Shuffle up and deal

There is still work to be done but that first step is always a doozy. We were all doing just fine and no one was bothering us until someone snuck a small piece of legislature regarding internet commerce and foreign banks into a bill that was largely an anti-terrorism bill. That was the day internet poker and on-line sports books new they had arrived because they had just lost a huge audience, Americans living in the U.S.A.

The UIGEA
The UIGEA, or Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, was signed into law in 2006. This act does not make online poker or online gambling illegal. This act instead targets banks and financial institutions, demanding that they identify poker and gambling transactions and block them.
To date, banks have had extreme difficulty enforcing this act. Billions of transactions take place every day in the US and banks don't have the resources to identify individual transactions. In late 2009, the implementation of the UIGEA was delayed for 6 months to allow for more debate and to give banks more time to comply with the law.
So far, the UIGEA have proven to be an impotent piece of legislation. The only effect the UIGEA has had is that sometimes credit card transactions to poker sites are blocked. In those cases, players simply choose a different deposit method and continue on as normal.

It has taken almost 5 years but we have a light at the end of the tunnel to get back the full ability to play poker online for REAL money(legally) and maybe, just maybe, go even farther.
http://www.onlinepoker.net/poker-news/poker-law-industry-news/online-poker-bill-passed-federal-lawmakers/6854
The above article hints that online gambling could be legalized, obviously it would get taxed if it was legal but at the same time if it wasn't taboo maybe it would lose some of its lustre. So for everyone who would stop betting on sports if you taxed it someone else would take interest because it would be available everywhere. Don't believe its possible to get a handle on the gambling market? I present to you the Canadian government, the province of Ontario allows you to bet on sports everywhere lottery tickets are sold. Its called Pro-Line,
http://proline.olg.ca/demo_proline_e.jsp  you get a sheet that has the sporting contests listed and odds for the possible outcomes, you choose between 3 and 6 outcomes and place a wager amount of $2 or more. If all your outcomes are correct you win. Winnings are claimed exactly as the lottery is and the losses are allocated to fund various entities within the government just as the lottery is. Just make sure you understand all the abbreviations, I learned the hard way that NJ is the Giants and NY is the Jets, explanation given was because Giants play in New Jersey. I know, I know. They both do and the NJ would seem to fit the J in J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets but my argument didn't win and neither did my 3 team pro-line wager that I thought was a WINNER because I didn't have the Jets, I had NJ(the giants) but anyway you get the point. Individual states could have their own pro-line or they could form a co-op like Mega Millions and Power Ball and share. Can you see the Saturday and Sunday morning convenience store lines during the NCAA and NFL seasons with guys(& gals) wanting to place their 3 to 6 team parlays?
Back to poker to wrap this up, the current bill that was passed by the House Financial Services Committee will only legalize online poker, so sports betting will need a Pro-Line like movement, and the bill will most likely need to be attached to something larger to get passed into law. Like most things that the government gets their hands on there will be hoops to jump through for the licensees or the site operators but it is a start. HFSC communications director, Steven Adamske said "We shouldn't be telling [Americans] what to do with their own money."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-economy/2010/07/congress_is_thinking_about_mak.html