[Billman]

Bluff,

First off, I think you slightly mis-characterize my views. In fact, I think you create a straw man argument by assigning things to me which don't necessarily reflect my views.

We don't need a perfect storm. All we need is a semi-effective enforcement effort. The regs that come out of the UIGEA don't need to catch every single gaming transaction. All they need to do is catch the transactions coming from the largest eWallet and debit card providers. That's a relatively easy task as we've recently seen with Neteller.

These boards are literally screaming with people complaining about not being able to get money onto or off of sites. Millions have been seized by the DOJ and hundreds of millions more are trapped in the Neteller system with not even a clue as to when those funds will be released. Am I one of those people saying that people will never see their money again? No. I am saying that the experience is going to leave a bad taste in people's mouths though. A bad taste that is already causing people to reconsider whether or not they want to expose themselves to this level of risk for something they view a hobby or entertainment.

And that's not be speculating. That's backed up by cold hard numbers. From PokerSiteScout Stars and FTP have both seen 20% peak player declines.

You keep saying things like the government won't be effective in cutting off all avenues but they don't need to cut off all avenues. Just like tax evasion laws don't need to catch every tax cheat. You've framed your argument into a very binary assertion because it's the only way your optimism is even justified.

As someone else pointed out, the weatherman doesn't need to be 100% correct to be effective. But you're trying to frame the debate so that to disagree with you I have to take the position that the weatherman is 100% correct.