Top 20…or 25…or 50…

Bluff Magazine just released their yearly Power 20 ranking of the most influential people in poker. And as with any arbitrary list this one generated quite of bit of buzz and controversy…which of course is one of the main reasons why you’d publish such a list. It gets people talking and folks in the industry are certainly talking about the names on this list (and the names that aren’t on it).

First off, MY name isn’t on it, and while that’s understandable on just about every possible level it broke my heart. Then again, UB’s Annie Duke wasn’t on the list and quite of few people found that a serious omission. In light of Annie’s appearance on Celebrity Apprentice this year and her lobbying efforts in Washington over the years, I was surprised she wasn’t included. Joe Sebok, who joined Team UB last year and is also the President of PokerRoad, did make the list at #17. Matt Savage, the Tournament Director at the Commerce Casino (and at the last three Aruba Poker Classics) came in at #19…both Matt and Joe seem ranked a bit low to me, considering PokerRoad’s popularity and Matt’s level of respect within the poker community. World Champion Joe Cada was ranked tenth…which I don’t really understand. Does Cada really have that much influence in the poker world? Fame, yes, and he is the reigning champ. But how much pull Cada would have should he raise concerns about, say, the juice in WSOP events is open for debate. Bluff ranked Cada ahead of Phil Ivey…really? Don’t see it.

Another point of controversy is that the top two “people” on the list aren’t people at all–they’re online poker sites. Picking a single person to act as the voice for an entire company can be difficult, but if this indeed a ranking of influential people that’s a choice that should’ve been made (despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations have the same right to political free speech as individuals). Speaking of politics, Rep. Barney Frank made the list at #7, Frank of course having introduced a bill that would overturn the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). But if that’s the case, in my opinion the guy who was instrumental in getting the UIGEA passed should be on the list, should maybe even be #1. Republican Sen. Jon Kyl has been trying for more than a decade to keep Americans from spending their money online as they see fit, and he recently showed that he’s still willing to harm the nation at large over his irrational hatred of online gaming.

In January Kyl blocked President Obama’s appointment of six Treasury nominees. Why, you ask? Because the Obama Administration approved a six-month delay for the UIGEA regulations to be implemented. The UIGEA was passed in 2006; more than three years along it still hasn’t been put into practice because no one knows what the heck those regulations should be. And as the deadline approached there was broad support for holding off for six months to figure things out (and/or wait for Barney Frank’s bill to reverse the UIGEA altogether). Kyl’s voice was one of the few against the delay and when his voice was ignored he went into a snit. And got his revenge by blocking these six Treasury apppointees.

In case you haven’t heard, in 2008 the world economy went through the worst downturn since the Great Depression and the Treasury Department is one of the major players in trying to fix that. And Kyl, pouting over his pet law being put back on the shelf, is keeping the Treasury Department from being fully staffed. As Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman, said, ““Here we are…and there is no Under Secretary of the Treasury. That should be an important position. How can we run a government in the middle of a financial crisis without doing the ordinary, garden-variety administrative work of filling the relevant agencies?”

So while the other members of the Bluff Power 20 may have considerable clout within the poker industry, none of them have the casual ability to do very real harm to the United States government. It’s unfortunate that poker found itself subject to Kyl’s whims in 2006, and just as sad that such a man is able to exercise such power over the nation at large.