Online poker makes push to return; tribes wary

WASHINGTON — Since he dropped out of Seattle Central Community College, Alex Fitzgerald said, he’s found the good life: winning more than $2.5 million as a professional online-poker player and quickly becoming one of the hottest young gamblers in the world.

Poker, he said, is his passion and his profession, and he studies it every morning. But he’s doing it in Costa Rica. He said he must play on foreign land because online poker is illegal in the United States, after the Justice Department shut down the three largest sites on Apr. 15, 2011, a day known among gamblers as Black Friday.

“I can never live in my country of birth again without giving up the only job that has consistently fed me since I was a teenager," said Fitzgerald, who’s 24.

One thing might change that: Congress could legalize online gaming, allowing at least 150 U.S. poker players who’ve fled the country to return. While the poker industry is lobbying hard to make that happen, it’s the ultimate nightmare for many U.S. Indian tribes, who fear that it could destroy their $28 billion-a-year casino business.

While no vote has been set, poker lobbyists have lined up backing from the nation’s most powerful senator, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who once headed his home state’s gambling commission. They’re banking on Reid to muscle a bill through by the end of the year, reversing the ban approved in 2006.

Legalization is a worrisome prospect for many tribal officials, who predict that most gamblers would be less likely to drive to casinos, often found on isolated tribal lands, if they could play for money on their home computers.

On Capitol Hill, where congressional committees have been debating the issue for months, tribes have been busy trying to line up votes.

“We see legalization of Internet gambling as a direct threat to the economic growth in Indian country, and we do not support any proposals that legalize Internet gambling," said Glen Gobin, an officer with the Tulalip Tribes in Washington state.

Others are moving to make sure the tribes will have the upper hand in running online poker. On Thursday, Hawaii Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka, the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, unveiled a draft of the Tribal Online Gaming Act of 2012, which would allow federally recognized tribes to apply for licenses to operate online poker.

Akaka, who’s regarded as a close ally of the tribes, is seeking reaction from tribes and other senators before deciding whether to formally introduce the measure.

Critics say it would be a big mistake for Congress to scrap the 2006 federal law, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

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