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You can go to the convenience store, buy a pack of cigarettes, and smoke your lungs into emphysemic distress. Eat fast food every day for the rest of your life, and send your heart into cardiac arrest. But the government has to draw the line somewhere. After all, the livelihood of our future relies on thoughtful legislation. So put down that mouse and step away from the computer, Americans. It’s been decided. Online poker is bad for you.
One year ago, the US government decided to put its foot down on Internet gambling. The Security and Accountability for Every Port Act of 2006 (SAFE Port Act) was their way to do it. Title VIII of the SAFE Port Act was the dreaded UIGEA, the bill that prohibits the transfer of funds from a financial institution to an internet gambling site, with the exceptions of Fantasy Sports, online lotteries, and horse racing. Since its passing, there’s been good news for some, bad news for most, and a lot of angry gamblers.
On December 8, 2006 – only two months after the bill was passed, Full Tilt Poker had a reported 50% increase of players, pulling in an average of 4,000 cash players a day, as opposed to the pre-bill average of 2,000. PokerStars went from a daily average of 6,500 cash players to 8,500, peaking at 12,000 players – a hefty 24% increase. They became the number one name in online poker room traffic.
The bill scared many offshore gambling sites away from the US customer base. This brought a high concentration of US players to companies who are adamant about keeping business in America. Prior to the 2006 UIGEA, the head honcho of online poker rooms was Party Poker. After pulling out of the US market, they’ve slipped to third in online site traffic rankings, behind Full Tilt and Poker Stars.
Poker Room, Pacific Poker, and Doyle’s Room also no longer take US customers. Paradise Poker, a company listed on the London Stock Exchange, was dependent on US customers for business, but stock exchange rules forced them to relinquish their US players, causing a huge drop in traffic and playership.
Other poker rooms were not able to stay afloat and have packed up the cards since the introduction of the bill. JetSet Poker closed up shop with a regretful letter to the customer posted on October 13, 2006, mere days after the passing of the bill. On March 31, 2007, after five months of trying to wriggle around legislation, PokerBlue closed operations and anyone with funds remaining with the company was asked to complete an online transfer form. CardRoom has also gone out of business, but are taking a slightly different approach. In their closing letter to the customer, they promise that soon they will provide “the most exciting and entirely legal online gaming experience!” They say the games will be completely free to play, with no deposits, and that CardRoom will take all the worries out of online poker while providing a fun-filled, secure environment for poker players everywhere. Only time will tell how this one pans out.
But despite the legislation and room closures, Americans are still gambling on the internet. Granted, it’s now harder to cash in and out, and major e-wallets like NETeller and FirePay have followed orders and no longer serve US customers – but it can still be done. The UIGEA blocks credit cards from being used, but funds can still be transferred from account to account, and surprisingly, you can still wire money. It’s been well documented that banks don’t have the resources to monitor online gambling transfers, making some debit card deposits possible.
So what has this piece of legislation done for the country besides monopolize the American market for Full Tilt and Poker Stars, and make the banks look incompetent?
For one, it has unnerved a lot of people. The internet is flooded with websites, articles, and blogs shunning the UIGEA. It’s not that people are upset about not being able to play poker – because let’s face it, they still can – but it’s that the government is trying to tell them what they can and can’t do. If you can’t sit in your own house at your own computer and play poker with your own hard-earned money, then you might as well move to Canada, because you can do it there.
This angst has sparked the interest of a few high-profile gambling aficionados like former US Senator Alfonse D’Amato, who has since become chairman of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), a non-profit that aims to protect the rights of poker players in the United States. During the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event, the Senator kicked off his shoes and sat back in a suite on the seventh floor of the RIO to reminisce about his experiences with poker – and dished out some heated arguments about the absurdity that is the UIGEA.
“Whatever happened to parental responsibility?” asks D’Amato, his eyes wide with concern. He understands that online gaming is accessible to the underage population, but doesn’t think that this is the government’s place to intervene. “When it comes down to it, it’s up to the parents,” he says. “It’s unfair to deprive good, innocent people of being able to play. You have the horse racers who protected and exempted the horseracing industry, and the NFL who protected and exempted Fantasy Sports. So we have to protect the poker players, because it’s not fair. Why should someone who wants to play poker be precluded but it’s different with [betting on] horses?”
The Senator’s relationship with poker goes beyond fighting for the rights of its players. Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, he recalls Sunday evening get-togethers where “The women would cook these great, savory meals and the men would play poker for fifty cents.” He sees the game as an American pastime that could use a hand from the internet to bring families closer together – which is a very, very different view from those critics who think that online gambling takes away from the wholesomeness of the game.
“Today, families don’t live under one roof anymore,” he says. “Your son could live in New York, your daughter in California, you’re somewhere else, and it’s hard to get together and do something as a family, let alone have a poker game.” He thinks that families could get together online and have a little cyber-home game.
Fine, the PPA isn’t really about family values, but they are an important part of the fight against the UIGEA. “What is most confounding about the exemption of horse racing and online lotteries,” says D’Amato, “is that these games involve much higher chance factors and require far less skill to play than card games.” That means the government thinks it okay to risk your money when you have less control of the outcome, but will slap your wrist if you start getting too smart about it. Go figure.
Arizona Senator Jon Kyl doesn’t share D’Amato’s enthusiasm when it comes to exempting online gambling from the act. He says that while poker involves an element of skill, the hands that win or lose are a result of chance – “the luck of the draw.” He challenges enthusiasts to prove otherwise to the satisfaction of a court, and says that then they would not be subject to online gambling restrictions.
While luck definitely has its place in a poker game, there must be a reason why there are good poker players and bad poker players. You can only get lucky so many times – and some professional online players make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a day. That’s a lot of luck.
In “Repealing UIGEA: Don’t Bet On It,” released on April 30, 2007, Kyl wrote that the exemption would “undermine state gambling laws, making it much more difficult, if not impossible, for states to enforce their laws against gambling on online poker, and would override any policy decisions made by state legislatures.” To Kyl, it is a matter of following the rules set by those who set them – a principle. He says he strongly opposes efforts to remove any “tools” that state and federal authorities have worked hard to establish.
Kyl also says that online gambling is the most addictive form of gambling among American youth, and thinks that exempting it would “exacerbate the two most pernicious aspects of internet gambling: addictiveness and easy access for youth.”
D’Amato, however, sees this as a reason to legalize online gambling. “If it’s illegal, there’s no way to regulate it. There are ways to regulate online gaming so that we know who’s playing what, and every hand can be tracked and it can be made known who’s abusing the system or who shouldn’t be playing.”
In countries like Holland, online gambling isn’t illegal – it’s licensed and controlled. Most sites are written in Dutch so that people outside the country can’t use their services. People who want to play are monitored by an encrypted code they sign up for at the point of registration.
While it must be disheartening for poker traditionalists like D’Amato to see their beloved game of poker get snubbed with disdain, those who are most directly affected are, of course, the online players themselves. Some casual players will play a cash game here or there and enter a tournament every once in a blue moon. But since it’s more of a hassle to do it now, these “fish” have greatly decreased in numbers. That means there are fewer bad players and more serious players online, and it’s much harder to win.
Taylor Caby is a 23-year-old online pro from Chicago. He says that the UIGEA has caused him to make less money this year, as a consequence of there being fewer bad players and playing less poker due to the shrunken availability of online poker rooms.
Caby says that though he used to play on a few networks that are now banned in the States, the biggest change for him since the passing of the bill is the caliber of the online players. “Honestly, you see a lot less inexperienced players now,” says Caby. “There used to be those guys who don’t really know what’s going on and they just play and they’re so easy to beat, but now the games have gotten a lot harder. It’s not as bad in the higher stakes games but definitely in tournaments and lower stakes.”
For many of the same reasons, the bill has even affected players outside of the United States. Sorel Mizzi is a 21-year-old online poker pro from Toronto, Canada. His homeland makes it okay for him to play on sites like Party Poker and other US-banned sites, but even so, he says the game just isn’t the same anymore.
“There’s no longer the volume [of players] that there once was,” he says. “I no longer play on some of my favorite sites and there are far less fish. And I can’t use NETeller anymore as an e-wallet.”
Mizzi sometimes plays in cash games on Party Poker, but thinks it’s no longer worth it to play in the tournaments. “The only tournament I play in on a non-US site now is the Sunday $300,000 guaranteed [prize] on Party,” Mizzi says. “That used to be $1 million guaranteed before the ban.”
Caby says the games are still very beatable, but only if you are good. “It’s never as easy as it used to be, and it never will be again,” he said. “But if you want to be successful, you have to get better.”
What the UIGEA has done then, in a sense, is close off the online gaming industry to the dabblers. Those who used to buy in for twenty bucks to play around for a bit and cash out no longer bother, because it’s just not worth the trouble. Let us not forget that there are no $.01/$.02 tables at your local cardroom. Now, those who do bother playing are playing the higher limits; the only difference is that they now have to play a lot better to win any money.
It turns out that over the past year, this legislation has cultivated a by-product of bigger, better poker players and nearly destroyed the casual player who plays merely to pass the time – not to mention killing the game for those who don’t live near a casino or poker room. Further, there is the extreme case of the elderly or disabled who cannot play at a traditional table, and have had the luxury of playing at home stripped from them. The list of freedoms and conveniences the UIGEA tramples is astonishingly long… all the while leaving billions of potential tax dollars made available through regulation lying on the table.
In a country with over three million homeless, nearly two million violent crimes per year, and an ongoing situation in the Middle East, you have to wonder how the government had time to mess with online gaming in the first place!
Lianna Shen is a graduate student and freelance journalist who covered the happenings at the 2007 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
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