The House Judiciary Committee has approved a bill which purports to ban Internet gaming. Cardplayer Magazine recently ran an analysis of the bill (as it stood in April). In a nutshell, the bill is a mess, it wouldn’t do what it sets out to do, it would enshrine another hypocrisy in the law by carving out exceptions for certain forms of gambling but not others, it’ll lead to decades of litigation and trying to ban internet gaming is just an all-around Bad Idea.
We have quite a few online poker players here. I hope all of you in the US will take some time to familiarize yourself with the bill and its implications, and contact your members of Congress to tell them to oppose any attempt to ban internet gaming.
Just pointing out that the measure approved yesterday by the committee, which would update a law dating from 1961 to ban Internet gambling, is only one of two anti-Web-gaming measures before the House. In addition to approving a bill sponsored by Virginia congressmen Bob Goodlatte and Rick Boucher yesterday, the committee also unanimously supported another measure sponsored by Iowa Republican Jim Leach that would ban use of credit cards for online gaming. A Bloomberg story yesterday said the bills are likely to be passed by the full House but may face resistance in the Senate. The American Gaming Association said in April it wants Congress to study whether Internet gambling should be legalized.
I’m a poker dealer. Banning internet gambling would do a few things that would directly impact me. It would bring more players into an actual card game, which means I would have less people with shitty manners who think they know everything because they’ve watched poker on television and played online. (We call them the travel channel kids), more players implies a busier poker room, which means more money for me.
It kills me to see kids still in high school talking about being a professional poker player. A friend of mine is a youngish guy (mid to late 20’s) and his girlfriend got pregnant. While she was pregnant he got into debt for about 4k. He had to work it off without her knowing. He would probably fall under the category of “estranged father” if she had found out.
Gambling is dangerous. We do low stakes and I see people every day and know there is no way they can continue to spend the kind of money they do, and yet they do. We recently had a guy come in, he was a cute, young thing. He started to be a regular, played a few tournaments, started getting intense, and then stopped coming. I hope he realized what he was getting into and checked himself.
These people never want to discuss anything but poker. If they go on vacation, it’s to go gambling. If you say “Hi, How are you?” Their answer is based on how much they are up or down. We can only be open 12 hours a day, and you should see the ones jonesing for our doors to open and freaking out because they doors are closing.
I shudder to guess how many folks are sitting in a dark room somewhere, their face illuminated by party poker, as their world falls down around them. I’m not saying there should be a law against it, hey, kill yourself however you want, just don’t hurt anyone else. I’m just saying as a dealer, it’s sad to see how much this can consume people, but lots of things are like that.
So, in a nutshell, this is supposed to be a free country. Screw the guv’mint. And send me some players to table 28.
I really don’t understand why the federal government has such a hair up its butt about online gaming. Most gambling and vice legislation is left to the states to deal with. Alcohol legislation is mostly left to the states. I just don’t see online gambling being such a huge problem that the Feds need to expend the effort that they seem to.
I don’t play poker, but I can’t help thinking of the Law of Unintended Consequences? How is this going to affect other online games? For instance I used to play Bridge online and I was into an an online fight sim, both of which hold competitions.