The premier event of the Federated Sports + Gaming (FS + G) season is still over two months away, but the preparations for the new league have been in full swing for quite a while. The announcements regarding the policies, tournaments, and details of the upcoming events will all be rolling out over the next few weeks, starting today with the unveiling of the group’s Standards and Conduct Committee. FS + G League Commissioner Annie Duke spoke exclusively with BLUFF about the new group and what we can expect from them once the first season gets underway.

FS + G appointed the eight-person committee over five months ago and the group has been diligently working at developing a Code of Conduct ever since, fleshing out the membership qualification process, establishing tournament and league rules, and putting a system in place to monitor player compliance with league rules.

“We realized really early on that we wanted to take standards and conduct very seriously. We felt like we had a great opportunity, because we have the same people playing each event, to do that in a way other people hadn’t been able to do strictly because of logistical reasons,” Duke explained. “It is a way that closer resembles what other professional sports leagues have done. Our first step was to find an outside ethics advisor. The next thing was to make sure we have player input.”

One of the first people FS +G reached out to was ethics consultant and University of Denver professor Stephen Martin. The former federal prosecutor who has worked with companies like MCI WorldCom and Adelphia stepped in to help FS + G get the committee off the ground. He also serves as one of the seven voting members of the Standards and Conduct Committee.

The league then appointed five poker pros to serve as the inaugural committee. Eric Baldwin, Andy Bloch, Chad Brown, Joe Hachem, and Nick Schulman will each serve two years on the committee and the league’s tournament director, Matt Savage, is also a voting member of the group. Duke is the eighth member of the committee, but, unlike the other seven members, does not vote.

The Code of Conduct as well as tournament rules will be released in the coming weeks, but Duke did give some indications about what the committee took into consideration when developing the new policies.

“When you’re thinking about professionalizing a sport, it is a matter of everybody partnering together and realizing that everybody in this community really stands up and represents this sport to the public. In terms of creating and mainstreaming the sport, the conduct of those that face the public is very important and that’s very much under the purview of the committee.”

The group will also have input on how the league handles Code of Conduct violations from both players within the league and those seeking membership.

“Anything that has to do with issues of something like cheating has to go through the Standards and Conduct Committee who will ask, ‘Have there been violations of tournament rules themselves as well as the code of conduct?’ We have a process in place and documents in place and if people are found to be violating the rules in those documents, there are disciplinary consequences. If someone is within the league already, that would range from warnings to suspensions to revocation of a card. If somebody is new to the league, they will also go thru that lens and the Standards and Conduct Committee would make a determination about whether that player is admitted to the league or admitted to the league with a warning, whatever it might be.”

The Standards and Conduct Committee is just the first of a few player groups the League is forming. While that group deals strictly with ethics and rules, the league also plans to appoint players to a committee that looks at things like tournament structures, schedules, and player perks.

Ever since the league unveiled its list of 218 qualifying members, Duke has been busy calling players one by one and she says that, though she hasn’t contacted everyone yet, the overall response to the new league is a good one so far.

“I have been taken aback by how positive the response has been,” she admitted.

Duke’s duties as Commissioner mean she won’t be frequenting the Rio much this summer and her WSOP plans are limited to just the Main Event. She explained there is nothing she would love to do more than play in several events, but with the FS + G season getting underway at the Palms starting August 5th, there is simply too much to do between now and then to find much time to spend at the tables.

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