Online Poker Coming Back to New York? Bill Clears Its First Vote of 2018

Online Poker Coming Back to New York? Bill Clears Its First Vote of 2018 January 30, 2018 January 30, 2018 Carolyn J Dawson https://www.poker-online.com/author/carolyn
Posted on  Jan 30, 2018 | Updated on  Jan 30, 2018 by Carolyn J Dawson

An online poker regulatory bill has been re-approved by a State Senate Committee in New York, and this has happened for the third time in the course of three years! With such a re-approval, it opens up yet another legislative duel in relation to the future of online poker play within the State. The Senate Bill – number 3898 – which relates to Racing, Gaming and Wagering, had the same kind of variation margin to it as the 2017 outcome. At that time, it sauntered through the Senate, but it was never called for a vote within Assembly.

This year, there was a 10-1 margin from the passage on Tuesday, with the only ‘against’ vote coming from State Senator, James Sanders Jr. Mr Sanders is a Democrat and represents the borough of Queens in New York. Of course, the primary sponsor of the Bill, John Bonancic was amongst those who voted in favour.

Despite Sanders’ ‘aye’ vote in 2017, there was no reason given for his switch over to a ‘nay’ decision. Of course, it’s of little relevance considering the outcome of the 10 votes for the Bill. Following this outcome, it was immediately handed over to the New York Senate’s Committee on Finance. This proves as a compulsory stop before there is a full vote by the Senate on the matter. Back in 2017, the Bill spent three months within this sector before managing to secure a vote of 28-9.

While the journey of Bill 3898 seems to be quite fluid and peachy for the moment, it generally always has been up until the Assembly vote. From 2016 through to 2017, Assemblyman for New York, Gary Pretlow has voiced his support for an online poker bill. However, he has never managed to raise a popular argument in order to satiate the two parties voting in the Assembly.

Pretlow’s Problem

There have been several accusatory remarks made by Mr. Pretlow in previous years, with the blame for an online poker bill not coming to rights being put on others. He claims that women are opposed to gambling or gaming and that last year’s defeat of his bill was down to the female sex. He said that there is “opposition to the legislation by a lot of female members of the Assembly…”, during an interview with Matthew Kredell at OPR.

Pretlow vowed to stick with it though, and this year claims that he knows exactly which members of the Assembly to deal with. However, such statements have been blasted by several people as being very much stupid. While market research does generally tend to show that women are 10-15% less likely than men to favour or participate in gambling, stating that women are against it completely is somewhat narrow-minded.

He only needs to take a look at last year’s Senate version of the bill made by Bonancic to see that his opinion is way off course. This bill received a full Senate vote, with about the same percentage of females as males casting an “aye” vote. Of course, Pretlow’s bill is yet to be called for a vote, so it’s difficult to say what kind of outcome there would be from the Assembly in terms of gender split.

Carolyn J Dawson is a professional freelance poker writer. She specialises writing content about poker/ bingo / blackjack/ etc. as well as breaking poker news. Carolyn has been freelancing for us over a number of years and writes high quality articles. Visit her google + page here