how long before PS UB and FT drop?

[BluffTHIS!]

Bill,

I am talking about the readers of this forum, not the microNL and zoo forums. And the pros and semi-pros are the ones with significant amounts of money at risk, and who depend on poker for an income. The casual player who reads 2+2 and plays low stakes just doesn't have much to lose, especially in the short term. He doesn't need to make any plans because he doesn't need to play.

[Billman]

Bluff,

I still think you're way off. I've been watching the Legislation and Internet Gaming forums very closely since Sept and a very large percentage of posters are not pros or semi-pros. Of course, I have no numbers to back that up but I think if you took an informal poll most people would disagree with your assertion.

Secondly, why shouldn't recreational players continue to play? As long as it can be done safely and they're made aware of the risks I see no problem. In fact, you're sort of making a counter-argument to your previous points. If recreational and entertainment players quit playing (as you seem to suggest) then this industry is basically done for. Wrap it up and pack it in because without that fishy money in the poker economy it's one big shark pool.

Bill

[Sniper]

[ QUOTE ]
If recreational and entertainment players quit playing (as you seem to suggest) then this industry is basically done for. Wrap it up and pack it in because without that fishy money in the poker economy it's one big shark pool.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bill, You are being way too US-centric in making this staement... online poker is not going way, and will still be profitable for the sharks who can get in the tank, even if the vast majority of US players were to stop playing...

[Billman]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If recreational and entertainment players quit playing (as you seem to suggest) then this industry is basically done for. Wrap it up and pack it in because without that fishy money in the poker economy it's one big shark pool.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bill, You are being way too US-centric in making this staement... online poker is not going way, and will still be profitable for the sharks who can get in the tank, even if the vast majority of US players were to stop playing...

[/ QUOTE ]

True. Sorry, my statements are specific to US players. I should have made that more clear.

[BluffTHIS!]

Billman,

I am not suggesting recreational players quit now. To the contrary, as I said above, they have little to lose and thus little incentive to quit until and unless forced to by effective enforcement. Thus they don't even need to worry about whether that enforcement will be effective and can afford to just wait and see as is the case of the pro with savings, since again we will know in months.

[Piece of Cake]

I agree that it's easy to police the banking system under online pokers current structure. But I fear the prohibition stance the government is presently taking could possibly drive the development of new technology that makes it harder to police - much like how the the extinguishing of napster led to the development of the new torrent file sharing system. There is of course, a lot more to gain profitwise here than with the naptser example.

This tragically would only make future regulation more difficult, especially since the infrastructure for playing will still be present in other countries while this transformation takes place.

Just something to think about. I mean for this to be a thoughtful inspection of possibilities, not a prediction.

[Billman]

I don't think people really realize how firm a grasp governments have over the electronic movement of funds within their borders. This isn't anything like Napster. Napster was trading in electronic bits that could travel over any network. Money has very specific networks it travels over and unlike the internet those networks are both highly regulated and highly secure. You can't simply tap into the ACH network like you set up an ISP account.

I've said it before in many places but I'll repeat it here:

If the money travels through the US banking institutions in electronic form it's very vulnerable to being stopped.

But what about a bank in Panama? Well, how does that money get from your US bank to Panama? Unless you're moving cash or using paper checks (harder but not impossible to stop) you're moving that money via the above mentioned networks. So, really the only REAL solution is to move the money outside of the US banking system in a completely valid way. That means opening a legitimate bank account in a foreign country. Why the "legitimate" qualifier? Because the gov working with banks have been chasing down money laundering for years and they already know all the tricks involved with bs banking institutions in offshore lands. If you think the UIGEA laws put a crimp in online gaming, you don't even want to know the kind of crawling up your ass they can do if they think you're doing something shifty with that money in an offshore bank.

[vinyard]

[ QUOTE ]
Money has very specific networks it travels over and unlike the internet those networks are both highly regulated and highly secure. You can't simply tap into the ACH network like you set up an ISP account.

[/ QUOTE ] Again, a deliberate omission of the SWIFT network which is not ACH and has already put very clear limitations on what it is willing to allow the US to monitor and regulate. And of course, its an enormous network. Banks of any size cannot leave SWIFTnet and the US (or any government) would be foolish to try to force them to as it would cripple that government's economy and, in the case of the US, totally screw the world economy as well. Again, I suspect that you are ignorant of how SWIFT works or you are deliberately misrepresenting how easy it would be to "shut down" when, in reality its in nobody's best interest to do so especially over something as relatively trivial as gambling transactions. Further, to shut said network down even to something as small as gambling transactions (and I think in a previous post I made a pretty strong argument that all poker transactions in the world are likely 1/10000th of total SWIFT transactions total) would require that network to have a fundamental shift in how it operates which would hurt all involved parties' bottom line.

[ QUOTE ]
If the money travels through the US banking institutions in electronic form it's very vulnerable to being stopped.

[/ QUOTE ] Repeating yourself doesn't make you correct. How exactly do you think drug cartels and terrorists move money around with relative impunity? I think you are also overstating how diligently the government pursues off-shore banking accounts and money laundering but that's a separate issue.

[BluffTHIS!]

To add to vinyard's comments with what I learned by researching the topic after he previously brought it up in another thread in rebuttal to billman, the US gov't does have a hook in the SWIFT system. But it's called the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program and not the "Poker Player Finance Tracking Program".

[ozziepat]

Napster wasn't illegal per se. However, it did enable bad little boys and girls to violate copyrights and acquire music libraries without paying for them. It was the old "something for nothing" scam with a middle-man profiting from the illegal transactions. The basic technology was, oh, maybe 20 years old.

Neteller is/was also an enabler, but in the financial realm. It enabled users to move money from domestic (regulated) institutions offshore to (unregulated, by the US) gaming institutions. Stable "workarounds" (as inappropriately illustrated by the Napster follow-on) aren't going to happen because there already exists a body of laws and regulations, both domestic (UIGEA is only the most recent) and international, to prevent it. Which leads me to

See:

http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2007/02...of-denial.html

for a good explanation of the denial mechanism (in another context). Sorry I couldn't find one specific to poker. Ignore the politics and focus on the general descriptive material.

And finally: Re state vs federal rights. If it (for very broad definitions of it) crosses state or national boundaries, the federal government can, and frequently does, get involved. This country (the US) was set up so that any rights not specifically granted to the federal government were implicitly granted to the states. That fundamental went by the wayside long ago, and the trend continues. An amazing number of laws exist under the umbrella of (interstate) commerce, for example, and there's nothing concrete to suggest that the Feds wouldn't become involved if domestic interstate online poker ever became a reality - which it could any day. This is not to suggest it would be banned, but it sure as hell would be monitored and regulated in some manner, as would the "enabling" businesses.