The digital ink had barely dried from my last post about the good news for online poker overseas when news tickers started lighting up with word that Neteller founder Stephen Lawrence had copped a plea. I would have felt much better if he had been found guilty by trial because at least you know that the guy went down swinging. I don’t mean to imply anything about Lawrence’s character with that last statement; only that by copping a plea it means that he and his lawyers must have looked at the mountain of problems about to fall on top of them and decided it was better to take the conspiracy rap and risk up to 5 years than it was to fight it.
The other disappointing part about this is that John Lefebvre is completely screwed now. Even if he wanted to fight on they can force Lawrence to testify against Lefebvre as part of Lawrence’s plea bargin.
Couple of cool things going on overseas. First the EU pimp slapped France and Sweden for protecting their own state run gaming monopolies. The government of Sweden runs its own poker room and France has alwyas had a poor record which was only made worse when the banned the Unibet-sponsored cycling team.
According to the official EU release, “The European Commission has taken action to put an end to obstacles to the free movement of sports betting services in France, Greece and Sweden. The Commission has formally requested France and Sweden to amend their laws[...]. These formal requests take the form of ‘reasoned opinions,’ the second stage of the infringement procedure laid down in Article 226 of the EC Treaty. If there is no satisfactory reply within two months, the Commission may refer the matter to the European Court of Justice.”
Second piece of good news was that PokerStars was kicking off the Asia-Pacific Poker Tour (APPT). Asia has a lot of potential and it’s good to see something starting to develop over there.
As a side trivia note, the APPT’s President and Co-Founder, Jeffrey Haas, used to be at ClickNRaise Poker who sponsored the first WPBT Winter Classic.
A few days ago I did a post which was a response to Focus on the Family’s talking points against legalizing online gaming. Many of their points harp on sensationalistic claims about how many problem gamblers are at risk. While I took the position that problem gambling was a medical condition which invalidated some of their points about online gaming turning people into problem gamblers, it seems like some researchers at Harvard University have tackled the problem from another angle. According to the PokerNews article:
The study looked at both “fixed-odds” bets (e.g., bets on the outcome of a particular game) and “live-action” bets (e.g., in-game, proposition bets such as which side would have the next corner kick). The fixed-odds bettors averaged placing 2.5 bets of €4 (approx. $5.30 U.S.) every fourth day over an average period of 4 months (from first to last bet) at an average loss of 29% of the amount wagered. The live-action bettors averaged placing 2.8 wagers of €4 every fourth day over an average period of six weeks at an average loss of 18% of the amount wagered. Interestingly, the data showed that “individuals seemed to moderate their behavior based on their wins and losses.” In other words, “as percent lost increased, duration of play, number of bets, bets per day, Euros per bet, and total wagers all decreased.” As the authors point out, such a finding is particularly significant since “a hallmark feature of gambling-related problems might be the continuation of gambling despite adverse consequences.”
So not only are the pro-UIGEA folks generally misguided but a good chunk of their talking points are invalid. The article also points out that the study Rep. Jackass Bachus tried to introduce as evidence of the evils of gambling is a highly selective study with a small sample size compared to this Harvard study which profiled 40,000 gamblers.
Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.