Feds Show Their Cards On Online Poker: Freeze Funds

from the whoops dept

For years, the federal government has insisted that online poker in the US is illegal, and reinforced it by tacking on punishment for payment processors who process gambling payments onto a totally unrelated bill about harbor safety. Poker players, on the other hand, have insisted for years that there are no laws against online poker -- in part because the laws are all against games of chance, whereas poker is a game of skill. This position received a small boost recently when a judge agreed that poker was a game of skill rather than chance. On top of this, there's been an ongoing effort underway (led by Barney Frank) to specifically make it clear that online poker is legal. However, until that bill goes anywhere, the feds apparently still believe it's very much illegal and have now started going after the payment processors, freezing the funds of payment processors who work with a variety of online poker sites. Expect quite a legal battle to follow.

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Congress Too Busy Gambling With Your Money To Let You Gamble With It Yourself

from the politics-as-usual dept

We had noted recently that Congress appeared to be moving forward with a bill that would actually re-legalize playing online poker. However, reports coming out now suggest that with Congress so busy passing pork-filled bailout bills, the online poker bill has been shifted to the backburner and will probably have to wait until next year. So, you know, if you were planning to survive this economic tough time by making it up playing online poker, you may want to consider moving to, say, Antigua.

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Online Poker Cheating Scam Unraveled

from the whodunit dept

Slashdot points us to the news that the well known online poker playing site UltimateBet.com has been fined $1.5 million as part of an ongoing investigation into what appears to be a rather massive scheme to defraud online poker players by giving some insiders the ability to see all the cards other players held. Over the past year, this story has been building up steam, as the fraud was actually called out by some other players who questioned how certain players had been able to win so much. Using statistical analysis, it was shown to have been close to impossible, without inside knowledge, and the latest report does, indeed, pin some of the blame on a well-known poker player who was an initial "consultant" to one of the companies involved in this mess. If you read the MSNBC link above, you'll see that there are a number of different companies involved, but it sounds as though many are simply shell companies for the same group of people, with attempts to move assets around for a variety of purposes. So, it's not yet entirely clear who was involved beyond the one player named, but more names are expected to be released later this year, as investigators finish up their investigation.

What may be most interesting about the whole ordeal was that it was exposed not by the body charged with actually regulating the online casino, but other players who were able to sniff out the details working together in online forums. Chalk another one up to the wisdom of the crowd.

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As US Looks To Re-legalize Online Poker, Germany Bans It

from the moving-in-opposite-directions dept

Just as the US seems to be moving forward with efforts to relegalize online poker, it appears that Germany is moving in the opposite direction, passing a law to ban online poker -- even to the point of allowing German authorities to put online poker players in jail (though, no one seems to think that's likely to happen).

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Bill Moves Forward To Re-Legalize Online Poker

from the ante-up dept

Looks like having poker lobbyists setting poker tables at both presidential conventions this year was effective. A new bill is successfully moving its way through Congress that would effectively re-legalize online poker, reversing a law passed two years ago that made it illegal for financial institutions to accept payment for online gambling (all in the name of national security, of course).

Of course, the new legislation would also add some regulations to online gambling, banning wagers on sports -- though, of course carving out an exception for the time of sports gambling that politicians engage in: jai-lai, horse racing and dog racing -- which would remain legal). Rep. Barney Frank who introduced the bill, noted: "Adults are entitled to do with their money what they want to do." Of course, if that's the case, why can't they also wager on sports? Either way, considering the number of folks who have jumped through all sorts of hoops to continue playing poker online, this seems like a step in the right direction.

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Internet Poker Lobby Setting Up Tables At Both Conventions

from the upping-the-ante dept

The US's odd decision to effectively ban online poker as part of a national security law has never made much sense, other than as yet another paternalistic move by the government deciding what is and is not okay for you to do in the privacy of your own home. Some claim that the online poker ban is due to lobbyists from the offline casino industry, who don't like the competition -- but there's little evidence to support that. First of all, the offline casinos have talked about how they'd like to get into the online game themselves, but cannot due to this ban -- and it's quite likely that making games like poker more popular via online competitions would increase foot traffic to offline casinos as people who believe they've become experts online venture out to real world casinos.

Either way, it seems that the folks in favor of legalizing online poker are getting increasingly sophisticated in their lobbying efforts. Last year, they sent representatives to lobby in DC, and this year they're setting up actual poker games at both major party political conventions, trying to drive home the point that playing poker shouldn't be a crime. The article also notes that the lobbyists have started their own Political Action Committee as well, called PokerPAC, which has already raised some cash. Apparently, the poker players are getting serious about calling Congress' bluff on online poker.

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Popular Online Poker Site Changing Names Due To Patent Dispute

from the what's-a-domain-got-to-do-with-it? dept

Shawn Patrick Green writes "As if online poker weren't embattled enough. Popular online poker site, Bodog, was forced to change its name to NewBodog.com after they failed to show up at a patent-dispute trial in Nevada, prompting the judge to suspend its domain, Bodog.com. The site has now "permanently" changed its name to BodogLife.com and the founder, Calvin Ayre, says that he refuses to pay the guy that brought up the overly-broad patent dispute, who is claiming $48 million in damages." If you're interested, the patent in question can be viewed here. It hardly seems unique or innovative. If you asked someone how they'd design a system for prioritizing the display of certain content over a network, plenty of engineers would have come up with the same sort of solution. The bigger question, though, is why a judge would take away a website's domain name in a patent dispute?

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Teenagers' Popular Summer Job: Online Poker Player?

from the getting-younger-and-younger dept

We've been wary of news reports over the past few years hyping up various folks who were supposedly making all kinds of money playing online poker. While there clearly are some professional sharks out there who basically prey on bad poker players to take their money, almost every news story seemed to focus on people who (surprise, surprise) only claimed to win money (often lots of it). That's why we were skeptical of the story about a startup that skipped out on raising venture capital, and instead worked on funding the company through poker. Then there were the college students who felt that playing online poker was the best way to pay for college tuition. Even if these stories were accurate, leaving out how rare it is for someone to be able to make that much money in online poker seemed fairly irresponsible. The latest story, however, takes the cake. The San Jose Mercury News has apparently found a bunch of teenagers who saying that playing online poker is much better than getting a summer job. The article tries to portray this plan as not all that unreasonable, because (so the article notes), the kids approach the game as a job, rather than just as "gambling."

Oddly, the article brushes over the fact that online poker remains illegal in the US (well, at least according to the DOJ's interpretation of the law, over which there is some dispute) and most sites have age limits that these kids probably didn't qualify for when they started playing. While the ones profiled are now 19, at least one admits he's been playing online poker since he was a junior in high school. Obviously, a first question from many folks would be about the parents of these kids. Some are quoted, and they seem slightly embarrassed, but at the same time seem somewhat pleased that their kid is making some cash and doesn't need to borrow money any more. Some might take this article and use it as an argument against the evils of online gambling -- but that would be wrong. It really should be about yet another story in the press that plays up the gambling industry's marketing ploy that "anybody" can become rich gambling, while hiding and playing down the much more likely scenario of people losing money (sometimes a lot). While this article mentions that most people lose money gambling, it buries it in a single sentence towards the end. Suggesting that online gambling is somehow a suitable summer job replacement also seems particularly questionable. I have no doubt that some young folks are making a ton of money while playing online poker, and I think that the US's position in trying to ban online poker is silly and unreasonable -- but it still seems quite odd that so many stories about online poker seem to focus on the success stories, rather than those who ended up losing tremendous amounts of money.

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