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While there has been so much talk about the Las Vegas casinos and European online gambling companies jumping into the U.S. online poker market assuming legislation passes in the next few months to legalize the activity, the real winner may be Facebook.
It’s Zynga poker game continues to top all other businesses that are part of Facebook. Zynga boasts a user base of around 60 million daily (for all of its game applications). The site, however, does not allow “real cash” play with its popular Texas Hold’em game. That could all change if online poker does become legal in the States.
Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass), who sponsored the measure to regular Internet poker in the U.S., believes there is a strong chance his bill will pass by year’s end.
Frank told Gambling911.com’s Jenny Woo last week: “The answer is YES,” the bill will pass, but only if enough of the poker community gets on the phone and contacts their representatives and senators.
“No, if they don’t,” the Congressman asserted. “This is not some preordained thing. This is a political process. I think this - people have been telling me “Oh it’s hopeless, etc”. I’m hoping that with the big vote we got, which was encouraging - let me go back a step – sometimes if people think a cause is hopeless – they won’t get involved. Well I hope they now know it’s not hopeless but it’s not a slam-dunk either. Whether or not this bill can pass depends on how many people who want it to pass call up because I guarantee you the right wing opponents will be working on this and they’ll be doing everything they can to kill it. So we need to hear from people.”
For now, Facebook is downplaying the prospect of accepting real money for its Zynga online poker brand.
They told Business Insider last week that it was, “too early to speculate or get caught up in hypotheticals.”
Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
