List of Ten Most Influential

January 6, 2009

Gambling911.com has released their annual list of who they feel are the ten most influential in online gambling today, or at least over the past year. This year there were a couple of surprises, especially in the number one slot, but overall pretty much what you would expect to see.

Although it was interesting to see that Calvin Ayre, the founder of the online gambling site Bodog.com and Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl did not make the list. Ayre has been on the list many times over the past few years, but has since retired putting him off of the list. Kyl has long been considered online gambling�s worst nightmare, but has been pretty quiet in the past year and thus was booted as well.

Ron Paul was number ten on the list, simply because of his dedication to online gambling and his run at the presidency. Ivan Demidov came in at number nine for making the final table at both the World Series of Poker and its sister event in Europe � both this year. The Poker Player�s Alliance made number eight for the brou-ha-ha that they created regarding getting online gambling and poker playing to the forefront of our minds.

Coming in at number seven is the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association simply for fighting, fighting, and well, more fighting of the government. Joe Norton pulled in number six for keeping Absolute Poker in business against the odds. Barack Obama took number five for giving us �hope� that online gambling will be legalized soon. Number four went to Anurag Dikshit and Ruth Parasol for the lobbying of online gambling and co-founding Party Gaming.

Spencer Bachus took number three for simply being online gambling�s new arch nemesis and Barney Frank takes number two � although many think he should be number one for his pure dedication to online gambling. However, the top spot went to Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear for getting the online gambling industry defending itself while trying to steal 144 online gambling sites. We hate the idea of it, but it really was brilliant on his part.




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