I’m okay with Warcraft being banned.
Just the crappy stuff.
I’m of two minds on this.
One of my sons spends way too much time and money at online poker so I’m secretly delighted to see that he can’t do that for the time being. Talked to him over the weekend and he was going on about how he was getting outside more and how he wasn’t playing poker. He failed to mention that he wasn’t playing poker because he couldn’t. Yes, it has only been a couple of days but I’m hoping it breaks the spell long enough for him to get a job. They should at least have periodic time-outs, like kids at the pool, for this kind of addictive behaviour.
On the other hand, I don’t think the government should be butting it’s nose into people’s business unless it absolutely must. Most states are hostile toward gambling in general until they get to be the house, then they suddenly think it’s good family entertainment, so gambling shouldn’t be a moral issue.
In the end though, the government butts its nose into my business all the time over a lot less harmful things that gambling so, if the DoJ has nothing better to do with its time, I’m not unhappy to see the crackdown.
I’m not comfortable talking about my sex life here. 
Gambling should be legal or illegal, the morality of it doesn’t change with the venue.
Point of order, here–the brick-and-mortar casinos have facilities for getting cash advances from your credit card, too. And just as many people ruin their lives–I’ve personally witnessed a guy get bankrupted at a blackjack table, then reach into his pocket and pull out a $100 over the protests of his (wife? girlfriend?) and lose it on a single hand with her yelling “and how are we going to afford the bus ride back to Philadelphia now?” I’ve personally witnessed a guy lose nearly $6000 in 30 minutes at a $5-$500 table, too, then settle in near the table sucking down free drinks while he called at least a dozen people asking them to borrow some money for the weekend.
There is no difference between poker websites and going to the casinos from an addiction and life-ruining standpoint.
Several issues here…
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One, it’s not necessarily open and shut that online poker = gambling, wrt the UIGEA. To paraphrase Mike McDermott from Rounders, ‘why do you think the same 4 guys end up at the final table in the World Series of Poker every year… are they the 4 luckiest guys in Vegas’?
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Kudos to Barney for trying to get this overturned. Hell, the Dems had complete absolute control for 2 years and he couldn’t get the time of day from that bitch Pelosi. Oh well
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Gotta love the Messiah’s Justice Dept - they won’t prosecute a clearcut case of voter intimidation, but they go out of their way to make hundreds of thousands of Americans miserable by shutting this down. The least qualified guy in any room he walks into…
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The UIGEA wasn’t a Republican or Democrat thing per se - it was one guy, that cocksucker Bill Frist, who slipped it into the Port Security bill when nobody was looking. That Port bill passed something like 409-2, and unanimously in the Senate. He did it after Harrahs bought him off w/a campaign contribution
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Yes we’ll probably get our money back, after several months; at least, that’s what happened to Neteller victims.
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The sites are regulated and certified, just not by Americans.
No, we’re afraid internet gambling’s going to jeopardise our cut.
That was my understanding, too. How that is an acceptable way to make laws, I’ll never know.
“Hey, here’s the law we need passed so our country can continue to function. Oh, by the way, there’s a little tidbit in there about how it is now mandatory for all adults to beat children daily. Enjoy!”
Ding ding ding!
We have a winner people! Step right up. Pays off at 2:1.
It’s all about the money; who is getting it and who is not. Internet gambling siphons profit away from the state.
I recently had cause to consult with a private detective over a relative’s large unexplained debt. The detective said that in the vast majority of huge life-ruining debts he has had to investigate, online gambling was the culprit. I’ll have to come down on the side of this new law. Having gambling one click away from addictive personalities who have constant access to a computer is completely wrecking lives.
Everyone here has some sort of addiction or another. Even being on this site, “Fighting Ignorance” can be addictive in itself, not to mention some post counts (not to mention Lurkaholics) give us a clue to the amount of hours spent here as well, fighting ignorance or not.
Post count over 10,000 per/year? Ban the Dope.
Compulsive Shoppers? Ban the stores.
Adrenaline Junkie? Ban extreme sports.
Twelve or more fantasy teams? Ban fantasy sports.
Lung Cancer? Ban smoking.
Huffers? Ban spray paint.
Sympathise with Dr. House? Ban painkillers.
TV on more than 6 hours a day? Ban Broadcasting.
Murderers? Ban all weapons/tools/vehicles/drugs/methods/etc.
Yeah, I know. Ridiculous.
Just because some people here have had personal and anecdotal evidence that a certain behavior has caused ruin does not prove that a certain activity should be subject to ban. Instead, the person needs to take responsibility for their addiction. Just because your furry little critter isn’t being gored at this moment, doesn’t give you any moral high ground to stand on, regardless of how you were affected.
How about a ban on irresponsible people…I’m all for that.
Bingo x2. This isn’t about morality or even the destructive force that gambling can sometimes be, this is about dollars. The release alone alleges that there are “billions” in profits untouched by uncle Sam and the IRS. We aren’t getting our cut, plain and simple.
I just posted this to the gameroom thread but I thought I’d repeat it here to give some perspective on the industry:
These sites make an absurd amount of money. Absolutely absurd. They collude and refuse to price compete, so the rake is roughly the same across the internet. It varies by stakes and game type, but it’s not uncommon for online sites to rake $2 or $3 per hand, dealing 60+ hands per hour, with many people playing multiple tables.
I would estimate it costs those sites roughly a penny a day to run a virtual table, in terms of bandwidth and servers and such, yet that virtual table if taking $3/hand for 60 hands per hour for 24 hours can take in over $4000 in real money. Per day. A virtual table, costing almost nothing to run. These businesses are absolutely ass raping in terms of profit, it’s just obscene. Their rake is half or more as much as an actual casino charges, but the casino has to pay for the table space, the dealer, floor staff, security, air conditioning, lights, drinks, etc. Yet because people can multi-table, and computerized dealing can make tables deal more hands per hour, players actually end up paying way more per hour having bits moved around on the other end of the internet than they would sitting in an actual casino getting free drinks, dealers, support staffs, etc. These sites could cut their rake by 99% and still make a huge profit, which makes them just absurd.
And people end up paying crazy amounts. Let’s say an online professional plays 8 6-handed tables with a $2 max rake where the average hands/hr is 60. There is nothing at all atypical about this scenario - if anything it’s a conservative estimate. Assume he wins 1/6th of the pots, and plays 40 hours per week. That person is paying $160 in real money per hour to a virtual site. $6400 per week. $332,800 per year. To a virtual poker site that’s not doing much more than what yahoo games is when it runs scrabble or pictionary for free. Compare to say a World of Warcraft subscription that requires far more support/server power/bandwidth/etc where Blizzard can make a ton of profit off a $180 per year subscription. The online site in this scenario requires a $332,800 per year subscription.
That number seems so absurd that you must think I’m making it up, but plug in the numbers yourself and see what you get. Why do people pay that? Well, the good players can make money despite paying this high cost, and the bad players don’t realize how much of the money they’re losing is because it’s being raked away instead of losing to other players. But even the winners only get their net profits after that fee is subtracted - so if someone is good enough to net $50,000 per year, they’re actually making almost $400,000 a year from the game nad paying $332,800 of it to the online site. The site that moves a few bits around in cyberspace for them.
It’s a big part of the reason I hate playing online, it just bothers me philosophically. I’ve paid tens of thousands or more of online rake and the whole thing just strikes me as absurd. It makes me feel not at all sorry for these businesses because they’re a bunch of price-colluding assholes who’ve taken tens of thousand+ of my dollars (I mean I’m a net winner online, by far, but I’ve paid them absurd amounts to do it).
My concern is primarily that it’s going to be bad for poker in general. I play in casinos almost exclusively but now all of the displaced online grinders are going to need a place to keep earning their money, which may mean they come into my games, and they’re a hell of a lot tougher than the recreational players you aim for. And fewer people will get into poker now - there will be fewer poker shows with no online sponsors, fewer people that test the waters by learning online for small stakes and then decide to come to Vegas, etc. This is bad for the entire poker community, reducing the incoming amount of bad players and concentrating the good players.
Hey, MOIDALIZE, you’re banned.
I thik the way around this is to turn yourself into a non-US person for purposes of opening an online poker account. I could see someone starting a service where they will create an entity you own in a non-US jurisdiction and then route your connection to the poker site through that jurisdiction. Moving money may be a little tough, and there’d be some tax reportig to do (assuming one wants to be fully on the up and up), but these problems don’t seem insurmountable.
SB, your numbers above assume that max rake is paid every hand, which isn’t the case. But put in some factor for percentage of max rake paid each hand and you still get to a huge rake number (ie, maybe it’s $150,000 still). Also, I understand that several sites offer rakeback programs.