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Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) took advantage of a hearing on legalizing online poker to not only compare poker players to heroin addicts but also attack poker pro and Celebrity Apprentice Season 2 runner up Annie Duke regarding her affiliation to the popular online poker room UB.com.
Two years ago, UB.com was embroiled in a highly publicized “insider” cheating scandal that made national (and international) headlines via a 60 Minutes CBS news magazine segment. UB.com has since made good on paying those players they believed may have adversely been affected by the improprieties.
But Bachus, one of online poker’s most outspoken opponents, hasn’t forgotten the matter.
Upon bringing up Ms. Duke’s affiliation, she was quick on her toes to respond.
“The site self-regulated and refunded all the money to its customers. I would prefer to have something like HR 2267 so that the government could oversee that regulation. I think that the customers of that site were lucky that they were playing under a site with new management that behaved in an honest way and refunded them,” said Duke. “The one individual who perpetrated the crime and breached the software has not been prosecuted because unfortunately there is no jurisdiction to do so.”
That one individual in question is Russ Hamilton, accused in the 60 Minutes piece of manipulating the software and cheating players out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hamilton was the 1994 World Series of Poker main event winner and he hasn’t commented much on the charges levied against him.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), who proposed the legislation, is expected to bring the bill back to the committee for a mark-up and vote possibly by next month. With enough votes the legislation could then go to the full House of Representatives for consideration.
Duke, who missed her flight out of Washington, D.C. Wednesday evening, offered this tweet to the poker community:
“I hope I did a good job for poker players today. I want to represent us well.”
It appears as if she was on her game.
Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
