Efforts to legalize real-money online poker in California this year are likely dead, but that doesn’t mean stakeholders in a future industry there aren’t already gearing up for the long road ahead next year and possibly beyond. The most recent firm to form a partnership for online poker in the Golden State was Louisville-based Churchill Downs, according to a Thursday report from The Courier-Journal. The deal is with Crystal Casino & Hotel in Los Angeles and Ocean’s 11 in Oceanside, which are under the same ownership. The partnership means the groups would work together to bring a poker site to…

Over the weekend, the PokerStars Pro Tour concluded with its final four events. The last stop took place atTurlock Poker Room & Casino in Turlock, California, and another large turnout of support took place. Fans, poker players, and media members from around the Central Valley region flocked to the room, hoping to get the chance to meet with Daniel Negreanu and Vanessa Selbst. As previously mentioned, the PokerStars Pro Tour has been running since the middle of July, promoting awareness and support for legally, regulated online poker in the state. That’s something Mario Alvarez, Director of Casino Relations at Turlock…

The politics of prohibition reared its ugly head again last month when legislation was introduced to ban all Internet gambling, including the fledgling intrastate web poker industry that exists in Nevada. The bill from U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is a clear play to boost the chances of his long-shot presidential campaign. Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman Sheldon Adelson, a Republican Party mega-donor, happens to oppose Internet gambling, including poker. Web poker was played all over the country, for real money, before sites were shut down in 2011 by the Justice Department under a flawed interpretation of the Wire Act….

California online poker has quite the full house when it comes to legalization According to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, there are 89 cardrooms in 32 counties in California, and of the 110 federally recognized tribes in the state, 58 of them run 60 casinos — many of which have poker rooms. Even so, there is still a big pot of money left on the table when you consider California online poker, a game that’s currently not legal in California. Only New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware have legalized Internet poker for now. Efforts to legalize web poker have been ongoing…

PokerStars has joined forces with a number of California tribal casinos and cardrooms to launch an online poker coalition in an effort to promote an open and fair market for any future regulated internet poker market in the state. The new ‘Californians for Responsible iPoker’ group features five tribal-gaming groups as well as the Commerce, Bicycle and Hawaiian Gardens cardrooms. Each member of the group has already reached an agreement with PokerStars to use the online poker operator’s software should the state opt to regulate internet poker activities. PokerStars said the group will enable it to demonstrate in state-level hearings…

California’s chances at passing an online poker bill in 2015 may be all but dead and buried if secondhand statements attributed to State Senator and Governmental Organization (GO) Committee Chairman Isadore Hall III can be taken at face value. A recent column by John Howard that appeared in Capitol Weekly quotes two sources – one named and one unnamed – who claim to have spoken with Hall recently on the issue of online poker, and both indicated that despite the progress the issue has made in the Assembly, online poker is a dead issue in the Senate. “He said he…