Letters to the Editor
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Some good news...
... here.
Let me declare an interest. I want to play online poker, not because I expect to make any money, but because I enjoy playing in online tournaments and pitting my wits against others. A mental sport, if you like.
The difficulty the US has in banning its citizens and financial institutions from participation in international online poker games, is that poker is not completely illegal in the US. It is allowed in Nevada and in various Native American reservations.
If the US wants to make a principled stand based on the morality of poker, then it must ban all poker games within its own territory--which we know will never happen.
Now the US may well be concerned about the involvement of organized crime, money laundering etc., but this can be dealt with through international treaties that regulate online poker rooms. Oh, I forgot. The US doesn't do treaties.
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Online poker CANNOT be regulated
As an Internet data management professional and computer person, there is NO way that I would ever play online with real money. Why?
1) Games of skill require odds to be known. With online games, the odds are under the programmer's control, and can be manipulated.
2) Collusion is certainly possible, and almost guaranteed.
3) The house can use shills, and change the odds in their favor.
4) No scheme for monitoring odds can work, since the odds can be changed from hand to hand, and this means that ANY large scale monitoring cannot work.
It's just like voting with online terminals. No one knows who wins until the winner is declares, and then there is no way of checking.
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North Carolina fought for 50 years to get a lottery
the ninny nanners, Baptists, liberals (yes them too!), soccer mommies were happy to be paid and unpaid lobbyists on behalf of South Carolina and Virgina (which had successful lotteries) to stop it in the name of Jayzus, the Children and the Great White Liberal Micromanaging Mother God in the sky. Now it turns out the people who pushed through the lottery were a bunch of crooks, hald of them have already gone to jail. The lottery is failing mostly because in the Bible Belt you want your liquor, whores and card games out of site. The state gets their cut purportedly for the 'schools' which no one believes. But the devils bargain was that they outlawed video poker. It's only partway about the money - it's also about that mean American Calvinist streak to punish people and call it holy.
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Online poker regulation
If ever there was something that was self-regulating, online poker would be it. It's so easy to set up an online poker site that initial buy in for a new competitor is relatively cheap. On top of that, if even a whiff of jiggered odds hits the web (and make no mistake, people that play on-line poker are generally web-savvy), the site involved will pay in lost revenue from people fleeing their service quicker than they can hire a PR firm.
Yeah, a few players may do some collusion, but even then, those players would get called out if they were drawing any significant amounts of money from their acts and the site will blacklist them very quickly. Just as in Vegas, they know that their profit margins are great as long as people think field is level, so they'll do what ever they can to keep things fair and just keep raking in their cut. Or they'll soon find themselves without customers.
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dataguyx...I disagree
Yes, online poker sites can, in theory, mess with the odds. With the arsenal of poker tracking software and online poker forums, word of statistically impossible patterns that suggest tampering would spread like wild and accounts would be taken elsewhere in droves. It would be business suicide.
Collusion is possible, but very rare from my experience. It's not easy to pull off and if found out, the poker sites will sieze all your money.
I've made an ROI of 200% playing online poker and don't feel any insecurity about where my money is.
Poker falls under the gambling category, but it is first and foremost a game of skill. 'A few minutes to learn and a lifetime to master'.
Far more immoral in my mind are lotteries - the government promoting an easy quick financial fix to the poor and uneducated, the solution to all life's problems, when they know full well the odds are impossible.
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@dataguyx
Online poker rooms make their money by the "rake" a small percentage of each pot, or by entry fees into a tournament.
For example a player pays $11 to enter a tournament, but only $10 is returned to the players in prize money, so with 100 players, the house makes $100 profit and $1000 is distributed among the winners.
In cash games there is a bit more room for manipulation, but it really depends on there being a rogue programer, (which you find from time to time in banks and other financial organizations.)
Anyway, the whole point is that it is possible to develop international standards and the majority of people will not play on sites where there is any hint of impropriety. Companies like Party Gaming, parent company of Party Poker are quoted on the London stock exchange and subject to overview as is any company. Same goes for other major gambling companies.
Probably the chances of running foul of a rogue programer online are much less than the chances of running into a crooked dealer and his accomplice in a bricks and mortar casino.
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The 109th Congress
Couldn't get it's budget passed, couldn't balance a budget, couldn't oppose the war in Iraq, couldn't stop the mortgage debacle, etc etc etc.
But they did make a felon of Joe Sixpack for doing the nefarious crime of betting $25 on Washington State on Saturday.
They had their priorities in order.
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Americans should be REQUIRED to learn to play poker
Poker punishes you in the long term for making bad decisions, but it can reward bad decisions and punish good ones in the short term.
Becoming a good poker player requires you to overcome your emotional impulses, dedicate yourself to learning and understanding the game, satisfying yourself with good decision making and not on making money (concentrating on making money is a sure way to lose in poker.)
In an age when our leaders invoke the "smoking gun is a mushroom cloud" and we all run in fear without asking "what are the odds that the smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud? is the investment we're making against that contingency proportional to the risk? does our plan make any sense?" we could all do with some education in good decision making.
We often use poker metaphors in politics. "Boy, I'd love to play poker with the Democrats...he's playing a high stakes game...Bush just went all in."
Why, do you suppose, that is? Because we recognize that skill at poker is an apt metaphor for skill at more complex issues.
And why do the various family research councils want to ban poker? Because they prefer mindless sheep to people who understand how things work.
They're denying you education. Don't let them.