Washington State iPoker Bill Dead Again!

Any optimism that the online poker bill introduced in Washington State last month (HB1114) might have gained some measure of support in the state Senate was cruelly dashed last Wednesday after it failed to even receive a hearing. Just like in 2015, the bill will now likely remain on the shelf for the rest of this year, before possibly making a reappearance in 2017.
House Bill 1114, proposed by State Representatives Sherry Appleton and Vincent Buys, if approved, would have allowed operators to apply for licenses to offer their online gambling products in the state. That is now a distant possibility this year, and as a disappointed Sherry Appleton commented after the bill’s failed passage:
“The bill did not get the support that I had originally hoped for and consequently we will not be moving forward with it this session.”
The number of potential online gambling states was already small before Washington’s online poker bill bit the dust, but now the shortlist consists predominantly of California, Pennsylvania, and possibly New York. Unfortunately, there are no indications that the potential jewel in the crown of US iPoker, California, is any closer to bridging the gap between its disparate gaming interests who have thus far stymied any attempts to move iPoker legislation forward.
Pennsylvania and New York, on the other hand, have seen some advancement in their online gambling bills, but in the absence of any concrete results online poker in the US will continue to remain confined to the states of Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware. At least individual states do have the option to pass online poker legislation if there exists sufficient support, though. Anti-online gambling proponents, including Sheldon Adelson, for instance, have proposed a bill known as the Restoration Of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) which would have denied individual states the right to do even that, and instead banned online gambling at a federal level.