After three states launched online poker and gambling regimes in 2013, there was hope that 2014 would see more state legislatures join the igaming party. With only one week left before 2015 arrives, those hopes have been dashed and the party has fizzled.

With a new year on the horizon, hope is renewed that 2015 will see at least one state join Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey in enacting Internet poker regulations. If the projections released earlier this year by the finance wizards at Morgan Stanley hold true, California will finally push through an online poker scheme that the state’s gaming interests can agree on, or at least live with.

Remember that study in September that anticipates 20 states to be operating regulated online gambling sites by 2020? Unfortunately, Morgan Stanley prognosticators find California to be the only state to climb on board next year, with a launch not happening until 2016.

Should that prediction hold true, that would mean that two calendar years will have passed without a regulated launch after Nevada broke the ice in April 2013 and the other two states followed in November of the same year. Two years.