I recently rekindled one of my favorite pastimes. Playing poker. Not that I ever stopped playing; I just haven’t had the time or opportunity to play much in the last few years. Last week, I found myself at my favorite local card room, Running Aces (which I highly recommend checking out), where I managed to win a modest tournament with a field of about 45 players. It was a lot of fun! I remembered how much I love this game.
Adding fuel to those flames, tonight the World Series of Poker (WSOP) will crown its 2013 World Champion, granting him (all of the final 9 players from a field of more than 6,000 are men) the coveted champion bracelet and more than $8 million. One of the things I love about this game, is unlike other elite sports events like the World Series, or the Super Bowl, literally anyone can try to win this game. All one needs is the cash for the $10,000 buy-in and some time to spend in Las Vegas in the summer. Sometimes you don’t even need any cash at all. As everyone who loves the game knows, in 2003, eventual WSOP Main Event champ, Chris Moneymaker won an online poker tournament “freeroll” that cost him nothing to enter to get into the tournament. Talk about the American Dream! An average guy, an amateur player, rose above the best in the game to win more than $2.5 million, sparking the poker boom.
But that’s not what I love most about this game. Professional Poker player and writer Victoria Coren once wrote:
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I’ve always loved that description. It touches on all the aspects of the game that intrigue me. Its a game that takes luck, sure, but it also invites you into a secret world with its own language. It takes cunning to win. You have to be an investigator. You have to use your reason. You have to think through strategy. In short, you need be good to win consistently. So, while amateurs can dream, and try to win it all (and many have), being a good poker player takes practice, commitment, and talent. It takes skill over luck over time. And it takes time to develop that skill.
I wish I could play more often because I really want to be good. I take it seriously. I track every win and loss. How much I bought in for, how much I ended up with, how much time I spent, what type of game it was, among other things. I manage my bankroll carefully, and only risk what I am able to afford to risk. I have a day job that pays my bills. I’m a good citizen. But one reason I can’t play as often as I want to, is because the US federal government has taken it upon itself to decide I can’t spend my money how I want to spend it, even if its in pursuit of something that arguably takes as much skill or even more skill than playing the stock market. Aside from the insane laws in Minnesota where I live making it impossible for me to play the form of the game I prefer (No Limit cash game), on April 15, 2011, the Federal Government decided to make playing poker online extremely difficult if not impossible when they indicted and shut down three of the biggest online poker rooms in the world. The day is known as Black Friday in the poker world.
On Black Friday, the government interpreted an ambiguous law as outlawing online poker, although it never specifies that. The point of this blog isn’t to go into all of those details, as they’re widely available, and better summarized elsewhere. And last year, I wrote about a settlement between the Feds and PokerStars, one of the online rooms indicted. Since that day, whether or not one agrees that the Feds had jurisdiction to do what they did, we all can agree that playing poker online since then has been nearly impossible, or extremely risky for Americans. Modern poker was invented and popularized in America, and yet Americans are effectively banned from playing the game in one of the ways we prefer.
For me, that is a travesty for these reasons:
- Online poker is not a crime. There are no victims. Players decide to spend their money playing the game, and that is their right. Do some take it too far and develop problems? Yes. That is true of ANYTHING. Some people make terrible decisions in their lives. We need to stop protecting people from themselves, especially when it interferes in the liberty of people who are able to function normally and without addiction. And while it really shouldn’t matter, for the record, people do not develop poker addictions at any higher rate than with any other addictive disorder. And most people who gamble, do not become addicted.
- Online poker rooms are less safe for consumers is a myth. Before Black Friday, consumers had many options. All of them had reputations among players for various customer experiences. Like with any business, if the business doesn’t give the consumer what they want, when there are other options, the consumer goes to the competitor. Reputation means everything. At PokerStars, I always knew exactly how much money I had in my account, and never had an issue getting a pay out that I requested. Also, many professional poker players staked their own reputations on the experience of the card room they were sponsored by. In fact, one of the reasons the Department of Justice was able to shutdown the online sites was because the Federal government had already made the consumer experience a difficult one when in 2006 the Bush administration passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act (UIGA) by throwing it into a larger bill Security and Accountability for Every Port Act (SAFE) designed to clamp down on terrorist money moving shenanigans. Essentially, they made it difficult for banks and credit card companies to do business with online poker rooms, thus making those rooms more likely to use cagey techniques for getting money to and from their customers. The feds created the circumstances that lead to a terrible customer experience, and one that looked less legitimate. I find that to be truly appalling. Additionally, after Black Friday, when the three sites were shut down, thousands of Americans who played online poker had their own money frozen. Some, like me were able to get their money in a matter of a few days. Others, are still waiting. I only had about $80 in my account, but some professional players had tens and hundreds of thousands, and even millions locked in their accounts. Some law abiding Americans made their living playing online poker. A very good living, and suddenly, the Federal government basically fired them, and kept the money. The delays in getting it back are still ongoing for some people. This is unforgivable to me. In a “crime” that had no victims, only willing, law abiding, tax paying individuals, the government has both taken away their livelihoods, and stolen their money all in the name of consumer protection. Not that it really changes anything, but in case you’re wondering… pretty much every other country allows online poker, including, and especially, the United Kingdom, a country that has had its own horrific terrorism experiences. Tell me, who really needs the protection and from whom?
- Online poker is a way for less experienced people to learn the game while risking less. I used to love playing poker multiple times per week at PokerStars. Because it was such a large site, with pools of people available at anytime all over the world, virtually any game at any level was available. If I go to a brick and mortar card room, I will probably need to bring a minimum of $40 with me just to buy into a game. And that would be one of the least profitable games, where I’d need to spend hours and hours just to get ahead, and beat the rake (the percentage the casino takes from each pot). Usually, when I play at a “live” game, I bring around $200 with me. I want the experience to be worth my time, so I’m likely to bring enough to be able to play for a while if things go bad, and I need to bring an amount that lets me into a game I want to play. That’s a lot of money. Online, I could literally choose a game that required only a $5 commitment. Sure, my profits would be smaller, and take longer to make, but what online poker did was allow me to play many hands of real poker with relatively little risk. To get better at poker, you have to play a lot of hands.
- Playing online poker could be better for the local card rooms and casinos. As my ability to play online shot immediately down to zero, so has my time at the brick and mortar card room. I have a poker budget. I add to my budget when I win, and take from it when I lose. Its not limitless. When I played online more frequently, I was able to build a bankroll that allowed me to play more games. It in turn, made me more passionate about playing the game, and improving. While playing online is more convenient, there’s nothing like playing a live game. I was able to justify doing so as a result of my online play. Because I’m no longer able to play as many hands, I’m not able to further develop my skill. In fact, those skills are likely atrophying. You can’t play a few hours a month (if that) and expect to regularly be a winner at a game that demands skill above luck. In poker, unlike other games, the casino doesn’t win when I lose. The casino wins when I spend time playing, especially when I spend time playing in high value games. I’m not a professional player. I’m like most lovers of the game out there. I can’t spend 40+ hours a week at the tables. But before online poker busted, I was spending far more hours at the casino than I am now, and I was playing in those higher value games. Now, I rarely do either. I’m not getting better, and the casino doesn’t get my business as often.
The Winning Choices
In my view, one way to help the economy would be if two things happened.
- Washington needs to pass a bill that strips any illegality away from playing poker online for Americans. I’m not a fan of regulation, but if they need to add language that makes collecting taxes easier and keeping minors out of the games, that’s fine. Ultimately, whether or not poker is illegal should be left up to the states. The default for the country should be online poker being legal. States should have to deem it illegal for compelling reasons.
- If local casinos were smart, they’d be pushing more for online legality, and be working with big online card rooms to build relationships. They could lend their name and reputation to the online facility, and therefore drive business into their brick and mortar rooms. Online poker is partially a numbers game. A worldwide pool is best. What would be terrible for the game is for each state to build its own online poker room (as is happening in Nevada and New Jersey, the only two states that have made online poker legal), and limit players to just the state. I doubt I’d be able to find my $5 buy-in tables, and therefore I wouldn’t be playing much, or building my bankroll up to play in the bigger games. The world-wide pool of players is vast, and that pool being available to all makes the consumer experience best, and safest. The game needs to be brought unequivocally into the light, where players are free to play a game they love with their own money, and where governments can collect the taxes they so crave. Aside from that, these businesses employ people. More online poker is better all.
So, tonight as I watch to see whether or not an ameteur player can outlast the professionals and win $8 million dollars, I’ll be thinking, it would be fun to be playing online at the same time. Maybe my payout would only be around $20, but I’d be doing something I love in the comfort of my own home. Instead, I’ll have to wait until the next home game with my friends, or the next chance I have to get to the local card room. It might be a while, and chances are, I’ll be worse than I would have been. That’s good for the pros, but bad for most of us. Keeping online poker illegal helps no one, is bad for the economy, and its bad for liberty.
What are your thoughts?
Cheers,
PersephoneK
If you want legal online poker in America check out the Poker Players Alliance, and help them work towards that goal, or keep abreast of what’s going on with current legalization efforts.
