Fresh off the heels of failing to squelch the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act‘s enforcement altogether, the Poker Players Alliance is now trying to delay the Dec. 1st deadline at least. As an interest group, the PPA was able to submit a petition to Timothy Geithner, the US Secretary of the Treasury, asking him to push the deadline one year, to give affected businesses the proper time to make the changes necessary to comply with UIGEA. Geithner has 180 days to think it about it before he has to reply. That’s half a year! And December 1st is less than 2 months away.

And, thankfully, Frank is not alone. Authoring a companion measure designed to levy a tax on internet gambling is Representative Jim McDermott of Washington state. This bill seeks to impose a 2% of the gross receipts of online gaming sites licensed under Frank’s bill.

Put the two bills together and you see a vision starting to take shape that is a boon to online poker players and the economically ravaged U.S. government alike.  One site that has not folded under the USA pressure is Black Chip Poker.  They continue to operate even with the current UIGEA regulations.

But as we all eagerly await his (imminent?) success, the states aren’t waiting at all. Lawyer and Washington State Director of the Poker Players Alliance sadly failed in his effort to get a Washington court to repeal a state ban on internet gambling as it was a violation of certain constitutional rights. But the court upheld the ban, and the fight in Washington goes on.

Meanwhile, Californians (including Governor Arnold) tries to make CA the first state to legalize online poker and online gambling, and allow the state to collect a revenue from it by regulating it.

So what does the media have to say on poker bots? Let’s see…

Well, some latecomer “journalists” are merely predicting that these emotionless statistics spitters are poised to take over the online poker world. But as we already know, poker sites are wise to their ways and ever-savvier in singling them out and banning the players who use them.

Still other writers are pointing out, with plenty of evidence to back their theories up, that the makers of poker bots are constantly devising better machines, and whereas human poker pros once had a decent shot against a poker bot, the ones they’re coming up against now seem almost impossible to beat.

What to know about poker bots as a player?

1. They’re legal – in the sense that you can’t get prosecuted, sued, or taken to jail for using one
2. They are, however, unethical–and using them does qualify as cheating
3. And they do violate poker sites’ terms of use and can therefore hold onto any profits you’ve won on the site but haven’t yet cashed out, and worse get you banned not just from the site on which you use the bot but on every site in that particular poker room’s network

So the bottom line on poker bots is: Bot-er Beware!

As for all you ethical players out there, a word of advice: Bots are best at heads-up limit and pot limit games. To minimize your risk of playing against a poker bot, pick No Limit multiplayer games.

In reaction to the unpopular and unlawful UIEGA, over 30,000 citizens voted ‘Yes’ on the item on the website’s Citizen’s Briefing Book (which invites US citizens to “share your ideas on any issue facing the new administration, then rate or comment on other ideas) entitled “Boost America’s Economy With Legal Online Poker“. Additionally, since the item was posted by AAHue on Monday, January 19, over 1,000 mostly-positive comments were posted on the site on the subject.