Conspiracy Theory: Put on Your Tin Foil Hats

[Kneel B4 Zod]

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what everyone here seems to miss is this:

the sites that would benefit the most from online poker legalization in the US would NOT be Harrahs, MGM, Bellagio, et al.

the best positioned companies would be google, myspace and AOL - sites that already get billions of traffic hits that they could easily translate into their new rooms.

Traffic leads to downloads, which leads to players, which leads to critical mass.

Harrahs et al could spend untold millions and still not get the traffic that the other sites already get - and these sites would not have to pay ANYTHING for this traffic.

money is not the problem in creating a room (see Mansion) - it is website traffic.

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I dont buy it. The tie ins to their B&M casinos would be huge. FPP for rooms/suites. "HarrahsPoker.com, the exclusvie site to win WSOP seats" etc.

And the B&Ms have a big head start..programmings done, execs who know the game etc.

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any site could partner with Expedia to offer the same benefits as the casinos, or even more so. free flights, hotel rooms, etc.

re: the software/knowing the game: this stuff is easy (how much did Party know about poker?), and I would argue that a sits like Google (b/c of their massive bandwidth infrastucture) is actually the one with the headstart

[LucidDream]

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What changed their minds?

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The 2002 main event had 600+ entries. The 2006 main event had 8800+ entries. Online sites have sent hundreds of thousands of entrants to tournaments around the world. Casino cash games are far more plentiful than they were in the recent past. None of the boom would have happened without online poker.

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For the last time, stop talking about poker and look at the big picture. If these B&M casinos only ran poker rooms they would be out of business.

They are trying to regulate "online gambling" not "online poker". Poker will just happen to fall into that catagory and will make up a small percentage of the business these companies could do online offering all the same house games they currently offer in their B&M casinos.

These companies don't give a [censored] about your poker game.

[blueodum]

What most of you people don't understand is how hard its going to be to get this law repealed. It could be decades before a serious attempt is made. There aren't going to be many legislators willing to go to war over this issue even if they are sympathetic to online gaming, and that's because most voters have a very negative view of gambling.

If this was a ploy by the Vegas casinos to corner the online market, it was a monumentally stupid ploy.

[Jeremy517]

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For the last time, stop talking about poker and look at the big picture. If these casinos B&M casinos ran poker rooms only they would be out of business.

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Fine.

1999 to 2002 Vegas gaming revenue: 7.6 billion per year. NO GROWTH from 1999 to 2002.
2005 Vegas gaming revenue: 9.7 billion

Clear enough?

[checkmate36]

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This is why alcohol and tobacco products are still legal when they have absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever. If companies like MGM want to have online gambling leagalized it will happen, it is only a matter of time and a matter of how much money it will cost them to make it happen.


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[LucidDream]

OK, now you are starting to get it but not completely I can see. Take that growth in combination with all the business they were already doing, now pipe it into every home in America. Now they are making infinite.

[Jeremy517]

Ugh, you are one confused guy. Forget it.

[LucidDream]

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Ugh, you are one confused guy. Forget it.

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Really, then please tell me why betting horses and state lotteries didn't get banned too?

[DVaut1]

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OK, now you are starting to get it but not completely I can see. Take that growth in combination with all the business they were already doing, now pipe it into every home in America. Now they are making infinite.

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Good point.

So, to ensure access into every American home (to make all that money), the legitimate American B&M corporations have devised the most effective plan possible: use their prodigious influence to prohibit the American home from accessing their billion dollar product venture legally.

Make sense to you? Because it sure as hell doesn't to me.

[blueodum]

Really, then please tell me why betting horses and state lotteries didn't get banned too?

Because they had effective lobbyists. But there is a BIG difference between exempting something from a ban and unbanning it.

Think about this: people have been trying to legalize marijuana for decades, and even though it is a relatively harmless substance with several demonstated health benefits, it remains prohibited.

There is no way online gaming will be legalized and regulated in the US this decade.