcement framework under which Internet gambling operators could obtain licenses authorizing them to accept bets and wagers from individuals in the United States. The legislation comes in response to the enactment of Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which restricted the use of the payments system for Americans who gamble online.

As a recap, HR2267 passed through the Financial Service Committee last July.  It never took further steps in Congress last year, despite a significant sweat.  Harry Reid floated a draft of an internet gambling bill in December, known lovingly as #reidbill in Twitter, which also never made further official progress on Capitol Hill.  HR2267 contained no mention of the now dreaded “blackout” period that was the most infamous part of the #reidbill draft.

You can read the full statement by PPA, giving Campbell/Frank a virtual pat on the back-> here.

photo: WYFF4 – Greenville

No charges have been filed, despite yellow tape identifying this site of a deadly poker game as a crime scene.

This time it was player-on-player violence … leaving one man dead and another injured after a gunfight broke out early morning at a warehouse poker game in Anderson County, SC.

Jermaine LeCorey Scott, 34, supposedly was losing in the wee hours of a game last week, and at some point pulled a gun on five other players. Though not clear whether or not the triggering incident had anything to do with a bad beat or involved accusations of cheating, police contend Scott was attempting to rob his opponents … even though he was not wearing a mask like most (99 percent?) armed poker robbers.

From local news reports: Channel 4 (with video), more Channel 4, Channel 7

Players supposedly called flagged down police at a nearby intersection around 7 am on Tuesday to report the shooting, and deputies arrived to find two men shot, lying on the ground in the empty warehouse, which may or may not have been cleared of poker supplies before their arrival. Scott died at the hospital from multiple gunshot wounds a few hours later. The other player, unnamed, had bullet wounds to his hand and a concealed weapon permit. Police investigators have ruled the deadly shooting a matter of self-defense — justifiable homicide — and say they have no plans to press any charges.

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The somewhat nutty former Sen. Al D’Amato is getting ready for his upcoming trip to Washington — State, not DC — and is calling the online poker troops to action in Olympia, for the PPA’s big shindig in support of Lee Rousso at the state Supreme Court.

It really is an offensive law that Washington passed in 2006 — the Internet Gambling Ban, making it a felony to play a computer game online — regardless of where you stand on poker. But we’ll have to see how the non-poker masses take to one man’s challenge the constitutionality of such a government intrusive.

I’m pretty sure the WA Court doesn’t make its decisions on the spot, so it will likely be some time before we learn if the below vid that D’Amato and the PPA just put out is an invitation to a victory party or a battle cry. Either way, it’s still fun to hear D’Amato get all impassioned:

I don’t know Washington state’s gun laws, so for now it’s probably best to leave your weapons at home. But you can still suit up belligerently in appropriate rally attire:

I’ve been a fan of John Stossel, and his willingness to call bullshit on conventional wisdom, since the days I started noticing the difference between good journalism and bad. He has since moved from ABC News to Fox, where his libertarian shtick is a tea-party-friendly line of fiscal conservatism that challenges the moral contingent who want to impose on personal freedoms. Thus, the newest cause he’s taken up (at least for a week) is gambling … specifically online gambling.

Stossel outs himself as a recreational poker player in an episode of his namesake show on Fox Business that aired Thursday: Bans on Betting.

The show re-aired throughout the weekend, and will be on one more time tonight, Sunday, at 10 PM ET.

His efforts to bring the online gambling issue to the fore last week extended far beyond his own show. Here he is on The O’Reilly Factor:

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Witht the June 1 enforcement deadline fast approaching, PPA Executive Director John Pappas lays out a new strategy for dodging the UIGEA:

They’re sending a petition around Congress requesting an exemption from the UIGEA for online poker and “peer-to-peer” games. Procedurally, this is similar to what got us that first six-month delay. And while it seems like a bit of a hail mary — starting off with just 22 signatures – if the PPA pulls this off it could be huge. Just guessing a bit here, but an exemption for poker, an ex post facto carveout essentially, seems like it would be a serious reversal of power akin to a middle pocket pair turning a set against an Ace-King that connected on the flop.

Haven’t spoken to anyone about this yet, but I think the big telltale sign here will be whether or not Harry Reid gets on board. He’s the guy other Dems (like my rep, Dina Titus, who recently signed on as a co-sponsor to the stalled Barney Frank bill) often look to for direction. Supposedly the rumors we’ve been spreading about his support for online gambling (and a possible poker-only bill) have been “greatly exaggerated”. And if you recall, his longtime big supporters at the American Gaming Association want more online gambling for sure, but only after this June 1 D-day passes.

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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The PPA isn’t giving up on moving Barney Frank and Jim Goodlatte’s online gambling bills through Congress before (or after) the June 1 UIGEA deadline. In response to their efforts — and perhaps testament to their progress — one of the original UIGEAers Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) has joined forces with his colleague Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) in a letter encouraging all congresspeople to resist any sensible appeal to legalize internet gambling.

They seem to be playing fierce and maybe even a touch dirty. The bipartisan nature of the letter is sure to catch some undecided Congressional eyes — and in it they drop a story about a college student committing suicide after going uber-deep into online gambling debt.

Click here to read the letter circulating in Washington DC.

Before it gets too late, big congrats to Pokerati blogger-player Jon Katkin, who took 2nd place out of 220ish in the Opportunity Village Celebrity Poker Tournament at Caesars Palace last Saturday.

Nice!

Katkin bought in for a single $300 tax-deductible good-cause bullet, and with blinds rising quickly, maintained a 10-20 BB stack throughout to get to the final table. There, he knocked out Howard Lederer and outlasted Allen Cunningham to win $5,000, a week’s stay in a fancy-room suite at the Rio during the WSOP main event, and $1k in food comps at any of the restos there.

Read Katkin’s take on his own game as well as PokerGrump’s impromptu coverage of the event.

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No one should get too excited about the supposed Full Committee Hearing for the Barney Frank (D-MA) bills … engines may be revving for HR 2266 + 2267, but these bills aren’t really “moving”. At best they are spinning their wheels and at worst they are flat-out stuck in political mud.

The PPA informs us that the hearing has been “postponed [until] later next week possibly”. Its being scheduled for a Friday shoulda been the first clue that the House Financial Services Committee wasn’t really serious about having a debate on these bills. At this point in an election season, the members often try to get out of Washington DC as early as possible on a Friday so they can return to their home districts.

The whole purpose of this not-so-scheduled hearing is not for debate and mark-up … but rather to appease a Spencer Bachus (R-AL) beef, who previously complained the last time they talked about these bills that Frank did not do his due diligence and invite the Deptartment of Justice and the Treasury (and maybe the Federal Reserve?) to testify. Supposedly someone from California is also looking to speak, saying these regulatory matters should be left to the states, not the Feds.

A month-and-a-half ago Barney Frank (D-MA) was prepping us for life with the real UIGEA in fully enforced effect — at a time, no less, when Federal law enforcement was saying “we know who you are Full Tilt, and you better be ready to tell us who Isildur1 is!”

But this upcoming week, Frank’s online gambling bills apparently are moving … on the docket for Friday, April 16, are Full Committee hearings for H.R. 2266, Reasonable Prudence in Regulation Act and H.R. 2267, the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act-Governmental Perspectives.

Click here to watch the committee hearing live when it happens.

UPDATE: This hearing has been postponed, without a new date set.

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The PPA was in Massachusetts this week, testifying before a joint committee on behalf of H4069, which would classify poker as a game of skill — apparently important as that state considers a variety of casino-related legislation.

Go Massachusetts Skillaments, but elsewhere, far more is at stake for states that could care less about the nuances of what is and is not technically gambling amongst avowed gamblers. Thus, PPA Executive Director John Pappas has been crisscrossing the country addressing states considering intrastate online poker, trying to persuade them not to muddy the online semi-gambling waters with legislation that comes to the table inherently flawed, legally and from a competitive market standpoint.

Pappas was in Florida last week, addressing a Senate committee on regulated industries. Florida, as we know, has been working on more and more legal poker for the past five or six years with much success, so why not extend that to the internet? Well, Pappas explains, because problems needing fixin’ at the federal level first. Without it, anything any one state creates, he says, automatically will exist in a a legal gray area that could be challenged in a variety of federal ways. And because of this gray area, and the way poker works, regulated “state monopoly” sites will struggle to compete against the unregulated likes of Full Tilt and PokerStars. (He doesn’t mention those sites by name, but players know that’s who he’s talking about.)

It’s an important argument to begin honing, because right now we have California and Florida moving aggressively in the intrastate direction — supposedly with Iowa and Wyoming about to jump on the bandwagon. Legislation can be a rather cut-and-paste enterprise these days, so if those four states go, then it’s only a matter of time before some 40+ others follow suit, which could undermine, or at least complicate, years of work on by poker’s favorite grassroots advocacy group.

Have a listen. In addition to bringing the California arguments to Florida, for the first time we hear the PPA start to lay out some of the details on how internet poker taxation would work under either the Frank or Menendez bills — with provisions included for individual states to receive their revenue share from the federal regulatory system. We also learn of a new organization — the Poker Voters of America — that has effectively brought the idea of intrastate online poker to the Florida legislature. On its surface, the PVA doesn’t look too different from the PPA. But strategically, they’re fighting the UIGEA in a much different way. Well-meaning but misguided is the gist; can we have your donor list?

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Greg Raymer is still alive in the NAPT main event (with 128 of 872 remaining). He made it just in time for the tournament … via Washington DC, where he was at CPAC 2010, bringing “our issue” to the people who came to see the likes of Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, John Ashcroft, Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson.

It’s kinda a tough sell when you think about it … the buzzwords in influential conservative circles these days are all about less government, not more. So here we have poker’s Libertarian ambassador trying to persuade GOPers to: forget the moralists in favor of personal freedom (ok, probably doable), set up a new government bureaucracy to monitor our financial activity on the internet (what the …?), and tax him a lot more personally. (“OK, now we gotta hear this; hey Jeb get over here, I think the guy who showed up in your office this summer wearing shorts and sandals with socks is gonna tell a joke!)

Vanity Fair seemed to find it a little bit mockworthy. But according to Time magazine, what really matters is that poker players do know how to party:

But probably the coolest parties that first night at CPAC were secret ones — invite-only passes palmed to a select few. The first one was hosted by the Poker Player’s Alliance and included CPAC’s “It” kids, James O’Keefe of Acorn pimp fame and his three cohorts who were recently entangled with the law for messing with Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s phone lines; anti-tax champion Grover Norquist; conservative media personality Andrew Breitbart; and 2004 World Poker Champion Greg Raymer. The open bar at Medaterra got quite a workout with young conservatives ordering everything from beer to shots of Redheaded Sluts, a crimson concoction involving Jagermeister. (After some debate, no one was game enough to try a flaming Redheaded Slut.) Breitbart and the rest of the Louisiana Four — as they were fondly hailed by many at CPAC — then headed over to a party hosted by Mike Flynn, editor of the website Big Government, at Morton’s Steakhouse. Flynn not only had an open bar tab but stacks of fine cigars for guests to chuff on.

BTW, check out CPAC’s straw poll to see what issues matter most to people who consider themselves true conservatives in 2010. You’ll see on page 11 that the runaway favorite for president amongst these folks is Ron Paul (R-TX), who generally hates all things more-government, but as a co-sponsor to the Barney Frank bill, could prove a critical ally.

Some pokery political types are in London right now for the International Gaming Expo. Figure out for yourself why there might be foreign interest in the likes of the Poker Players Alliance, right as this bill gets ready to go into “mark-up”. Our pal J. Todd is there and he tracks down PPA Exec. Dir. John Pappas to talk about the 2010 Barney Frank bill, what’s the strategy behind it, and what makes it different from previous online poker legislation.

It’s apparently all gonna be twitter-based this go-round — www.tweetforpoker.com.

Good interview helping mak sense of it all: