Representative Barney Frank now has an additional six months to get new legislation passed that will replace the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and establish some sort of regulation for online casinos.  However, no one expects the road to be easy; after all, it has not been remotely that up to this point.  Even though the House Financial Services Committee is expected to discuss Frank’s HR 2267 and HR 2266 this week, it will take weeks to month before any of those are passed into law.

It looks like with all of the positive motions toward online casinos, however, there is still a good chance that online poker will be regulated long before online casinos.  Lawmaker Robert Menendez of New Jersey proposed a law that would regulate and legalize online poker in the state.

People have long suspected that the various levels of government in the United States would be far more welcoming to online poker long before the opened the flood gates and allow full online casinos.  For a brick and mortar gambling analogy, online poker is sort of the slot machine of the online gambling world;  the game that seems to arrive first prior to a state eventually expanding into table games and full casino services.  

Online poker is certainly moving in the right direction however.  Several states have ruled that poker is a game of skill and not a game of chance, making it legal in most states for people to wager on the games.  The game of skill classification is the justification for legalized Fantasy Sports online.