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Jason Kellerman, chief executive officer of Pure Play, a so-called "legal" online poker room based in the USA, will be a featured speaker at the upcoming seventh annual European i-Gaming Congress and Expo in Barcelona, Spain, event organizers announced.
Kellerman is to discuss the legislative landscape for online gaming in the United States, they said.
The event, a convention of sorts for those in the Internet gambling business, runs September 23-25, 2008.
Kellerman's lecture will be on September 24.
Specifically, Kellerman will address issues such as recent developments concerning the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) and the possibilities that one or more individual states in the USA could legalize online gambling, event organizers said.
In a news release announcing the lecture, Mark Walker of Clarion Gaming, which is organizing the convention, stated: "We're delighted to have Jason speaking. Pure Play's unique business model and ability to offer online poker to millions of Americans will be of huge interest to our delegates. We always enjoy having these success stories."
Three-year-old Pure Play, originally known as Bet Zip, is based in San Francisco, California, USA.
The site claims that, despite laws in the USA against online gambling, it is completely legal. =A0 The site offers two methods of online poker: one is completely free and players can win cash, while the other requires a small monthly membership fee but the cash prizes are bigger.
Prize money is generated by ads on the site, as well as from the membership fees.
Because poker players at the site can win money without risking losing any, the site is considered "gaming" and not "gambling," and thus can be run from the U.S. and accept U.S. customers, Kellerman told PokerHelper.com in an interview last year.
Pure Play is just one of several U.S.-based online poker rooms claiming legality, via some legal loophole or another.
Others are Thwart Poker (www.thwartpoker.com), Duplicate Poker (www.duplicatepoker.com) and Triple Jack (www.triplejack.com).
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Thomas Somach, www.pokerhelper.com
