As many of you now know, last month we endorsed Nevada Senator Dean Heller for election to the Senate this November. Unlike most other Senate races, the Nevada contest features two candidates that are both in favor of online poker. Despite this, we consider this race, from a standpoint of obtaining a good federal poker bill, to be the most important one in the country.

The reason for this is that to get a successful bill, the voting in the Senate will need to be bi-partisan. That is, it will need support from both Republicans and Democrats, and right now, more Republicans are needed.

Well, it turns out that Senator Heller has become the lead spokesperson on the Republican side for supporting this issue, and we hope that his winning the election will be the equivalent to bringing a number of additional Senate votes to our side. We don’t see anything like this happening with his opponent. So, our decision to support Senator Heller was an easy one as well as an important one. There’s lots of discussion in our Poker Legislation forum concerning this endorsement since it has surprised a lot of people. We encourage those of you who are interested in this race, whether you live in our home state of Nevada or some place else, to join in.

We also want to announce that we’re hard at work on our next book. It’s titled Further Limit Hold ‘em; Exploring the Model Poker Game and the author is Philip Newall. It discusses some advanced strategies that can be used in limit hold ‘em games, and it’s of the same top notch quality as Philip’s first book, The Intelligent Poker Player. We hope to have it available before the end of the year.

I also want to comment on the status of intrastate poker here in Nevada. It’s coming, and we expect the first sites to be up and running within six months. If you’ve been following the discussion on the forums, this information is nothing new. As more information becomes known and the sites actually start real play, there should be plenty of discussion in the appropriate forums, and of course if we in 2+2 management hear anything unique, we’ll quickly get the word out.

While there is probably a great deal that can be written for this month’s Publisher’s Note,
probably more than any other Note, my decision is to keep this fairly short. The reason for
this is simply everything is already much better covered on our website than I would be able
to do here. But there are still a couple of points to make.

First, all of us need to realize that poker is an individual right. If two or more consenting
adults want to play poker somewhere on the Internet, it’s our position at Two Plus Two that
they should be able to do so without any interference from an outside source, including our
government.

As most of you (who live in the United States) know, presidential politics is beginning.
There should be many candidates on the Republican side, and the Democratic candidate is of
course already known. So, my recommendation when considering who to vote for is to think
about how each candidate stands on the subject of individual rights. As the great Milton
Friedman once said, we should be “Free to Choose.”

My second point is something that I said on our PokerCast, Episode 168. I believe that the
perception of Internet poker by many people who don’t know much about it, and this includes
many important people in our government, is that it’s a clash of Titans where huge sums of
money constantly change hands.

It should also be obvious why this perception persists. As stated on the show, it’s much
more interesting knowing who won or lost $1 million last night than who won or lost $1.50.
But the fact of the matter is that the large majority of games are for small stakes, and
not for huge amounts. Put another way, the vast majority of players are playing for recreation,
and the cost (assuming they lose) is closer to going to a movie than a house.

So, I believe a better job needs to be done in getting this information out. Once more people
understand this, the number of people who perceive poker as some sort of evil should be reduced.

Speaking of our PokerCast, I want to commend Mike and Adam for getting the information out.
As of this writing (April 28) we have had 291,707 downloads of PokerCast
Episode 168 – Black Friday Special; Aftermath of the Online Poker Indictments, an amazing number.

Finally, changing the subject, there will be a sale for some of our lesser selling books
in our Two Plus Two Poker Book Store. For those of you who like to read poker books, this
will be a great opportunity to pick up a few of our titles at a significantly reduced price.
There will be announcements on the website.