I wrote a response article for QuadJacks defending the ongoing value of spreading awareness of poker as a skill game in the current political environment:
Check it out here: Poker Still Needs the Skill Game Argument.
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Pokerfuse article: "DOJ’s Response to Campos and Elie: Summary and Analysis"
I recently had the privilege of writing a guest piece for pokerfuse regarding the recently-published Department of Justice document related to the federal case against former online poker payment processors Campos and Elie.
Check it out here: DOJ’s Response to Campos and Elie: Summary and Analysis.
I do hope to be back to semi-regular writing here soon once I can start finding time for it again. I have some ideas in the pipeline that I may be able to get to in the near future. Thanks for all of your support so far.
Check it out here: DOJ’s Response to Campos and Elie: Summary and Analysis.
I do hope to be back to semi-regular writing here soon once I can start finding time for it again. I have some ideas in the pipeline that I may be able to get to in the near future. Thanks for all of your support so far.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Apocalypse
Last Friday, the webpages at PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com were replaced with the following image. Shortly after that, Americans were no longer able to play poker on these sites. Regardless of the immediate outcomes of this event, and regardless of the eventual future that online poker will have in the U.S. and in the rest of the world, this destructive change marked the sudden and immediate end of the first era of online poker.
After my dozens of hours of wading through online discussions over the past several days, I have been at a loss for what to say regarding what the poker world is calling "Black Friday". I don't have anything valuable to add to the ongoing community conversation for now, so I've erred on the side of staying quiet so as not to add to the chaos.
Nonetheless, I wanted to at least provide a brief summary and a few thoughts, mostly for the benefit of my personal acquaintances who may not be familiar with poker, or who may not have followed this particular issue closely. Since I have this blog, I might as well put it here. It won't be anything new for anyone who has been following the forums.
This is the biggest news in poker history, and the biggest damage ever done to the entire game's economy. It may even be the single highest-impact adverse event in the history of any competitive game.
In as few words as I can:
What happened?
Friday afternoon, the Department of Justice unsealed indictments against individuals associated with the largest U.S.-facing online poker sites, including PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. These sites served only as a venue for players to play poker against each other, and they did not offer any casino gambling. The charges against the sites include both illegal gambling charges and bank fraud charges. In response to the indictment, these sites blocked U.S. players from depositing, withdrawing, or playing in their games.
Since 2006, there was a reasonable probability that the DOJ would take an action like this at some point. It was more of a matter of when it would happen, rather than if it would happen.
No federal law addresses online poker, though some outdated laws cover sports betting or general gambling games played against the house (rather than between players). The DOJ has felt for years that online poker is illegal under these existing laws, and they have been alone in this assessment.
The UIGEA, passed in 2006, did not change the legality of any form of gambling and failed to provide a framework with which the DOJ could actually prosecute poker sites. However, this law, which targeted banks and other financial intermediaries that dealt with illegal gambling websites, allowed the DOJ to go after the processing of deposits and withdrawals for poker sites. For most major banks, the threat that poker sites might be considered "unlawful online gambling" and that servicing them might attract the costly attention of the DOJ was enough to make it a bad business decision to accept such transactions.
Thus poker sites that continued to serve the U.S. were inevitably destined to work with increasingly less reputable banking partners. At some point, the DOJ was bound to have enough information to make some claim against the poker sites under the broad classifications of money laundering and/or bank fraud. That is the nature of the bank fraud charges in this indictment.
Aside from the alleged bank fraud, which presumably became necessary in order to continue to serve the largest poker market in the world, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker are reputable, legitimate, global companies. They are explicitly licensed in every country which provides licensing for online poker; the sites would be happy to pay U.S. taxes in exchange for the benefits of U.S. licensing, but the U.S. still has not established a licensing framework. The sites operated in the U.S. under strong legal opinions that peer-to-peer strategy games like online poker do not constitute illegal online gambling. If they can demonstrate that the business of offering online poker to Americans does not constitute illegal online gambling, the bank fraud charges may not apply. It's complicated.
While I generally trust in PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, I do not support their misrepresentation of their transactions to banks, if the allegations are true.
What are the immediate effects?
Nothing has changed with regard to the legality of online poker for the player. American players are not targeted in any way in this indictment, nor under any federal laws. Even the DOJ agrees that playing online poker does not violate any federal law. All of the laws at play here are those which target only businesses that operate or profit from "illegal gambling".
Despite the fact that the players have broken no laws, their account balances with these sites are currently inaccessible. The sites will attempt to return U.S. players' funds as soon as they are able, but presumably, with an ongoing investigation into allegations of bank fraud in the U.S., the sites are having trouble initiating any further financial transactions in the U.S.
PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker were the only licensed and reputable online poker sites that were willing to accept American players amid the country's ambiguous legal landscape. Other smaller sites continue to serve the U.S., but are neither safe nor liquid enough for the consideration of serious poker players, especially as moving money to and from international poker sites will continue to become more and more difficult until the U.S. changes its laws.
Even if the indicted sites go on to win in court and to clear themselves of all charges, which would allow them to resume their U.S.-facing business, this will take years.
So, basically, for now and for the immediate future, online poker no longer exists in America.
What happens next?
Americans will continue to be unable to access their balances with these sites for some time. While historical precedent and most of the informed legal opinions I've read say that the players will get their money back eventually (possibly years), there's some chance that these funds are permanently seized by the DOJ due to the nature of the fraud charges or otherwise lost due to a future bankruptcy of these one-time giant global poker companies. Having read many different perspectives on this complex legal situation, I think there's at least a 95% chance that U.S. players will eventually get back their money. edit: Just now, a DOJ press release confirmed that the DOJ is looking to allow the sites to return players' money in an expedient manner, so upgrade this to 99%.
Tens of thousands of American online poker pros are essentially out of a job (I do not expect the general public to sympathize with this). Millions more American gamers have lost the opportunity to conveniently and efficiently play the game that they love and responsibly enjoy. Those few that are addicted to gambling on poker will continue to play at the remaining unsafe sites. For both professional and recreational players, replacing online poker with live, brick-and-mortar poker at U.S. casinos is rarely an option, due geographical concerns as well as a variety of economic and efficiency reasons. Serious players will have few options for practicing and improving their game, and the rest of the world will pull ahead of America at competitive poker.
The entire modern global poker industry of the past several years has been built upon PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, and the damage done to these two big online sites will have effects on the entire world of poker. Some poker tournament circuits and televised poker programs have already been cancelled, and countless more industry and media jobs will be disappearing as the poker economy contracts. I expect that this amounts to thousands of "real-life" jobs lost for Americans. The same negative effects will also carry over into other countries to some extent, as international players will have lost the ability to compete in a fully global player pool.
When the indictments are resolved, hopefully the illegal gambling charges are addressed in a way that leads to a court case that definitively establishes that poker is not unlawful gambling under U.S. law. Depending on who you ask, the illegal gambling charges are somewhere in between a real stretch legally and purely frivolous or just for show. However, the bank fraud charges are severe, and while not necessarily an unwinnable battle for the poker sites, it looks pretty bad for them — though, as I noted earlier, some say that the nature of whether or not fraud was committed does depend in some way upon whether or not the underlying operations were illegal gambling. Nonetheless, because of the severity of the bank fraud charges, the full set of indictments may be settled out-of-court, which would be a tremendous loss for the game of poker.
The silver lining in this catastrophe is the opportunity for poker to finally get its day in court, and I hope that those associated with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker will push for this.
The other possible silver lining would be if this indictment sped up the process of passing U.S. legislation to allow for domestic licensing of online poker. Some speculate that it will help compel U.S. interests to work towards it faster, as domestic casino companies will no longer need to worry about competing with established international sites for the U.S. player base. Others expect the controversy of this event to dissuade our elected representatives from embracing anything related to online poker. There does not seem to be a consensus.
Personal impact and thoughts
While I knew this day was likely to come at any moment in the past 4.5 years, and while I managed my money and planned my poker career accordingly, that hasn't made it easy to handle.
I play the vast majority of my poker online and will not be able to replace it with live poker to any meaningful degree. Moving to another country to play online poker would be incompatible with the rest of my life. This affects not only my finances, but also my happiness and life balance. Poker has been invaluable to me over the years as a unique outlet for mental exercise, strategic competition, and social interaction, all while being an excellent complement to my academic lifestyle. Over the past few days, it has really sunk in that I truly do value the game on these merits, rather than solely as an income source.
The entire premise of the government's various aggressive actions against online poker as "gambling", as well as society's refusal to properly treat poker the way identically-structured strategy games are treated, is something I have always taken serious issue with. This event is the culmination of a decade of ignorant and misguided policy towards my game, and it really hurts.
I was prepared for this and I'll be okay, but this is life-changing for me — and not in any good ways.
What to do?
If you have any interest in supporting the game of poker, the rights of competitive strategy gamers, or even just in supporting this because it is important to me, I would encourage you to take a look at the PPA's action plan and contact some of our elected representatives. While the charges against these particular poker sites may be legitimate, now that the perceived "bad actors" would be out of the picture anyway, this is an opportunity to gather support for U.S. legislation that will license and domestically regulate online poker. The government needs to hear that millions of its citizens are being negatively impacted by its policies towards online poker, and that its citizens deserve the consumer protections of a safe and explicitly-legal online poker landscape.
The poker world will never be the same as it was prior to Friday, but it will inevitably be rebuilt sometime in the next few years. The second, permanent era of online poker will emerge in a way that suits the interests of U.S. politicians and powerful domestic casino interests. This is discouraging at best, but it's the way laws get changed. As far as the health of poker and its players are concerned: the sooner it happens, the better. Every day in which well-minded, law-abiding, tax-paying Americans don't have access to compete at online poker is an undue intrusion into personal liberties and an insult to the integrity of this great game.
Links to more information
Ongoing 2+2 sticky thread with links to all relevant documents, press releases, and media coverage
Active Twitter folks on the issue and its aftermath: CKrafcik, GaryWise1, Karak2p2, Kevmath, Pokerati, taxdood
PPA's action plan
That's it for now. In general, this blog will continue, as most of my planned future topics were not entirely confined to online poker.
After my dozens of hours of wading through online discussions over the past several days, I have been at a loss for what to say regarding what the poker world is calling "Black Friday". I don't have anything valuable to add to the ongoing community conversation for now, so I've erred on the side of staying quiet so as not to add to the chaos.
Nonetheless, I wanted to at least provide a brief summary and a few thoughts, mostly for the benefit of my personal acquaintances who may not be familiar with poker, or who may not have followed this particular issue closely. Since I have this blog, I might as well put it here. It won't be anything new for anyone who has been following the forums.
This is the biggest news in poker history, and the biggest damage ever done to the entire game's economy. It may even be the single highest-impact adverse event in the history of any competitive game.
In as few words as I can:
What happened?
Friday afternoon, the Department of Justice unsealed indictments against individuals associated with the largest U.S.-facing online poker sites, including PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. These sites served only as a venue for players to play poker against each other, and they did not offer any casino gambling. The charges against the sites include both illegal gambling charges and bank fraud charges. In response to the indictment, these sites blocked U.S. players from depositing, withdrawing, or playing in their games.
Since 2006, there was a reasonable probability that the DOJ would take an action like this at some point. It was more of a matter of when it would happen, rather than if it would happen.
No federal law addresses online poker, though some outdated laws cover sports betting or general gambling games played against the house (rather than between players). The DOJ has felt for years that online poker is illegal under these existing laws, and they have been alone in this assessment.
The UIGEA, passed in 2006, did not change the legality of any form of gambling and failed to provide a framework with which the DOJ could actually prosecute poker sites. However, this law, which targeted banks and other financial intermediaries that dealt with illegal gambling websites, allowed the DOJ to go after the processing of deposits and withdrawals for poker sites. For most major banks, the threat that poker sites might be considered "unlawful online gambling" and that servicing them might attract the costly attention of the DOJ was enough to make it a bad business decision to accept such transactions.
Thus poker sites that continued to serve the U.S. were inevitably destined to work with increasingly less reputable banking partners. At some point, the DOJ was bound to have enough information to make some claim against the poker sites under the broad classifications of money laundering and/or bank fraud. That is the nature of the bank fraud charges in this indictment.
Aside from the alleged bank fraud, which presumably became necessary in order to continue to serve the largest poker market in the world, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker are reputable, legitimate, global companies. They are explicitly licensed in every country which provides licensing for online poker; the sites would be happy to pay U.S. taxes in exchange for the benefits of U.S. licensing, but the U.S. still has not established a licensing framework. The sites operated in the U.S. under strong legal opinions that peer-to-peer strategy games like online poker do not constitute illegal online gambling. If they can demonstrate that the business of offering online poker to Americans does not constitute illegal online gambling, the bank fraud charges may not apply. It's complicated.
While I generally trust in PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, I do not support their misrepresentation of their transactions to banks, if the allegations are true.
What are the immediate effects?
Nothing has changed with regard to the legality of online poker for the player. American players are not targeted in any way in this indictment, nor under any federal laws. Even the DOJ agrees that playing online poker does not violate any federal law. All of the laws at play here are those which target only businesses that operate or profit from "illegal gambling".
Despite the fact that the players have broken no laws, their account balances with these sites are currently inaccessible. The sites will attempt to return U.S. players' funds as soon as they are able, but presumably, with an ongoing investigation into allegations of bank fraud in the U.S., the sites are having trouble initiating any further financial transactions in the U.S.
PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker were the only licensed and reputable online poker sites that were willing to accept American players amid the country's ambiguous legal landscape. Other smaller sites continue to serve the U.S., but are neither safe nor liquid enough for the consideration of serious poker players, especially as moving money to and from international poker sites will continue to become more and more difficult until the U.S. changes its laws.
Even if the indicted sites go on to win in court and to clear themselves of all charges, which would allow them to resume their U.S.-facing business, this will take years.
So, basically, for now and for the immediate future, online poker no longer exists in America.
What happens next?
Americans will continue to be unable to access their balances with these sites for some time. While historical precedent and most of the informed legal opinions I've read say that the players will get their money back eventually (possibly years), there's some chance that these funds are permanently seized by the DOJ due to the nature of the fraud charges or otherwise lost due to a future bankruptcy of these one-time giant global poker companies. Having read many different perspectives on this complex legal situation, I think there's at least a 95% chance that U.S. players will eventually get back their money. edit: Just now, a DOJ press release confirmed that the DOJ is looking to allow the sites to return players' money in an expedient manner, so upgrade this to 99%.
Tens of thousands of American online poker pros are essentially out of a job (I do not expect the general public to sympathize with this). Millions more American gamers have lost the opportunity to conveniently and efficiently play the game that they love and responsibly enjoy. Those few that are addicted to gambling on poker will continue to play at the remaining unsafe sites. For both professional and recreational players, replacing online poker with live, brick-and-mortar poker at U.S. casinos is rarely an option, due geographical concerns as well as a variety of economic and efficiency reasons. Serious players will have few options for practicing and improving their game, and the rest of the world will pull ahead of America at competitive poker.
The entire modern global poker industry of the past several years has been built upon PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, and the damage done to these two big online sites will have effects on the entire world of poker. Some poker tournament circuits and televised poker programs have already been cancelled, and countless more industry and media jobs will be disappearing as the poker economy contracts. I expect that this amounts to thousands of "real-life" jobs lost for Americans. The same negative effects will also carry over into other countries to some extent, as international players will have lost the ability to compete in a fully global player pool.
When the indictments are resolved, hopefully the illegal gambling charges are addressed in a way that leads to a court case that definitively establishes that poker is not unlawful gambling under U.S. law. Depending on who you ask, the illegal gambling charges are somewhere in between a real stretch legally and purely frivolous or just for show. However, the bank fraud charges are severe, and while not necessarily an unwinnable battle for the poker sites, it looks pretty bad for them — though, as I noted earlier, some say that the nature of whether or not fraud was committed does depend in some way upon whether or not the underlying operations were illegal gambling. Nonetheless, because of the severity of the bank fraud charges, the full set of indictments may be settled out-of-court, which would be a tremendous loss for the game of poker.
The silver lining in this catastrophe is the opportunity for poker to finally get its day in court, and I hope that those associated with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker will push for this.
The other possible silver lining would be if this indictment sped up the process of passing U.S. legislation to allow for domestic licensing of online poker. Some speculate that it will help compel U.S. interests to work towards it faster, as domestic casino companies will no longer need to worry about competing with established international sites for the U.S. player base. Others expect the controversy of this event to dissuade our elected representatives from embracing anything related to online poker. There does not seem to be a consensus.
Personal impact and thoughts
While I knew this day was likely to come at any moment in the past 4.5 years, and while I managed my money and planned my poker career accordingly, that hasn't made it easy to handle.
I play the vast majority of my poker online and will not be able to replace it with live poker to any meaningful degree. Moving to another country to play online poker would be incompatible with the rest of my life. This affects not only my finances, but also my happiness and life balance. Poker has been invaluable to me over the years as a unique outlet for mental exercise, strategic competition, and social interaction, all while being an excellent complement to my academic lifestyle. Over the past few days, it has really sunk in that I truly do value the game on these merits, rather than solely as an income source.
The entire premise of the government's various aggressive actions against online poker as "gambling", as well as society's refusal to properly treat poker the way identically-structured strategy games are treated, is something I have always taken serious issue with. This event is the culmination of a decade of ignorant and misguided policy towards my game, and it really hurts.
I was prepared for this and I'll be okay, but this is life-changing for me — and not in any good ways.
What to do?
If you have any interest in supporting the game of poker, the rights of competitive strategy gamers, or even just in supporting this because it is important to me, I would encourage you to take a look at the PPA's action plan and contact some of our elected representatives. While the charges against these particular poker sites may be legitimate, now that the perceived "bad actors" would be out of the picture anyway, this is an opportunity to gather support for U.S. legislation that will license and domestically regulate online poker. The government needs to hear that millions of its citizens are being negatively impacted by its policies towards online poker, and that its citizens deserve the consumer protections of a safe and explicitly-legal online poker landscape.
The poker world will never be the same as it was prior to Friday, but it will inevitably be rebuilt sometime in the next few years. The second, permanent era of online poker will emerge in a way that suits the interests of U.S. politicians and powerful domestic casino interests. This is discouraging at best, but it's the way laws get changed. As far as the health of poker and its players are concerned: the sooner it happens, the better. Every day in which well-minded, law-abiding, tax-paying Americans don't have access to compete at online poker is an undue intrusion into personal liberties and an insult to the integrity of this great game.
Links to more information
Ongoing 2+2 sticky thread with links to all relevant documents, press releases, and media coverage
Active Twitter folks on the issue and its aftermath: CKrafcik, GaryWise1, Karak2p2, Kevmath, Pokerati, taxdood
PPA's action plan
That's it for now. In general, this blog will continue, as most of my planned future topics were not entirely confined to online poker.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Christie vetoes NJ internet gambling bill — my summary and thoughts
It's been a long time since the New Jersey internet gambling bill S490 passed with a 85% majority through its final legislative committee. In fact, it's been the maximum amount of time. Governor Chris Christie had 45 days to act on the bill by signing or vetoing it, which meant he had until February 24th to decide... or so we thought. After what felt like an eternity of waiting, shortly before February 24th, we all learned that some weird exception surrounding the congressional calendar actually gave him until March 3rd to make his move on the bill.
Earlier today, Christie vetoed the bill. His press release, linking to his official statement to the NJ Senate on this matter, is available here.
Originally, the veto was reported as a conditional veto, and is still recorded as such on the website of the NJ legislature, but the more recent reports are saying that it was upgraded to an absolute veto. This article captures the drama surrounding the nature of this veto.
Christie's decision
It's hard to blame Christie for running his time bank all the way down on this decision. He had many factors to consider, all of which were the topic of much speculation and discussion while we waited for his decision.
Reasons for Christie to sign:
Reasons for Christie to veto:
Reasons which were, at best, taking a backseat to all of the above, and at worst, not even under consideration:
What's next?
A conditional veto of this bill was expected to likely be only a temporary setback, perhaps enough to make NJ lose the race to be the first state to license internet gambling, but still only a short delay of the inevitable. The most recent news surrounding this absolute veto, however, makes it seem probable that there might be nothing happening with this bill for a while.
Though the NJ legislature is able to override a governor's veto with a 2/3 majority, Senator Raymond Lesniak, the sponsor of the bill, has said that he will not attempt to do so. Despite its original passage with a sufficiently-large majority, in light of Christie's veto, New Jersey Republicans are no longer expected to support the bill. Lesniak also seems pessimistic about the chances of any new "fixed" legislation for NJ internet gambling, given the Governor's attitude. His quotes in this article make it seem like any second attempt at getting this bill into law is not likely to come to fruition anytime soon.
Though the conflicting reports of today seem to be settling on the above, I can't help but observe that all of the incentives which compelled this bill in the first place are still there. New Jersey badly needs revenue, and it does not seem that Christie is fundamentally opposed to the notion of licensed internet gambling in NJ. If the positive incentives for such a bill were able to economically overcome the opposing forces of Caesar's and the NFL, it seems that a compromise could be reached and a few legal tweaks could be quickly made to the bill to make it palatable to the governor.
Most likely, though, we're looking at no action for a while. If a public referendum is indeed needed, I believe that can't occur until November at the earliest.
My Thoughts
As all of the information surrounding the bill developed, I was pretty close to indifferent between the bill's passage or failure, which is sad for what would have let my own state create the first explicitly legal online poker in the country. If the bill didn't criminalize unlicensed operators in a manner that might have forced international poker-only sites to stop serving NJ residents, I would have been a strong supporter of this bill. As it was, where passage of the bill would possibly mean that I'd have to move out of state to play online poker with a reasonably-sized pool of players, I had to personally lean towards opposing the bill.
S490 would have been a great bill for gamblers, but potentially a bad-to-terrible bill for serious poker players. I feel that the considerations of poker players were dwarfed by the considerations of gambling, and I can't help but feel disregarded in the wake of the political mess surrounding its veto.
The bill impeded on the rights of competitive strategy gamers by explicitly including poker in the scope of its protectionist regulations at the expense of global competition. No gambling game is negatively impacted by only being able to serve residents of a small region, but limiting poker to only New Jerseyans would possibly mean the end of the availability of sufficiently liquid online games for competitive players. This is the cost of using the public's perception of poker as "gambling" as a vehicle to attempt to secure rights for our game. Granted, the poker-only federal Reid bill also limited the player pool to U.S. players only, but it at least had ambitions to expand to global markets within several years, which is a relatively short amount of time in the world of government.
Also discouraging to me was that the discourse and incentives surrounding Christie's decision on the bill included so many different political factors that the rights of poker players likely held little to no value in his decision. This is the cost of selling legislatures on licensing and regulating internet poker through arguments primarily focused on tax revenues. Poker does not have nearly enough political allies who legitimately care about the rights of adults to participate in competitive games.
I'm also worried about the result if an eventual NJ internet gambling bill were to go to a public referendum.
Even if the bill were poker-only, I would worry that the majority of the public would vote against poker based on misguided moral beliefs or misinformation/ignorance about the game of poker. For example, to be generous, if 10% of citizens play poker at least semi-seriously, and another 20% are close enough to such people to even partially understand why poker is good, that leaves 70% of people whose perception of poker may be based off of indoctrinations that "gambling" is an unbeatable, degenerate, or sinful. Each person in this 70% gets a vote worth just as much as those in the 10%, regardless of how incorrect their beliefs are or, more unfortunately, how irrelevant the outcome of the vote is to their personal lives. I guess this might be a failure of the democratic process in general, but it seems particularly dangerous with something as widely and fiercely misunderstood as the game of poker.
Add in the fact that any future NJ internet gambling bill is still likely to treat all "gambling" instead of only poker and it becomes a lot easier to lose that vote.
I would be passionate in lobbying the public for voting for a good poker-only bill, but I honestly might not even bother asking my friends and family to support a broader bill. While I personally side with the rights of well-minded adults to annihilate their wealth through the methods of their choosing, I don't feel strongly enough about this to try to change the mind of somebody who wants to limit the existence of any form of slot machines at all costs, and I would not be comfortable conflating these issues with the game of poker.
So while I'm glad that I get to continue enjoying the long-term-unstable status quo of online poker for the time being, the stress of this long wait and its overly-politicized result makes me even more eager and desperate for the time when internet poker will be treated in a logical and rational manner by the U.S.
Might be a while.
Earlier today, Christie vetoed the bill. His press release, linking to his official statement to the NJ Senate on this matter, is available here.
Originally, the veto was reported as a conditional veto, and is still recorded as such on the website of the NJ legislature, but the more recent reports are saying that it was upgraded to an absolute veto. This article captures the drama surrounding the nature of this veto.
Christie's decision
It's hard to blame Christie for running his time bank all the way down on this decision. He had many factors to consider, all of which were the topic of much speculation and discussion while we waited for his decision.
Reasons for Christie to sign:
- The tax and job creation of internet gambling would generate revenue for the state, and quite a bit of it (a BIG reason for NJ right now).
- Internet gambling would lead to additional revitalization of Atlantic City in general.
- Domestic licenses on internet gambling would provide repatriation of revenues currently going to perceived "evil offshore operators".
- Winning the "race" by getting NJ's internet gambling network established before a future federal internet gambling bill could work out better for the state's coffers than simply waiting to opt into a federal scheme.
Reasons for Christie to veto:
- Caesar's Entertainment lobbied heavily against this bill, presumably believing that its own interests are better-served by an eventual federal bill.
- Many citizens oppose internet gambling, perhaps as many as 67% of them, according to a recent poll, which I thought was rather surprising. While other polls show overall support for internet gambling, I think it's fair to say that even those people who support gambling in general may not always support internet gambling, especially when concerned with a potential proliferation of gambling in public areas, such as non-casino businesses using internet cafes as effective gambling devices.
- There are various complex legal concerns over whether or not the intrastate framework of S490 would be acceptable under federal gambling laws. In particular, Christie has ties to the federal Department of Justice, the entity which goes against court rulings by insisting that online poker is covered by the ancient anti-sports-betting Wire Act and attacking payment processors accordingly. If the DOJ doesn't want there to be any internet gambling anywhere, for whatever reason, Christie might side with them.
- The NFL doesn't want it to pass and Christie may have owed them a favor... a little conspiratorial, but it is definitely the case that the NFL is inconceivably powerful and that the NFL is inconceivably opposed to all internet gambling, even poker-only initiatives.
- "Competition" from online gambling could reduce the business of brick-and-mortar Atlantic City casinos. I would be shocked if the net effect of AC-based internet gambling wasn't positive for all of Atlantic City, but I think this idea was out there.
- There are rumors that Christie may want to run for president soon. The official Republican Party platform opposes internet gambling in all of its forms, so it might hurt his chances at the nomination to be known as the first U.S. political figure to "legalize" internet gambling.
- Finally, the reason that I didn't consider until Christie gave it as a reason in his veto: there is a potential legal conflict between this bill and the state constitution. The NJ Constitution allows for casino gambling to take place only in Atlantic City. The internet gambling bill treated this by defining that play between a player anywhere and a business with servers in Atlantic City was play that "took place in Atlantic City". Christie found this to be dubious and suggests that a public referendum might be necessary to modify the state constitution to allow for statewide internet gambling.
Reasons which were, at best, taking a backseat to all of the above, and at worst, not even under consideration:
- Whether or not adults should have the right to be able to use the internet to engage in the same financial activities and/or gambling games that they can legally partake in through brick-and-mortar establishments
- Effects on competitive poker players, that silly little bunch... don't they realize that their activity is "just gambling" and exists only for producing corporate and government revenue?
What's next?
A conditional veto of this bill was expected to likely be only a temporary setback, perhaps enough to make NJ lose the race to be the first state to license internet gambling, but still only a short delay of the inevitable. The most recent news surrounding this absolute veto, however, makes it seem probable that there might be nothing happening with this bill for a while.
Though the NJ legislature is able to override a governor's veto with a 2/3 majority, Senator Raymond Lesniak, the sponsor of the bill, has said that he will not attempt to do so. Despite its original passage with a sufficiently-large majority, in light of Christie's veto, New Jersey Republicans are no longer expected to support the bill. Lesniak also seems pessimistic about the chances of any new "fixed" legislation for NJ internet gambling, given the Governor's attitude. His quotes in this article make it seem like any second attempt at getting this bill into law is not likely to come to fruition anytime soon.
Though the conflicting reports of today seem to be settling on the above, I can't help but observe that all of the incentives which compelled this bill in the first place are still there. New Jersey badly needs revenue, and it does not seem that Christie is fundamentally opposed to the notion of licensed internet gambling in NJ. If the positive incentives for such a bill were able to economically overcome the opposing forces of Caesar's and the NFL, it seems that a compromise could be reached and a few legal tweaks could be quickly made to the bill to make it palatable to the governor.
Most likely, though, we're looking at no action for a while. If a public referendum is indeed needed, I believe that can't occur until November at the earliest.
My Thoughts
As all of the information surrounding the bill developed, I was pretty close to indifferent between the bill's passage or failure, which is sad for what would have let my own state create the first explicitly legal online poker in the country. If the bill didn't criminalize unlicensed operators in a manner that might have forced international poker-only sites to stop serving NJ residents, I would have been a strong supporter of this bill. As it was, where passage of the bill would possibly mean that I'd have to move out of state to play online poker with a reasonably-sized pool of players, I had to personally lean towards opposing the bill.
S490 would have been a great bill for gamblers, but potentially a bad-to-terrible bill for serious poker players. I feel that the considerations of poker players were dwarfed by the considerations of gambling, and I can't help but feel disregarded in the wake of the political mess surrounding its veto.
The bill impeded on the rights of competitive strategy gamers by explicitly including poker in the scope of its protectionist regulations at the expense of global competition. No gambling game is negatively impacted by only being able to serve residents of a small region, but limiting poker to only New Jerseyans would possibly mean the end of the availability of sufficiently liquid online games for competitive players. This is the cost of using the public's perception of poker as "gambling" as a vehicle to attempt to secure rights for our game. Granted, the poker-only federal Reid bill also limited the player pool to U.S. players only, but it at least had ambitions to expand to global markets within several years, which is a relatively short amount of time in the world of government.
Also discouraging to me was that the discourse and incentives surrounding Christie's decision on the bill included so many different political factors that the rights of poker players likely held little to no value in his decision. This is the cost of selling legislatures on licensing and regulating internet poker through arguments primarily focused on tax revenues. Poker does not have nearly enough political allies who legitimately care about the rights of adults to participate in competitive games.
I'm also worried about the result if an eventual NJ internet gambling bill were to go to a public referendum.
Even if the bill were poker-only, I would worry that the majority of the public would vote against poker based on misguided moral beliefs or misinformation/ignorance about the game of poker. For example, to be generous, if 10% of citizens play poker at least semi-seriously, and another 20% are close enough to such people to even partially understand why poker is good, that leaves 70% of people whose perception of poker may be based off of indoctrinations that "gambling" is an unbeatable, degenerate, or sinful. Each person in this 70% gets a vote worth just as much as those in the 10%, regardless of how incorrect their beliefs are or, more unfortunately, how irrelevant the outcome of the vote is to their personal lives. I guess this might be a failure of the democratic process in general, but it seems particularly dangerous with something as widely and fiercely misunderstood as the game of poker.
Add in the fact that any future NJ internet gambling bill is still likely to treat all "gambling" instead of only poker and it becomes a lot easier to lose that vote.
I would be passionate in lobbying the public for voting for a good poker-only bill, but I honestly might not even bother asking my friends and family to support a broader bill. While I personally side with the rights of well-minded adults to annihilate their wealth through the methods of their choosing, I don't feel strongly enough about this to try to change the mind of somebody who wants to limit the existence of any form of slot machines at all costs, and I would not be comfortable conflating these issues with the game of poker.
So while I'm glad that I get to continue enjoying the long-term-unstable status quo of online poker for the time being, the stress of this long wait and its overly-politicized result makes me even more eager and desperate for the time when internet poker will be treated in a logical and rational manner by the U.S.
Might be a while.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The irrelevance of the Griffin/Qureshi prop bet to poker, and why there might be an abundance of gambling culture around our game
The Ashton Griffin/Haseeb Qureshi prop bet story has been making its rounds throughout the poker media for the last week or so. The short version of the story is that these two high-stakes poker players made a six-figure prop bet on whether or not Ashton could run 70 miles in 24 hours, risking not only Ashton's physical health but also their friendship. Haseeb's firsthand account of his side of the bet and his emotional struggle with it, in case anyone has somehow not read it yet, is a fascinating and well-written story (Part 1, Part 2).
I don't have any meaningful reactions to the actual events of this story that haven't already been expressed by plenty of others already. Among those who discussed the story, I thought crAAKKer and Bellatrix did a great job, and I generally share their views.
The story itself is perhaps less interesting than the poker community's fascination with it. Perhaps it was a slow news week, but many bloggers and podcasters seemed eager to draw conclusions from this story about the poker world as a whole, including an entire article from PokerNews about whether or not crazy prop bets like these are good for poker.
My concerns began when Haseeb himself was the first to claim to tie his degenerate experience to "the world of poker" (from Part 2 of his blog):
Did I miss the part of this story that was about poker?
The Griffin/Qureshi story does not involve poker at all. Sure, Griffin and Qureshi are both poker players. But it seems they are also, to use a phrase which gives them the benefit of the doubt, active high-stakes proposition bettors.
It's pretty clear that Haseeb's intent in the above quote is that there's something about the world of crazy prop bets or the overall baller lifestyle that's fundamentally unhealthy. But this world is not fundamentally related to poker.
Poker is a competitive strategy game, and many of its players enjoy it solely on that basis. They make rational investment decisions with respect to their poker career, and the financial risk associated with the random elements of a poker game is merely an unavoidable cost of playing. These players will never play casino games, bet sports, or make impulsive prop bets. They are not "gamblers" in any meaningful sense of the word; they would be much better described as long-term investors.
I would suggest that the Griffin/Qureshi story is a gambling story and NOT a poker story. With all due respect to the personal experience Haseeb was willing to share, the conclusions he has drawn in the quote above are not conclusions about the world of poker players. They are conclusions about the tiny world of gamblers who happen to have made it to the top of the world of poker players.
Accordingly, I don't see this story as having any sort of implications for the poker community. I don't see why it should be either good or bad for poker. And, beyond the novelty value of it being a story about two poker players, I don't see why it should be carrying nearly as much content in poker-related publications as it has been.
Is prop betting part of poker culture?
I admit that, holed up in my ivory tower, I am likely quite out of touch with the "real-world" poker culture, centered upon the fascinating antics of our most successful players, and I would not be so silly as to suggest that the culture of a particular game is confined entirely to the game itself. If poker players as a group are actually characterized by not only playing poker, but also by making crazy prop bets, then indeed that is part of the poker culture.
However, I would dispute the idea that prop bets are indeed characteristic of poker players. Rather, they are characteristic of a certain subgroup of poker players: gamblers who play poker. And it just so happens that the highest-stakes, highest-profile poker players in our world are probably especially likely to be gamblers. I can think of three reasons why.
1) Self-selection of gamblers to the game of poker
We'll keep the math light today, and we'll make up most of the numbers, just for the sake of illustration.
Let's separate society into those who like to gamble and those who do not. Pulling a number out of thin air, let's say that 5% of society enjoys gambling, in the sense of perhaps house-edge casino games or of unique wagers on uncertain-probability sporting events/prop bets (but NOT "gambling" merely in the sense of playing competitive strategy games for money, which is distinctly different from each of these).
Now let's separate society into those who like to play poker and those who do not. Using the PPA's estimate of 55 million American poker players of various levels, we might guess that around 17% of society likes to play poker. Some portion of this 17% likes poker because it's a competitive strategy game, some portion likes poker because it's a fun way to gamble, and some portion likes it for a combination of those reasons.
What does the overlap between these two groups look like? It seems reasonable to expect that gamblers should be more likely to get into poker than non-gamblers, for a few reasons:
The result is that about 14% of poker players are gamblers, versus 5% of the population as a whole. Therefore poker players as a group become more identified with gambling than other groups, despite the fact that no actual aspect of the game of poker has contributed to these effects.
Play with the numbers and the effects can be more drastic. If you take a broader view of "gambling" and let the percentage of gamblers exceed the percentage of poker players, the percentage of poker players that are also gamblers can get as high as you want.
2) Self-selection of gambling-predisposed poker players to higher-stakes play
We have seen in our analysis of the WSOP Main Event that high-stakes poker games demand either a high level of wealth or a high level of risk tolerance (or even risk-seeking-ness). Realistically, though, in the age of $100k-buyin tournaments and nosebleed cash games, the WSOP Main Event is pretty small. If we were to perform any sort of reasonable risk analysis on the highest-stakes games in the world, we'd find that tremendous levels of wealth are needed for a risk-averse individual to participate, and yet the general consensus is that very few players actually have a proper bankroll for these games.
Among rational players who aren't millionaires to begin with and who manage their poker career like a long-term, low-risk investment, few of them will ever be able to climb all the way up through the stakes and reach the highest-stakes games.
On the other hand, gamblers with the same skill sets as these rational players are likely to throw caution to the wind and move up too quickly, or impulsively play in stakes that are outright too high for them. Among this group, some of them will succeed and then maintain themselves at the higher stakes. Therefore, the highest-stakes games should have a significantly higher percentage of degenerate gamblers than the poker community as a whole.
3) The focus of media on interesting personalities
Finally, now that we've got our high-stakes players, the media will inevitably focus their attention on those players who produce the best stories. Gamblers (of various degrees) produce better stories than those who are more conservative with risk. Therefore we should expect an even higher percentage of the high-stakes players we hear about to have tendencies towards gambling than the high-stakes community as a whole.
All told, as we restrict our attention to the biggest poker players, we might expect as many as half of them to also be gamblers. Their gambling activity, which is at best tangential to the game of poker, will not be representative of the world of poker.
Conclusion: the REAL poker culture
The most talked-about members of the poker community are an extremely small sample of the entire poker community, and we should expect this sample to also be strongly biased in favor of people who are predisposed to degenerate gambling. The vast majority of the members of the world of poker would never dream of ever making a wager as ridiculous as that of Griffin and Qureshi. Even among successful, competitive, professional poker players, I expect that few of them share the view of poker culture that these prop bettors have.
Since this behavior is not characteristic of the vast majority of poker players, and since the behavior is completely unrelated to the game of poker (but probably related to a self-selecting subgroup of poker players), the culture of these crazy prop bets is a separate culture from that of poker.
Stories such as these should be neither good nor bad for poker. Suggesting that stories such as these are somehow inherent to or representative of poker, however, is almost certainly bad for poker, as well as incorrect.
I don't have any meaningful reactions to the actual events of this story that haven't already been expressed by plenty of others already. Among those who discussed the story, I thought crAAKKer and Bellatrix did a great job, and I generally share their views.
The story itself is perhaps less interesting than the poker community's fascination with it. Perhaps it was a slow news week, but many bloggers and podcasters seemed eager to draw conclusions from this story about the poker world as a whole, including an entire article from PokerNews about whether or not crazy prop bets like these are good for poker.
My concerns began when Haseeb himself was the first to claim to tie his degenerate experience to "the world of poker" (from Part 2 of his blog):
Something that I've come to think about is that perhaps there's something about the world of poker players that's fundamentally unhealthy. This generation of online poker players and its culture has existed for less than ten years, yet I've always had some assumption lodged deep in my psyche that if I'm not finding happiness through poker that it's just something wrong with me. And yet, there are so many people at every level of poker who are so deeply unhappy. It leaves me wondering.
And perhaps that's what really is the most difficult challenge for this generation of poker players. To infiltrate a world that is at its root, deeply unhealthy and imbalanced...
The Griffin/Qureshi story does not involve poker at all. Sure, Griffin and Qureshi are both poker players. But it seems they are also, to use a phrase which gives them the benefit of the doubt, active high-stakes proposition bettors.
It's pretty clear that Haseeb's intent in the above quote is that there's something about the world of crazy prop bets or the overall baller lifestyle that's fundamentally unhealthy. But this world is not fundamentally related to poker.
Poker is a competitive strategy game, and many of its players enjoy it solely on that basis. They make rational investment decisions with respect to their poker career, and the financial risk associated with the random elements of a poker game is merely an unavoidable cost of playing. These players will never play casino games, bet sports, or make impulsive prop bets. They are not "gamblers" in any meaningful sense of the word; they would be much better described as long-term investors.
I would suggest that the Griffin/Qureshi story is a gambling story and NOT a poker story. With all due respect to the personal experience Haseeb was willing to share, the conclusions he has drawn in the quote above are not conclusions about the world of poker players. They are conclusions about the tiny world of gamblers who happen to have made it to the top of the world of poker players.
Accordingly, I don't see this story as having any sort of implications for the poker community. I don't see why it should be either good or bad for poker. And, beyond the novelty value of it being a story about two poker players, I don't see why it should be carrying nearly as much content in poker-related publications as it has been.
Is prop betting part of poker culture?
I admit that, holed up in my ivory tower, I am likely quite out of touch with the "real-world" poker culture, centered upon the fascinating antics of our most successful players, and I would not be so silly as to suggest that the culture of a particular game is confined entirely to the game itself. If poker players as a group are actually characterized by not only playing poker, but also by making crazy prop bets, then indeed that is part of the poker culture.
However, I would dispute the idea that prop bets are indeed characteristic of poker players. Rather, they are characteristic of a certain subgroup of poker players: gamblers who play poker. And it just so happens that the highest-stakes, highest-profile poker players in our world are probably especially likely to be gamblers. I can think of three reasons why.
1) Self-selection of gamblers to the game of poker
We'll keep the math light today, and we'll make up most of the numbers, just for the sake of illustration.
Let's separate society into those who like to gamble and those who do not. Pulling a number out of thin air, let's say that 5% of society enjoys gambling, in the sense of perhaps house-edge casino games or of unique wagers on uncertain-probability sporting events/prop bets (but NOT "gambling" merely in the sense of playing competitive strategy games for money, which is distinctly different from each of these).
Now let's separate society into those who like to play poker and those who do not. Using the PPA's estimate of 55 million American poker players of various levels, we might guess that around 17% of society likes to play poker. Some portion of this 17% likes poker because it's a competitive strategy game, some portion likes poker because it's a fun way to gamble, and some portion likes it for a combination of those reasons.
What does the overlap between these two groups look like? It seems reasonable to expect that gamblers should be more likely to get into poker than non-gamblers, for a few reasons:
- Unlike most other competitive strategy games, poker is very popular to play for money at all levels of stakes. Therefore, if someone who is predisposed towards enjoying gambling is going to pick a strategy game to play, they are more likely to choose the one where they will easily find millions of opponents who are willing to play it for their desired level of stakes.
- Much of society perceives poker as a gambling activity. Regardless of whether or not this is meaningful or accurate, this should compel people who like gambling to try poker.
- Casinos strengthen this perception by offering poker alongside their degenerate house-edge games. Gamblers who frequent casinos are likely to try poker at some point.
The result is that about 14% of poker players are gamblers, versus 5% of the population as a whole. Therefore poker players as a group become more identified with gambling than other groups, despite the fact that no actual aspect of the game of poker has contributed to these effects.
Play with the numbers and the effects can be more drastic. If you take a broader view of "gambling" and let the percentage of gamblers exceed the percentage of poker players, the percentage of poker players that are also gamblers can get as high as you want.
2) Self-selection of gambling-predisposed poker players to higher-stakes play
We have seen in our analysis of the WSOP Main Event that high-stakes poker games demand either a high level of wealth or a high level of risk tolerance (or even risk-seeking-ness). Realistically, though, in the age of $100k-buyin tournaments and nosebleed cash games, the WSOP Main Event is pretty small. If we were to perform any sort of reasonable risk analysis on the highest-stakes games in the world, we'd find that tremendous levels of wealth are needed for a risk-averse individual to participate, and yet the general consensus is that very few players actually have a proper bankroll for these games.
Among rational players who aren't millionaires to begin with and who manage their poker career like a long-term, low-risk investment, few of them will ever be able to climb all the way up through the stakes and reach the highest-stakes games.
On the other hand, gamblers with the same skill sets as these rational players are likely to throw caution to the wind and move up too quickly, or impulsively play in stakes that are outright too high for them. Among this group, some of them will succeed and then maintain themselves at the higher stakes. Therefore, the highest-stakes games should have a significantly higher percentage of degenerate gamblers than the poker community as a whole.
3) The focus of media on interesting personalities
Finally, now that we've got our high-stakes players, the media will inevitably focus their attention on those players who produce the best stories. Gamblers (of various degrees) produce better stories than those who are more conservative with risk. Therefore we should expect an even higher percentage of the high-stakes players we hear about to have tendencies towards gambling than the high-stakes community as a whole.
All told, as we restrict our attention to the biggest poker players, we might expect as many as half of them to also be gamblers. Their gambling activity, which is at best tangential to the game of poker, will not be representative of the world of poker.
Conclusion: the REAL poker culture
The most talked-about members of the poker community are an extremely small sample of the entire poker community, and we should expect this sample to also be strongly biased in favor of people who are predisposed to degenerate gambling. The vast majority of the members of the world of poker would never dream of ever making a wager as ridiculous as that of Griffin and Qureshi. Even among successful, competitive, professional poker players, I expect that few of them share the view of poker culture that these prop bettors have.
Since this behavior is not characteristic of the vast majority of poker players, and since the behavior is completely unrelated to the game of poker (but probably related to a self-selecting subgroup of poker players), the culture of these crazy prop bets is a separate culture from that of poker.
Stories such as these should be neither good nor bad for poker. Suggesting that stories such as these are somehow inherent to or representative of poker, however, is almost certainly bad for poker, as well as incorrect.
Monday, January 10, 2011
NJ internet gambling bill passes Assembly, awaits governor's signature
I would have liked to have been able to dedicate the first few entries of this blog to some of the ideas I've been working on, but the timing didn't quite work out for that. Major events moving towards the potential annihilation of the global online poker environment come first.
I will be the first to admit I don't have a great knowledge of politics or of how various legislative processes work. So I settled in to live-blog the all-but-certain passage of the NJ internet gambling bill from its final committee, not sure whether or not the bill would be debated or just voted on. Turns out, just voted on. Also, as it turns out, not the most entertaining session to watch.
January 10, 2011, NJ Assembly Session
2:55 — The session, scheduled to begin at 1:00, actually begins.
3:28 — Voting begins on "consent bills", those which have been agreed to by both majority and minority sides of the aisles. There is no debate on consent bills." ... [then they vote on debate bills]
3:56 — Voting begins on nonconsent bills
4:13 — What was supposed to be a brief "time out" break is taken
6:00ish — brief "time out" ends
6:42 — A2570/S490, the NJ internet gambling bill, is brought up as a nonconsent bill, but voted on with no debate. Passes 63-11-3.
All that remains now is for Governor Christie to sign it, which could happen tomorrow or within up to 45 days. The general vibe seems to be that he is very likely to sign it.
In the meantime, no newer or final version of the bill has been uploaded to the bill's page. So either it hasn't been released yet, or this draft is the final version. edit: The very knowledgeable PokerXanadu on 2+2 seems confident that this means that the above draft is indeed the final version.
In summary, the bill:
Potential Implications
The signing of this bill into law will be a historic moment in the history of the online gambling industry. That's super for everyone who cares about online gambling.
For competitive poker players, however, there are a number of potential issues. If NJ players have the option of playing on NJ-only poker sites with NJ-only player pools as well as existing trusted international poker sites against global player pools, then everything should be great. If, however, PokerStars and Full Tilt decide that this law makes it illegal for them to serve NJ, then I have a big problem with this law.
It's also unclear from the current language of the bill which New Jerseyans would be affected here. If international poker sites are compelled to stop serving NJ residents, will they cease service to those whose permanent residence is in NJ? What if they have a secondary address in another state? What if they reside in NJ but log on and play from another state? What about the converse? The current language of the bill requires that a customer of an NJ-licensed internet gambling site must have a principal residence in NJ, but the criminal provision makes no mention of residency versus location, so it's not clear to me how international sites might react.
However, at least the current draft of the bill does not put any penalty on players for playing on international sites. There should also be several potentially-valid legal arguments as to why the criminal provision in this law does not apply to the operations of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.
What will PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker do?
While these international sites did pull out of WA after their state supreme court ruling, the nature of the NJ law is entirely different; WA criminalized ANY online poker play in their state and made it a felony for the player, so PokerStars and Full Tilt would have been facilitating crime by serving Washingtonians. On the other hand, there is no such provision in the NJ law, and indeed, since the NJ law makes it legal to play online poker with the intended Atlantic City monopoly, I believe there are international trade arguments as to why it HAS to be legal to do the same with international operators. And if the NJ bill defines that play on NJ sites takes place "in" Atlantic City, then wouldn't play with an international poker site take place "in" that country?
That all assumes that this law even applies to poker sites which do not offer casino games. Saying nothing about the rest of its merits, the failed federal Reid bill last month at least made an attempt to treat poker properly, while this NJ bill literally treats it the same as casino gambling. Regardless of whether or not a NJ-only site is able to draw in enough players and sustain enough games to be fun or profitable, the effective-prohibition against NJ players participating in international competition is a tremendous blow to poker as a strategy game.
I sincerely hope that this misguided law will not eliminate international poker sites from the NJ marketplace. Whatever happens, other states will inevitably follow NJ's lead, and while state-only poker sites should eventually find federally-legal ways to pool their player pools, that could be several years away. The very integrity of poker as a modern global competition could be at stake.
I can't help but wonder what this law would look like if anybody involved in it actually understood why poker should be treated differently than mindless, nonstrategic gambling "games" against a house. In a world that routinely mistreats poker by ignorantly classifying it as "gambling", it is perhaps not too much of a twisted surprise that the historic first legal effort by a US state to license and expressly legalize internet gambling is one that could end up really harming the game of poker.
All of the details and implications should fall together over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I have included a scientific diagram as to why it is bad if NJ residents cannot play with the rest of the world:
Note that the player in NJ is sad and lonely. His faceless opponents in the rest of the world seem to express no sympathy or concern, but it might be only a matter of time before they are alone as well.
I will be the first to admit I don't have a great knowledge of politics or of how various legislative processes work. So I settled in to live-blog the all-but-certain passage of the NJ internet gambling bill from its final committee, not sure whether or not the bill would be debated or just voted on. Turns out, just voted on. Also, as it turns out, not the most entertaining session to watch.
January 10, 2011, NJ Assembly Session
2:55 — The session, scheduled to begin at 1:00, actually begins.
3:28 — Voting begins on "consent bills", those which have been agreed to by both majority and minority sides of the aisles. There is no debate on consent bills." ... [then they vote on debate bills]
3:56 — Voting begins on nonconsent bills
4:13 — What was supposed to be a brief "time out" break is taken
6:00ish — brief "time out" ends
6:42 — A2570/S490, the NJ internet gambling bill, is brought up as a nonconsent bill, but voted on with no debate. Passes 63-11-3.
All that remains now is for Governor Christie to sign it, which could happen tomorrow or within up to 45 days. The general vibe seems to be that he is very likely to sign it.
In the meantime, no newer or final version of the bill has been uploaded to the bill's page. So either it hasn't been released yet, or this draft is the final version. edit: The very knowledgeable PokerXanadu on 2+2 seems confident that this means that the above draft is indeed the final version.
In summary, the bill:
- authorizes casino games and poker to be offered to NJ residents only, and only by companies in Atlantic City.
- establishes that the wagers are deemed to take place in Atlantic City, regardless of where in NJ the player is located.
- sets the minimum age for having an account with one of these businesses to 21, despite the fact that the internet gambling sites will presumably not serve alcohol, and despite the fact that NJ's minimum gambling age is 18.
- makes it a crime for "any person [to offer] games into play or [display] such games through Internet wagering without approval of the commission to do".
- makes no distinctions between poker and casino gambling other than special provisions for dealer tips, which historically are not very common in online poker.
Potential Implications
The signing of this bill into law will be a historic moment in the history of the online gambling industry. That's super for everyone who cares about online gambling.
For competitive poker players, however, there are a number of potential issues. If NJ players have the option of playing on NJ-only poker sites with NJ-only player pools as well as existing trusted international poker sites against global player pools, then everything should be great. If, however, PokerStars and Full Tilt decide that this law makes it illegal for them to serve NJ, then I have a big problem with this law.
It's also unclear from the current language of the bill which New Jerseyans would be affected here. If international poker sites are compelled to stop serving NJ residents, will they cease service to those whose permanent residence is in NJ? What if they have a secondary address in another state? What if they reside in NJ but log on and play from another state? What about the converse? The current language of the bill requires that a customer of an NJ-licensed internet gambling site must have a principal residence in NJ, but the criminal provision makes no mention of residency versus location, so it's not clear to me how international sites might react.
However, at least the current draft of the bill does not put any penalty on players for playing on international sites. There should also be several potentially-valid legal arguments as to why the criminal provision in this law does not apply to the operations of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.
What will PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker do?
While these international sites did pull out of WA after their state supreme court ruling, the nature of the NJ law is entirely different; WA criminalized ANY online poker play in their state and made it a felony for the player, so PokerStars and Full Tilt would have been facilitating crime by serving Washingtonians. On the other hand, there is no such provision in the NJ law, and indeed, since the NJ law makes it legal to play online poker with the intended Atlantic City monopoly, I believe there are international trade arguments as to why it HAS to be legal to do the same with international operators. And if the NJ bill defines that play on NJ sites takes place "in" Atlantic City, then wouldn't play with an international poker site take place "in" that country?
That all assumes that this law even applies to poker sites which do not offer casino games. Saying nothing about the rest of its merits, the failed federal Reid bill last month at least made an attempt to treat poker properly, while this NJ bill literally treats it the same as casino gambling. Regardless of whether or not a NJ-only site is able to draw in enough players and sustain enough games to be fun or profitable, the effective-prohibition against NJ players participating in international competition is a tremendous blow to poker as a strategy game.
I sincerely hope that this misguided law will not eliminate international poker sites from the NJ marketplace. Whatever happens, other states will inevitably follow NJ's lead, and while state-only poker sites should eventually find federally-legal ways to pool their player pools, that could be several years away. The very integrity of poker as a modern global competition could be at stake.
I can't help but wonder what this law would look like if anybody involved in it actually understood why poker should be treated differently than mindless, nonstrategic gambling "games" against a house. In a world that routinely mistreats poker by ignorantly classifying it as "gambling", it is perhaps not too much of a twisted surprise that the historic first legal effort by a US state to license and expressly legalize internet gambling is one that could end up really harming the game of poker.
All of the details and implications should fall together over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I have included a scientific diagram as to why it is bad if NJ residents cannot play with the rest of the world:
Note that the player in NJ is sad and lonely. His faceless opponents in the rest of the world seem to express no sympathy or concern, but it might be only a matter of time before they are alone as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
