Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun, even though I usually hate poker puns. Truly though, he is. I wrote about the Massachusetts congressman recently--he's the guy who is trying to reverse the UIGEA. He doesn't play poker or gamble. Instead, he's against the UIGEA based on his views about personal freedom, summed up thusly:

"If it affects me, mind your own business. If affects others, let the government get involved."

Here's a great article on who he is and what he's trying to do. And if you've got a few extra bucks, donating to his campaign is probably a good idea.

You may have read about Polaris last year, when the poker-playing AI program narrowly lost its match against two poker pros. Well, it's back, and this time it won, with a score of 2 wins, one loss, and one draw.

Polaris was designed by the same team of computer scientists that solved checkers. To solve a game, you have to build a database of every possible state and the best move to make in that state. This means that you have to know the complete state of the game at all times. Chess, othello, and mancala could also potentially be solved, although chess has orders of magnitude more possible states than checkers. Unlike these games, poker can't be solved since it you can't know the full state of the game all the time. This makes it a fascinating problem for computer science nerds like me.

What's interesting about this match is that Polaris is now learning and switching strategies:

Before the Las Vegas match, this newest version of Polaris had only played two matches against champion poker players, resulting in one loss and one victory. Polaris repeated the pattern of improving as it learned, falling to humans in the first two rounds, but defeating them in rounds three and four. "Repeatedly, I heard players exclaim that they had never seen a human do that before," said Bowling. "Switching strategies really threw the humans for a loop."

Don't throw in the towel yet, though. The match Polaris played was quite contrived and was heads-up, which is a much simpler problem to tackle than multiple players. I'll be curious to see how well it will do multi-handed.

California Democrat assemblyman Lloyd E. Levine's bill to legalize and regulate online poker in California passed committee yesterday. You might recall that I blogged about this earlier (Online Poker Rooms In California Inch Forward). The original bill was just intended to investigate the possibility of legalizing online poker, but Assemblyman Levine reworked it to directly make it legal. Full story from pokerpages.

The California Gambling Control / Intrastate Online Poker Legalization Act (authored by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys) was approved by the Senate Governmental Organization Committee on Tuesday June 24 on a 6-1 vote, with amendments to move forward on drafting regulations and generating projections for potential revenue.

The Attorney General's Bureau of Gambling Control, the state Gaming Control Commission and the Legislative Counsel will now recommend a structure for the system, analyze potential revenue and draft regulations to be included in the bill's language as it moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee in August, its final stop before a Senate floor.

Just one more committee, then on to a vote! Take that, federal regulations!

Update: A bit of background

Looks like Peter King's (R-NY) amendment to H.R. 5767 that would have blunted the worst effects of the UIGEA failed due to a tie vote in committee:

The King amendment responded to concerns raised by U.S. financial services companies about the burden and ambiguity in the proposed rules to implement UIGEA.

The updated bill would have required federal regulators to adopt formal rulemaking processes to define unlawful Internet gambling activities, to create a list of unlawful Internet gambling businesses, and to conduct an economic impact study on the costs for compliance.

The bill would have also forced the agencies to take into consideration the Paperwork Reduction Act and Regulatory Flexibility Act, current laws the proposed rules to enforce UIGEA failed to address.

Basically, the current UIGEA rules are not properly defined and are largely unworkable, creating a burden on the financial institutions that will have to do the police work to enforce it. Peter King sought to define the rules in a workable manner, which of course would have meant relaxing the regulations.

Also via Lucky Numbers, we find anti-gambling Alabama representative Spencer Bachus displaying his fundie cred:

Bachus issued the following statement:

"Today"s vote was a victory for young people because illegal Internet gambling brings the casino into their bedrooms and dorm rooms, sometimes with tragic consequences.

"Whatever else is said about it, illegal Internet gambling is a federal crime and a crime in all 50 states. Its most vulnerable victims are the young people who by the tens of thousands have been exposed to the risk of becoming compulsive, addictive gamblers."

The only explanation I can think of really is the fundie angle: the right-wing religious groups need their red meat to keep voting for him, so he's helping them out.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of normal people who want to play poker online can't, thanks to this guy and his warped reality. Memo to Rep. Bachus: people will gamble anyway. Just like the war on drugs, the UIGEA will be ineffectual and costly to implement.

Of course, if you really wanted to help young people out, you could increase their educational opportunities. I'm sure Rep. Bachus would support more federal funding for education.

Oh, wait

Yup, he voted against an additional $10.2B for federal education and HHS projects (subsequently passed, then vetoed by Bush), and against $84 million in grants for Black and Hispanic colleges.

With a bad beat jackpot nearing $1 million, it might be worth it to spend some of your online hours there:

This jackpot shattered all industry records, including the largest Bad Beat Jackpot record of $739,621 previously held by Party Poker. But the big question everyone is asking now is whether the AP jackpot will reach the million dollar mark before someone wins it?

And I thought poker was the devil's work:

The Budding Ivey Foundation was founded by Phil Ivey and his mother Pamela Simmons Ivey to continue the noble efforts of Ivey"s late Grandfather, Leonard "Bud" Simmons. Simmons, a true Statesman, was dedicated to helping his fellow citizens by showing them the ways to help themselves.

Full story here. Sounds great if you've got $1000 to burn for a good cause. I wonder if it's tax deductible.

I finally got sick of "Ethan's Blog" and changed my blog name to something more appropriate to the theme and direction I want it to take. My plan for this blog is to continue writing about my personal game and highlighting interesting news stories, but also get in to some of the political, legal, and even sociological aspects of poker. So don't be surprised if I ask you to write a congressman once in a while. You have been warned.