Professional poker brat Phil Hellmuth doesn’t believe that the plans to legalize online poker in the District of Columbia have anything to offer a man like himself. He’s not talking about people that call themselves brats – he means that the system won’t have any appeal to poker pros.
During a media spot to promote his new iPhone app, Hellmuth commented, “I still think that people are looking for a place to play poker and it wouldn’t be surprising if you had a lot more players than you think start playing. It’s a nice test, sure, but I think there’s so few people in D.C., 600,000, that you might not achieve critical mass for players on the site under those conditions.”
Hellmuth is part of the FairPlayUSA coalition and added that DC would benefit by lobbying for online poker legalization at a Federal level.
He later added, “The states have to ask themselves, how are they going to make money? Are they going to invest millions in software, hire a bunch of people and end up in a situation where they don’t recoup their money for three or four years? Or do they just start taxing it right away, and make decamillions from the start?”
One last reason why Phil probably isn’t that enamored to the online game…there’s less chance that you can make an entrance to be remembered for. He could always try his hand at the WWE though. If it’s good enough for Ric Flair at the age of 156 then surely Hellmuth would be a champion, no? He even has the nickname already and everything.
As for the legislation itself, intra-state has had opponents coming from all angles in recent months and support for federal legislation continues to gather support in many place. It’s simply not likely to happen at anytime soon in the US though.
