To whom it may concern, 

    The proposed legislation concerning charitable poker tournaments demonstrates an almost complete lack of understanding for how poker tournaments work in multiple ways as well as a disregard for the staff working them. Please allow me to help clear up some of the problems.

1. Lack of monetary values on chips: Tournament chips are play chips with play monetary values. Would you tell someone they couldn't play Monopoly with bills that had values on them? Of course not, the very idea is ridiculous, as is the proposal prohibiting it in this instance.

2. Start and finishing times: There are so many variables deciding the length of a poker tournament that putting an end time is abjectly simple minded and arbitrary. A tennis tournament final could last an hour and a half or five hours plus. How can you set a time limit on a varying competition. The competition is over when a player wins. It's really quite as simple as that.

3. Requiring full names on dealer badges: Not only is a poker dealer responsible  for distributing the cards and moving the chips in the pot, he or she is also the defacto referee at the poker table. Putting their full name on their name tag is not done anywhere in poker and doing so could have adverse and unnecessary results for the dealers such as harassment, online stalking, or even potential confrontation outside of the venue. What possible purpose does this serve?

4. Only one tournament at a time. If an establishment can run multiple single table tournaments concurrently creating the opportunity and availability for players arriving at different times to play, what possible rationale can there be limiting that?

I implore you to seek the advice of someone from the charitable gaming industry to aid in setting logical, reasonable regulations written with a complete understanding of how the game works and how it functions as regards to legal, charitable functions.

Respectfully,

John Jullien,

Registered Richmond, VA voter