Reply With QuoteWell, the US is also the country where casinos paid a guy to lobby against (other) casinos.
It's so absurd that the most difficult place in the world to deposit money to play online poker is the United States, the country that invented the game and which otherwise has the greatest degree of personal freedom in the world.
The rest of the world is going through a huge poker boom - Europe has been for ages now, but it's exploding in popularity in Asia and Latin America too - largely because of the internet. It's now one of the most international games in the world and a huge phenomenon - and yet the US has decided to make it extremely difficult for the average person to play (and criminalized it, in some states). Ludicrous.
Well, the US is also the country where casinos paid a guy to lobby against (other) casinos.
Originally Posted by Anti-Bunny
Hey, now. :("Justified, your honor, just because we support violent murderers by electing mob lawyers as our mayor doesn't mean that we will tolerate people who have taken prescription drugs."
Anyway, he's in Nevada, not Washington.
Edit: on re-read, I'm not sure where he is. He talks about Clark County and makes a clear (and slanderous!!!) reference to the mayor of Las Vegas, then later mentions "nearby" casinos in Washington. I'm guessing he commutes between the two.
Anyway, he complains a lot about the decision being inconsistent with the state's own lottery and brick-and-mortar casinos, but leaves out the justice's concerns with underage gambling. Clearly, this is more of a risk with online poker than with lottery tickets and casinos. I have no idea how pervasive a problem underage gambling is, but the worst cases do tend to get a lot of press ("We lost our house because my son ran up $100,000 of debt," etc.), so it's not surprising the government's able to make a persuasive case on that basis alone.
Last edited by Kolonial; 10-21-2010 at 06:05 PM.
Liquor in the front, poker in the rear
Just as an FYI, there's a Clark County in Washington as well. The county seat is Vancouver, right across the river from Portland.
I really fail to see a moral difference between Poker- and say, Justin vs Daigo at EVO (National fighting game championships)
I'm sure that's true, but in that same paragraph he talks about being "Eric Scotted," referring to a guy who was shot coming out of Costco in Las Vegas.
Coincidentally, the Scott family is being represented by that same mayor's son now.
I play online poker at Pokerstars. Haven't deposited or cashed out so I don't know what would happen if i tried.
However, this law is completely ludicrous. Attached as a rider to a port security bill during the mid term elections under Bush to 'energize the base' (read right wing evangelical whack jobs), it allows OTB (horse racing.) Wtf? While there is luck in poker, it takes skill to play.
Just one more example of the idiotic right wing.
Agree on everything you said about the Port bill, but it's left-wing paternalism that's now preventing Americans from being free to deposit money online to wager on a game they play. Barney Frank was retained as a paid lobbyist to clarify the law and make it clear that online poker was not illegal (at least Federally), but it was the Democrat-held house and senate that repeatedly prevented those clarifying laws from passing (even though, most experts agree, they wouldn't even change the law - they would just clarify it, so financial institutions wouldn't prevent cheques from being cashed and deposits from being made).
The reality is a lot of these developments are lobbyist driven - both parties in government are so susceptible to manipulation by lobbyists that you get nonsensical results (such as Horse Racing being excluded from that bid, because frankly lobbyists paid for its exclusion), and you have absurd scenarios like representatives from private casinos arguing about the "dangers" of poker to prevent online competition for their 30-table poker room, while politicians nod and take their cheques.
Really?
Yeah, this is not a right wing thing in any way, shape or form: this is a lobbyist owned Congress thing, both sides of the aisle.
Um, thanks for agreeing with me?
H.
It's almost like having a political system soaked in money isn't that good of an idea.
It's interesting to see the US outright ban on Poker, when other countries are moving to regulate it.
With all of the budget shortfalls in states and municipalities across the country, it seems surprising to me that this gambling is ignored as a potential source of revenue. Especially since most states have a lottery program.
So can you play online poker if you live in Nevada or Atlantic City? Or does gambling have to occur at state-licensed venues? Could an online casino buy a license?
It would be pretty awesome is people took vacations to Las Vegas and Atlantic City and sat in their rooms playing online poker.
To be clear: the US has not outright banned poker. The discussion in this thread is primarily related to online poker, not poker played in casinos or poker rooms (laws for those vary by state as well).
Online poker is illegal in Washington State - that's the only jurisdiction I'm aware of that has made online poker illegal.
Under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (passed in 2006, which was tacked onto a Port Security law as indicated above), prohibits transfers of money to "unlawful internet gambling" (which is not defined, but other than in Washington State, online poker is not unlawful).
The UIGEA primarily affected poker sites that also had online gambling services as well (blackjack and other casino/house games or sports betting) -- most notably, Party Poker and Paradise Poker, which were forced to leave the U.S. market and no longer accept U.S. players. Pokerstars and Full Tilt poker are poker-only sites, and so they still are available to American players except where the State legislature has made online poker illegal (Washington).
The other significant impact of the UIGEA is that it caused US financial institutions to no longer transact business with online poker sites, because they didn't want to inadvertently breach the UIGEA and weren't going to analyze each site to see if they also had "unlawful online gambling," etc. So it's much more difficult for Americans to directly deposit funds on online poker sites through their credit cards, etc.
There have been various initiatives to clarify the law so that financial institutions will resume services. Most recently, at the end of July, the House Financial Services Committee passed a bill that would formally legalize and regulate online poker in the United States - but it's unclear, and perhaps unlikely, if it'll ever become law.
You can play online poker legally anywhere in the U.S. except where the State has expressly banned it, which I believe is just Washington state.
This is my understanding, as well.
You are absolutely right. I'm rereading my earlier post and wonder what sort of crack I was on when I wrote that. I think I may have been flashing back to the proposed online poker ban in MA earlier this year.
I currently work for a company that runs online poker/casino services (you've probably heard of us if you've played online poker). After spending the past few months dealing with all of the French regulatory requirements, I'm just surprised the US hasn't followed suit.
Some of the French regulation is aimed at heading off problem gambling, which I completely agree with. There's also some talk about "protecting French players". But the real meat of the bill is aimed squarely at tracking winnings for taxation purposes. To play in France now, you need to provide us with a RIB - a French bank account number so that they know who to send the tax bill to.
I played poker in some casino's poker room recently, one of the small ones in WV. In fact every time I've played poker in a casino it's been a really fun time. The table banter, the drinks, the fact that you have showdowns but don't play every hand so your mind can take a break . . . it's a fun game. And with the table taking a rake, but the game being against other players, you aren't even gambling against the house . . . you are playing a fun strategy/luck game against other people.
I don't see the big deal about online poker. That being said, I would never put my money in an account like you have to do now to circumvent the law. Wait until it's legal or find something else to do with your free time.
Fair warning, online poker can also ruin live poker for you due to the pace. I just can't feature sitting at the same table for five hours when I can get the same action in 45 minutes online.
H.
Same thing with online Monopoly.
Nope, poker is totally gambling. You make your plays based on your perceived odds. You are gambling that the guy that won't shake loose doesn't catch a flush on the river.
Who wants to lay odds on whether this is trolling or gross ignorance?
That's why you play with friendly people so you can chat. I agree it's a complete bore (especially with a big table) otherwise.
No, he was joking. Funniest thing I've read all day.
http://pokerati.com/2010/11/04/poker...tate-pictures/This story is so ridiculous.. Why is a SWAT team being used over a fucking poker game?A relatively routine raid of a low-stakes poker game in Greenville, South Carolina turned bloody yesterday night — as police tried to gain entry to a poker house. The game host, now known to be Aaron Awtry, 72, shot through the front door, striking sheriff’s deputy Matthew May with a bullet that went through his arm.
A vice squad in SWAT gear returned fire, hitting Awtry with multiple rounds in his arm and thumb … which was followed by a 20-minute standoff between cops and players, according to a spokesman for the Greenville County Sheriff’s Department. Both shooting victims were taken to the hospital where they are in stable condition.
There were 12 people and Awtry in the house at 502 Pine Knoll Drive when police arrived at about 9:20 pm last night. According to frontline witnesses, they had just finished a small buy-in dinnertime tourney … and a 1/2 cash game was just getting underway when someone saw 5-0 approaching on a security monitor. Before he could clearly vocalize an alert, a battery ram begin slamming the front door and players froze. Awtry, who players say has notoriously bad hearing in his senior years and presumably believed the game was being robbed, began shooting at the door with his pistol, firing “at least once” according to a player, “multiple shots” according to police. At least four officers returned fire at the door with at least 20 bullets from their higher-powered assault weapons.
As Awtry fell back into the poker room entryway, he balked, “Why didn’t you tell me it was the cops?”
Apparently one of the players just tweated:
Local NBC affiliate did a story here:Un-fucking-real.To my surprise, Im alive. So is everyone else. Going to sleep… i hope…
http://www.wyff4.com/r/25628439/detail.html
Last edited by Anti-Bunny; 11-06-2010 at 01:27 AM.
It sounds like there were only four cops there when they were shot at through the door. That doesn't sound ridiculous to me. Not sure what you would consider an appropriate show of force for serving a warrant to an active illegal gambling operation.
Right, kerzain. It's a great idea to smash the front door in and wave guns around so you can issue $100 fines for gambling. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.
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