[blueodum]

THat said, I understand the reasoning behind the ban. Poker does not contribute positively to society. While it may be a game of skill, it is still a dangerous way that could potentially lose a great deal of money immediately. Comparing it to something like horseracing isn't fair, as horse races are not something you could blow your fortune on every day with the click of a mouse... for one thing, horse races aren't held every day.
It's also unfair to compare gambling to investing in the stock market. Investing in the stock market helps our economy by providing capital for companies that provide us goods and services. Any similar connection with poker would be tenuous at best. Even skill-less forms of gambling such as the lottery benefit local school systems.

Again, I don't think it's any of the government's business how we spend out money, but pretending that poker is a positive aspect of society is a stretch. Professional poker players aren't really contributing much of anything to society.

I have to disagree with you on most of your substantive points.

1) There is no limit to how much you can bet at the race track. There are always races taking place somewhere that you can wager on electronically, so the situation is pretty much analogous to online poker.

2) I'll partially agree about the stock market, but it is more difficult to justify the utility of speculation, as opposed to long-term investment. Financial speculators have inflicted great damage on various (mostly) healthy economies around the world at various times. Online poker has never done anything like that.

3) The lottery is a voluntary tax. It's hard to see any entertainment value gained by the participant (as opposed to poker), and poker can be said to foster analytical and intuitive skills and encourages the development of positive character traits, like discipline. Therefore it has a lot of educational potential, which lottery playing does not.

If online poker were taxed and regulated, it could also provide funding to social programs within US juridictions.

4) The poker industry (taken as a whole) is basically a leisure industry, just as spectator sports, amusement parks and cinemas are. It provides jobs to many people and entertainment and intellectual stimulus to its players. If you are going to say that poker does nothing productive for society, then you'll have to make the same statement about the entire leisure sector of the ecomonmy. And if that's the way you want to go, then it's Taliban, here we come.