Official Optimists Thread: Things That Comfort Me

[HumanACtor]

#1

When I first started playing online poker, PayPal was THE way to fund and withdraw your poker account.

PayPal was then ended, and did online poker disappear? Did all of the fish vanish? Did the online sites say "no more American players"?

No. People, including millions of fish, found ways to fund their poker accounts at exponentially increasing numbers.

This bill doesnt alter the legal nature of online poker sites one bit, just the financial avenues that players have to them. And the last time the primary financial avenue was cut, people *still* found a way. They will again.

#2

There's simply way too many billions of dollars at stake for foreign firms to drop American players. There's not only the millions per day in rake for the online sites but the millions that Harrah's and other B+Ms make, the millions that rooms like Borgata, Trump Plaza et al are dumping into 80+ table poker rooms, the *billions* that Neteller transfers, and so much more.

*They* will find and make loopholes for us.

[Semtex]

seriously...i'm optimistic too.

[Lawman007]

Post deleted by Performify

[JuntMonkey]

More optimism:

What if Harrah's prediction of a 2007 WSOP main event of 12,000 people included the legislation which they knew was coming?

[dibbs]

[ QUOTE ]
More optimism:

What if Harrah's prediction of a 2007 WSOP main event of 12,000 people included the legislation which they knew was coming?

[/ QUOTE ]


Hahaha well theres optimism and then theres....I dont know the word for this one. I cant imagine Harrahs didnt hear and have discussions about this stuff, and I have no idea if they lobbied against it, I imagine its easy to ignore possible snags when youre too busy swimming in pools of money and cocaine however.

[ACPlayer]

#3

I can still easily download songs for free on the internet. Not that I ever would of course. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[HumanACtor]

[ QUOTE ]
#3

I can still easily download songs for free on the internet. Not that I ever would of course. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

GREAT POINT KEEP EM COMING

[AJFenix]

I'm pretty optimistic about being able to make good money playing online poker myself for a long time (I'm not a US citizen, and I understand how big of a hit it is), but Party announcing (maybe even tomorrow) they are going to cut off US due to them being a publicly traded company isn't going to surprise me at this point in time. The private companies (UB/FTP/Stars/AB/etc) are sticking around, and most importantly neteller is as well, for the time being.

[Lawman007]

#4 We will still be able to drink alcohol.............at least until the next Republican-led Congress.

[Utah]

[ QUOTE ]
#1

When I first started playing online poker, PayPal was THE way to fund and withdraw your poker account.

PayPal was then ended, and did online poker disappear? Did all of the fish vanish? Did the online sites say "no more American players"?

No. People, including millions of fish, found ways to fund their poker accounts at exponentially increasing numbers.

This bill doesnt alter the legal nature of online poker sites one bit, just the financial avenues that players have to them. And the last time the primary financial avenue was cut, people *still* found a way. They will again.

#2

There's simply way too many billions of dollars at stake for foreign firms to drop American players. There's not only the millions per day in rake for the online sites but the millions that Harrah's and other B+Ms make, the millions that rooms like Borgata, Trump Plaza et al are dumping into 80+ table poker rooms, the *billions* that Neteller transfers, and so much more.

*They* will find and make loopholes for us.

[/ QUOTE ]I like your optimistic view. Things may be a pain in the ass for a while but poker is here to stay imho. I remember back in the days of only Planet Poker and Paradise and there were no publicly traded poker companies and there were huge issues whether the games were safe. There were also only a few thousand players and when there were no no-limit games. So, a few less (or a lot less) players just doesnt seem that big of deal to me. If worse case Party shuts down to U.S. players then someone will swoop in to fill the void. Someone will also figure out the funding. Have the govenment ever once been able to shut down a vice? Nope.

[dibbs]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
#3

I can still easily download songs for free on the internet. Not that I ever would of course. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

GREAT POINT KEEP EM COMING

[/ QUOTE ]

Am I allowed to point out the obvious flaws in logic with some of these or is this thread purely optimism mp? /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[cking]

[ QUOTE ]
#4 We will still be able to drink alcohol.............at least until the next Republican-led Congress.

[/ QUOTE ]

funny point - Guess what party Woodrow Wilson was (he signed in prohibition)

[breaktwister]

Great post - I totally agree. The non-US based companies that have stopped taking US customers will catch on sooner or later that the US government cannot touch them - for example the recent post on here from WPEX.

[candyman718]

Chocolate Pudding

[Lawman007]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
#4 We will still be able to drink alcohol.............at least until the next Republican-led Congress.

[/ QUOTE ]

funny point - Guess what party Woodrow Wilson was (he signed in prohibition)

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, but he was a stiff.

[ACPlayer]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
#3

I can still easily download songs for free on the internet. Not that I ever would of course. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

GREAT POINT KEEP EM COMING

[/ QUOTE ]

Am I allowed to point out the obvious flaws in logic with some of these or is this thread purely optimism mp? /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

You are .... and it is.

At least that is MO.

[MelchyBeau]

#5 the government has been very successful in preventing people from smoking pot

[billyjex]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
#4 We will still be able to drink alcohol.............at least until the next Republican-led Congress.

[/ QUOTE ]

funny point - Guess what party Woodrow Wilson was (he signed in prohibition)

[/ QUOTE ]

republican and democrats sure do hold the same views they did a 100 years ago!!!!!

[suzzer99]

#6 - the whole .net/.com thing was a brilliant, simple and effective workaround.

[Anders]

[ QUOTE ]
#5 the government has been very successful in sending thousands of people to jail for smoking pot

[/ QUOTE ]

hey I added a little something in there for ya /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[Hendricks433]

[ QUOTE ]
#5 the government has been very successful in preventing people from smoking pot

[/ QUOTE ] ummmmm lol they prevented it put far far far from being very successful. Middle Schoolers are smoking pot, how is that successful?

[EvanJC]

optimistic as well. tables are great.

[CORed]

I'm cautiously optimistic. A lot depends on how the poker sites and American poker players react to this legislation. Best case is that your debit card will no longer work to make online poker deposits, but Netteller, etc. still will. Worst case is that most of the big sites pull out of the US market and most of the players too. A lot also depends on how agressively DOJ enforces the law. It's goint to be very difficult to force banks to block transactions to third party services like Netteller. But, if DOJ puts the pressure on, many may do so "voluntarily", or the Netteller, etc. will pull out.

[HumanACtor]

#7 90%+ (a guess) of the fishies dont even know about this bill!

[Uglyowl]

Poker is huge amongst 12-17 year olds so there are new reinforcements on the way. (Both voters and players)

[Anders]

[ QUOTE ]
Poker is huge amongst 12-17 year olds so there are new reinforcements on the way.

[/ QUOTE ]

And hey, if the spiraling decline of Western civilization is continuing like it was when I was this age, and when I observed younger siblings of my friends when they reached this age, 12-17 year olds just plain don't give a [censored] about anything. They'd deposit money online if they wanted to even if the punishment was life in jail if caught.

[Grasshopp3r]

My 5 year old is a pretty good player.

Seriously, I think that this is much ado about nothing.

[goodgrief]

But I can't. I haven't been able to download any songs in years. Do you want to play the people who know the secret handshake or do you want to play fish?

--the fish of downloading songs

[ QUOTE ]
#3

I can still easily download songs for free on the internet. Not that I ever would of course. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

[HSB]

I am optimistic as well for the fundamental reason that the bill makes the banks the enforcers.

The regulations are going to have to come up with a way to determine which transactions are to be blocked. I can see three ways they might attempt this

1) Come up with a list of recipients that are gaming related. To counter that the sites just need to use payment methods that have significant non gaming business.

2) Some sort of algorithm that determines if a specific transaction from a specific person to a specific recipient is to be blocked. I have no idea how they would do this. How would they allow one person's transaction to e-gold for buying stupid crap and block my transaction to e-gold for funding PokerStars?

3) Tell the banks to come up with something themselves. The banks will then likely revert to number 1.

Whatever regulations they're going to have will have to balance the risk of allowing some gaming transactions against the risk of blocking some non gaming transactions. I strongly suspect they will consider the risk of allowing gaming transactions to be the lesser evil so they will block the obvious things and perhaps the secondarily obvious things that do a large amount of gaming business but not get to the point where they are close to eliminating all gaming transactions.

At which point the gaming transactions will flow to whatever method hasn't been blacklisted. The only real risk I see is if some funding methods refuse to do business with the gaming sites for fear of being blacklisted in the future. I'm sure some will but it only takes one to get the money through.

[Python49]

Some of these may have been covered but here are the most obvious ones off the top of my head. I haven't read the whole thread yet.

#8) As much money as there is to be made from this industry, SOMEBODY out there WILL make a way for it to happen, gaurenteed. People want to be rich and the market is huge right now. How likely is it that all these americans who want to gamble and are willing to spend lots of money to do it will not have anyone to spend it on. Can you think of a billion dollar industry where there is no provider for the services?

#9) Banks don't even want to enforce this law and it is unlikely they would be able to keep up with the constantly changing new ways that the poker sites will create for us to deposit funds.

#10) Worst comes to worst, even if american fish base is lost we will still be able to access the poker sites via proxies and play with the fish that will be acquired from marketing efforts in the china/european markets.

#11) Gambling is an addiction. If people are willing to break the law to download music, smoke weed, and have anal sex (this is illegal in some states) then they will certainly break the law to gamble. Once the loop holes that we will use to play online open up, the fish will use the same ones.

[HSB]

[ QUOTE ]
But I can't. I haven't been able to download any songs in years. Do you want to play the people who know the secret handshake or do you want to play fish?

--the fish of downloading songs

[/ QUOTE ]

You can't?

If you can beat the .02/.04 games of music downloading, you can download songs.

[schroedy]

[ QUOTE ]
Poker is huge amongst 12-17 year olds so there are new reinforcements on the way. (Both voters and players)

[/ QUOTE ]

If 18-25 year olds voted in the same proportion to the population as a whole, we would never be in this mess . . . along with a few others.

[goodgrief]

I don't want to play some teen-ager with a fresh young brain. I want to play the guys I play in the casino, you know the 80 year olds who think they know everything, the Alzheimer and the Parkinson's disease victims. Seriously, are you people mad? Who cares if I can play someone whose brain is still growing? I'm old. My brain ain't still growing. I want to play fish. That's my issue. I don't want to play your 5 year old daughter. I want to play your grandfather.


[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Poker is huge amongst 12-17 year olds so there are new reinforcements on the way.

[/ QUOTE ]

And hey, if the spiraling decline of Western civilization is continuing like it was when I was this age, and when I observed younger siblings of my friends when they reached this age, 12-17 year olds just plain don't give a [censored] about anything. They'd deposit money online if they wanted to even if the punishment was life in jail if caught.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Lawman007]

#12 We will still be able to look at Python49's avatar.

[XxGeneralxX]

#13 while waiting for a new US online poker provider. I could spend more time studying the game by reading poker books.

[inspectorgadget]

[ QUOTE ]
#13 while waiting for a new US online poker provider. I could spend more time studying the game by reading poker books.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point, hehe - god knows, I still need to study more...

And 50 cheers for Python's Avatar!

[satya]

Money talks.

[Vern]

#14 There won't be any more threads on 2+2 titled: "Will {online site} sue me for a bounced check?"

[UATrewqaz]

The economic laws of supply and demand trump the laws drawn up by some dimwits in Congress.

[Little_Luck]

#15- WPEX becomes the largest online poker room in the world

[MLSchaff]

#16- The government has sure managed to make it difficult to buy an unregistered handgun with cash and no idea.

#17- It is EXTREMELY difficult to find a prostitute in literally every city in the U.S.

#18- No 20 year old in the country has ever tasted a sip of alcohol.

Never underestimate the will of the people - it will supercede the law of the land every day.

[HumanACtor]

GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER