[BluffTHIS!]

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This situation illustrates again why we need to make clear the distinction between poker and sports betting. Any ties to crime have totally to do with sports betting, and any use of online gambling for money laundering for very large sums again is mostly tied to sports betting.

So when you write your congressman, or get a negative reply like this and intend to write again, stress that you recognize the potential problems with other forms of gambling, but that poker is a skill game played by people directly against other people, and mostly for aggregate sums much smaller than that involved in sports betting. And that thus you as a constituent expect your congressman to be smart enough to recognize this difference and in fact treat poker differently, and more favorably.



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I call bs on this. I am a poker player and do not indulge in casino gambling or sports betting. But this distinction is malarkey, no more a valid argument than Rep. Knollenberg was making.

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You are in the minority around here if you don't think both that there is a difference between poker and other forms of gambling, and that we shouldn't state that is so in our arguments. There is *obviously* a difference between +EV and -EV gambling. And between poker and sports betting, which are both +EV, there is the *huge* difference that sports betting has way more opposition than does poker, which is why we need to distance ourselves from sports betting in order to give ourselves a better chance to get poker legalized.

And as far a distinction between poker and sports betting in which one is more likely to be connected to criminal elements and money laundering, it should be clear which it is. Obvioulsy if sports betting were legal that wouldn't be so, but that's not currently the case.