Poker Forum

The year's first congressional hearing on Internet poker wasn't so much a debate about the merits of federally licensing and regulating the game online as it was a discussion of how eventual regulation should be handled.

Tuesday's hearing in the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade was a lot different from past Capitol Hill hearings poker, most of which involved contentious arguments between Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) in the House Financial Services Committee.

There were no poorly made Bachus comparisons of poker to drug trafficking or child...