This month’s topic will be Internet poker on a state by state basis. The big news is now the state of California. There, State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg has signed on as a co-author of legislation that would legalize Internet poker inside the state, and this seems to me to mean that we will finally see a bill passed by the California legislature and then signed by Governor Brown.

How quick this will get done and exactly what California Internet poker will look like is still not clear to me. However, his is certainly a step in the right direction. For those interested, we have a thread on this topic in the Poker Legislation forum, California Senate leader co-sponsors Internet gambling bill .

In addition to California, there is now progress being made in a few other states. Of course, Nevada, which is also home to Two Plus Two, is way ahead in this area, and I think it’s likely that Nevada Internet poker will be available before this year is over. Other states, including Iowa and Mississippi, also have bills pending in their legislature, and what their outcome will be is for anyone to guess, but again, at least some progress is being made.

The next question is whether different states, that approve Internet poker, will be able to ban together to create a larger player base as some states do with their lotteries. Our legal team has told us that at this point in time it’s not clear what the outcome of this possibility will be. So, we’ll have to wait to see what happens. But even if this is eventually allowed, the key word is “eventually.” We don’t expect states to be grouping together quickly.

Of course, a critical issue will be how exactly Internet poker is going to be offered in each state that legalizes it. Will the rake be reasonable? What games will be allowed? Will the stakes be high enough to satisfy the 2+2 Community? And so on. At this time no one knows.

Finally, I would be amiss if the work of TheEngineer isn’t mentioned. Besides the effort on the state level, it’s more important that ever to continue the effort on the federal level as well. So don’t miss his weekly action plan to promote online poker petitions to Congressional leaders.