In a move that has surprised many of the top analysts in the industry, it looks as though online poker has found a home for itself in the US senate. Many of the industry’s top analysts would have guessed that the changes to the online poker legislation in the United States would have come from the house before they came from the senate, but Senator Robert Menendez seems to have proven them wrong. The Democratic senator has introduced a bill that would completely change the way the US government looks at the issue of online poker.

The bill is known as the Internet Poker and Games of Skill Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act. And just as the rather lengthy name of the bill implies, this particular piece of legislation would create a pathway towards the legalization, taxation and regulation of online poker within the United States of America. Because of that, the bill is being roundly praised by online poker advocacy groups including the Poker Players Alliance.

The bill goes a little bit farther than that, looking to completely reclassify poker from a game of gambling to a game of skill. At the same time, it looks to force the federal government to come up with a list of online gambling operations that are deemed unlawful so that the UIGEA can actually be applied in a coherent and predictable way. Finally, the bill also looks to make the government clarify the Wire Act so that different online operations do not have to live in fear of a sudden funds seizure along the lines of what happened recently with Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker.

Overall, this bill does just about everything that a poker advocate could want it to do. For that reason, it has been hailed by the online poker community as being just what the doctor ordered. The fact that such things are being considered within the context of the federal government also illustrates the point that even if this bill is not passed, the way in which lawmakers look at poker has changed for the better.