New online gambling game law affecting World Series of Poker?

The recently signed law on USA's territory, "anxious" to prohibit the online gambling games, could seriously cut back the number of those signing up to participate to the biggest video game with carts on this planet, a.k.a World Series of Poker. Or at least that's some official observer's opinion, a declaration that is immune from the growing number of participants in the tour, from 839 in 2003, to 8.773 this year. The anticipated result of applying the law before the tour is being launched in 2007, is fast and apparently the only rarefaction of poker players.

Michael Bolcerek, president of Poker Players Alliance - a group with about 130.000 members - has declared:

"It's going to affect the average player most dramatically. And those players are the ones that have kind of filled the ranks. The hardcore ones will find somewhere, they won't care whether it's regulated. That's what a prohibition does. It drives everything underground."

Mike Sexton, no one else but the host of the World Poker popular tour presented on Travel Channel, thinks that this kind of delay will affect on a large-scale what today is being considered a sport.

"I wouldn't say it would put poker in a death spiral but in the long run it will hurt the growth of poker. The World Series of Poker is going to be devastated over this."

Hope has managed to "infiltrate" among the operators, through several declarations based on the number of poker tables, in Las Vegas that has grown from 142 in 2003 to 405 in 2006. Apparently, the new law should be capable to discourage the organizers, as ESPN, which supported the tour as far back as 1993, will continue to do that (legally) until 2010. Gary Thompson, the spokesman of the tour has communicated that "starting with the year 2005 , the organizers had no longer accepted recordings intermediated by the online companies, and that has affected participants flow."

Moreover, to preserve the general state of trust, PokerStars.com has revealed the fact that they have already taken care of the costs for the 1.600 online players, qualified this year.