GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - Online poker players face legal issues

LAS VEGAS - With the nightclub Tao swathed in red and black, music pulsated and go-go dancers gyrated on raised platforms along the wall. Everything from the "reserved" signs to the billiard table felt to the models' Chinese-style dresses bore the same label: "bodog.com." The only thing missing was the online gambling site's flamboyant founder, 45-year-old Canadian Calvin Ayre, who was nowhere to be found.

"He'd have girls all around him and he'd be the life of the party," said Ronn Torossian, a publicist and acquaintance familiar with Ayre's celebrating ways.

The billionaire who graced Forbes magazine's March cover decided to make himself scarce after federal authorities arrested David Carruthers, the head of rival Web gambling operator BetOnSports PLC, as Carruthers changed planes at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on July 16.

A federal judge ordered BetOnSports to stop accepting bets placed from the United States, and prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of $4.5 billion, plus several cars, recreational vehicles and computers from Carruthers and 10 other people associated with the Costa Rica-based gambling operation.

Around the same time, the U.S. House passed a bill that would ban most Internet gambling. Though the bill's future in the Senate is uncertain, the issue loomed over the
World Series of Poker in Las Vegas: Is online poker legal?

Tournament organizers and the U.S. Justice Department say no. The players, thousands of whom qualified in cash-paying Internet tournaments, say yes.

"I've got no certainty whatsoever," said Ayre, speaking by phone from Canada, days after Carruthers' arrest.

"I don't believe any senior executive of any online gaming company is going to be going into the United States for the foreseeable future," Ayre said. "It's not just me, and I've talked to a lot of them."

The World Series of Poker's uncomfortable relationship with online gambling emerged in 2003, when an unknown accountant named Chris Moneymaker qualified through a $40 online tournament and went on to win the $2.5 million main event, becoming the poster child for the wild popularity of online poker.

Advertising by poker sites on mainstream television exploded ? and then the Justice Department intervened....

rest of the story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060805/...poker_s_future