I offer to you my submission for the “Understatement of the Year” award by saying that this has been an interesting week for online poker fans. Obviously the event itself has been of great interest but so have the reactions to it both in the press as well as on blogs and message boards. I have witnessed a lot of brilliant, ignorant, and confusing commentary over the last week and thought I would try to sort of bring all of the issues into one frame.
There have been many opinions expressed on how the law was passed. Folks like Up For Anything have done beautiful jobs articulating the well-deserved frustration many feel at how this bill was rammed down the throats of the people. Some have wrongly suggested that we, as voters, should punish those who voted for the bill but that is insanely pointless. The bill was attached to a piece of legislation that would have been political suicide to vote against. Nobody with any sense of self preservation is going to vote against a port security bill a month away from mid-term elections. That was the beauty of Frist’s move. While some call it slimy (and it is) it’s the political equivalent of trapping your opponent with quads as he bets his full house into you on every street. Sorry this had to be your wakeup call in terms of how government works but perhaps next time people will put a little more time and effort into making sure that their representatives actually represent their interests.
Some have expressed rage and anger at everybody from Neteller to the PPA for not doing more to stop this. I’m going to take a completely made up guess and say that 50%+ of those who have expressed those thoughts didn’t vote in the last election and either are not now or were not registered to vote in this upcoming elections in Nov. Your duties as a citizen are not something you can farm out to corporations or special interest groups like one outsources a job to India. The PPA only has 120,000 members yet there are millions of US poker players. And this is with people like PartyPoker offering to pony up your membership fee! How many of those complaining about who didn’t step up to the bat for them actually supported those they wanted to step up for them? How many people complaining actively tried to educate other poker players and increase the PPA membership? Here’s a hint; see the PPA ad to the right? Do you have one on your site? I’ve had a few phone and email conversations with PPA president, Michael Bolcerek, and I can tell you that he’s busting his butt holding up his end of the bargain. Players need to step up and do their part.
The legislation itself has had many different people voicing opinions that range from insightful to woefully ignorant. First there is the distinction between whether or not it’s illegal to play poker and whether or not it’s illegal to accept illegal wagers. The media has muddied this up a bit by interviewing “experts” who say that this bill does nothing to change the law for players. Yet, if it’s illegal for the casino to take your bet and they refuse to take bets, well, it has a very similar impact on your ability to play. Or to put it another way it’s like saying that a bill that would make selling cigarettes a crime punishable by death has no impact on smokers since it didn’t criminalize smoking itself. While accurate in a purely technical sense, it’s far from true in terms of impact to the overall economics of the industry.
How this impacts the casinos is also up for debate. Obviously companies like Party, 888, and others either feel that the bill clearly makes their business with US customers illegal or that the risk of US courts interpreting the bill against them is too high to take. Personally, I side with this read on it. I may not be right but it’s what I took away from reading the actual bill itself last Saturday. Others, like Allyn Jaffrey Shulman, have an excellent argument saying that nothing has changed. Despite Shulman’s upbeat analysis, in the end, it will be the courts who make a final determination on this issue and in order for the courts to decide a case needs to be filed. Perhaps this is new information for those who slept in civics class but the way this has to play out is that someone needs to be charged with violating the law. Once that person is charged, they can offer a defense like the one Shulman presents. If you win (after several years of appeals) then others can point to your victory as precedence on how the courts should interpret the law. This is why it makes sense that so many companies are pulling out of the US market. First off, you have to be arrested and charged with the crime. If you’re the CEO of a multi-billion dollar business, do you really want to spend time facing federal charges just to prove your point? The government, in effect, has endless financial resources to bring against you. Even more chilling is that you not only make the decision for yourself but for all of your employees as they are aiding and abetting a crime. Even if you’re willing to take the risk yourself, it’s a hell of a risk to ask others to take.
Of course, I’ve seen many posts angry at some of the sites pulling out for not standing up to the US government. Pretty brave words for a guy hiding behind a handle on a message board 🙂
As you read various opinions on the UIGEA try to keep in mind that at this point all anyone can offer is opinions. Some opinions are going to be more articulate, educated, and insightful than others. Some will appeal to you emotionally because you’re frustrated and upset and want things to be different. Try to distinguish between the two. Some of the intelligent, well reasoned opinions will be wrong but that doesn’t make them any less intelligent.
As you read other’s opinions you need to ask yourself whether or not this person brings some special insight to the matter. For me, ZeeJustin’s analysis of the bill was almost comical. Much of it was simply wrong but this is coming from a guy who has no special legal education, no inside knowledge, nor has he previously demonstrated himself to have a great understanding of right and wrong. I’m sorry, but I just have to chuckle when I read things like:
1) They can require banks to check all online transactions and make sure none of them fall under the category of “Unlawful Internet Gambling”
The good news here is that these measures would be very expensive, and could possibly bankrupt some of the smaller banks, and would cost the larger banks even more money. This means that essentially every bank is on our side. They certainly don’t want to have to shell out all that cash. Expect major litigations to be filed if such a measure is passed.
First off, ZeeJustin doesn’t know the first thing about transaction processing. The banks aren’t on “our” side. Some transactions will be impractical to code. Some will be relatively easy. That’s what the 270 days are for. It gives everyone some time to figure out what can and can’t be done.
See, the difference between ZJ’s opinion and mine here is that I’ve built transaction processing systems for companies that do hundreds of millions in credit card and ACH transactions. I know what the protocols can and can’t do so I can speculate what will and won’t be possible to pull off. ZJ is simply wishing and hoping that the costs will be too high for anyone to bear.
I don’t single out ZJ for any other reason than his “analysis” has received a lot of traffic on 2+2. His post has garnered over 6981 views while a sticky thread that is a roundup of all the major media stories on the UIGEA has only received 5485 views and has been around for 4 days longer than ZJ’s post. He may end up being right on some issues but only via dumb luck.
Other people are even more misinformed. I’ve seen people claim that Bush could line item veto the UIGEA despite the fact that the President doesn’t have line item veto power. I’ve seen people claim to be lawyers yet completely misunderstand basic legal principles that I learned in Business Law 101.
Bottom line is that right now there is a lot of confusion. Things are unclear and not likely to become any clearer in the short-term. In that vacuum people are going to offer their opinions wrapped up as informed views or worse, as facts. Educate yourself. Continue to read up as much as you can. Don’t just look for sources that agree with your point of view but seek out other views as well. And most importantly, learn to dissect each and every post, news article, and message board posting looking for those little shrapnels of inconsistency that shows the author might not be as well informed as they think they are.