Tony Holden’s International Federation of Poker: Working to Build Respectability for the Game

Poker has been accepted as a mind sport by the International Mind Sport Association (IMSA). The decision came April 29, the first anniversary of the International Federation of Poker’s founding in Lausanne, Switzerland. According to IFP president and well known player and author Tony Holden, “This is a vital step towards having poker recognized worldwide as a respectable and legal game of skill. IMSA has close links with the International Olympic Committee and with SportAccord, the general assembly of some 150 international sports federations around the world, membership of which we aim to achieve within a year.
 
“This is about respectability. As you know, poker has been under attack from the authorities in the US and other countries ... the poker community has to convince them that poker is a game of skill and should not be faced with the kind of restrictive legislation that governs games of pure chance. Membership of IMSA should really help, not least because poker will now be played in internationally sanctioned events alongside the other Mind Sports.
 
“It’s an exciting thought that In 2008, the other Mind Sports (chess, draughts etc) competed in the World Mind Games in Beijing, parallel with the Olympic Games, with the sanction of the International Olympic Committee. We are closely involved in plans for a similar event alongside the London Olympics of 2012.”
 
Holden said the IFP’s objectives include organizing major team and individual international tournaments, including an annual world championship, standardizing tournament rules, and compiling international rankings alongside each member nation’s own national rankings. Holden said, “IFP will also draw together all the arguments, evidence and testimony gathered around the world by national federations or their equivalents which have been called upon to contest restrictive laws or punitive taxation. Many are already available in the Library of our website, www.IFPoker.org.”
 
IFP currently has 25 member federations across three continents, and is in talks with 20 more, including the USA, and hopes to welcome more and more countries into the IFP community.
 
“Until the foundation of IFP,” Holden said, “there was no global governing body to represent the interests of these players and to speak for them on the international sporting stage. Obviously there exist such excellent organization as the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), but that is oriented only towards US legislation. We will seek to work closely with them on their goals. But, in the absence of any global governing body, we are seeking to fulfill that role, our legitimacy coming from the number of national federations involved.
 
Holden hopes to see the formation of a US Poker Federation to work alongside the IFP and help stage a national tournament that would lead to US participation in next year’s IFP world championships.