"That said, I think poker might take off, especially here in the US where things have gotten super murkey."
I know the IRS isn't fooled by "it's not dollars, it's just these things that can be freely converted back and forth between dollars on the open market", where "these things" is a category well beyond merely "BitCoin" or even currencies. If you set up a local-ish economy that solely trades in cows, literal, actual cows, expect the IRS to continue to enforce its relevant laws based on the market value of cows. I seriously doubt that the laws against online gambling will be fooled, and even if a few of them are, it's very easily corrected. BitCoin doesn't add much to the murkiness at all; if it's illegal to do it with dollars it's almost certainly (and certainly eventually) illegal to do it with BitCoins.
Things aren't murky with the IRS. That's perfectly straightforward: you must report net gambling income.
Things are murky with the legality of transferring money via credit card to online casinos, and if the individual gambler is actually breaking the law by participating. Bitcoin resolves that murkiness.
I use the IRS as an example, not the totality of Federal law. To the extent it is illegal to transfer dollars to an online casino, it either is or will be illegal to transfer anything else with market value. BitCoin won't resolve the murkiness one bit.
Something I think you may need to understand is that this isn't a remotely new idea. BitCoin may not have existed before, but casino chips, again, literal physical casino chips, to use just one example from a richly populated field, have been around forever, and Federal law does not watch someone trading around chips and just shrug its shoulders and go "Well, golly, I guess those aren't dollars, I'll just walk away I guess." It does something more like "Well, golly, I guess we'll just slap some money laundering charges on too."
First, individual gamblers are not the target of any sort of federal online gambling regulation.
The regulations on online gambling revolve around the accepting and disbursing of funds by online gambling sites. Bitcoins do, and don't address this issue. It does address the issue in so far as it makes transactions between parties opaque, but it also doesn't address the issue if an FBI agent can just sign up for an account and demonstrate the system working for transferring BTC.
If you're thinking about playing poker for profit in the US, you should do it in a casino licensed to accept your bets, and you should report your income. We're dealing in bitcoin, but that doesn't mean we are ignorant of or unyielding to local law. Taking bets from the US is just not a winning strategy these days, and we have no intention of doing so.
I know the IRS isn't fooled by "it's not dollars, it's just these things that can be freely converted back and forth between dollars on the open market", where "these things" is a category well beyond merely "BitCoin" or even currencies. If you set up a local-ish economy that solely trades in cows, literal, actual cows, expect the IRS to continue to enforce its relevant laws based on the market value of cows. I seriously doubt that the laws against online gambling will be fooled, and even if a few of them are, it's very easily corrected. BitCoin doesn't add much to the murkiness at all; if it's illegal to do it with dollars it's almost certainly (and certainly eventually) illegal to do it with BitCoins.