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What about this thought : It comes a point in a poker tournament, where an important skill is to know you now have to rely on luck.

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Could very well be worth standing the test of time as a classic one-liner in poker.

As far as what you spoke of with separating luck and skill...I don't think I've explained myself well enough. The point I'm trying to make here is that the factor of luck involved in poker should not be a reason to enforce restrictions through federal legislation.

The exact point I made to Mike Sexton was that IMO we have not seen a permanent drop in the "action" at online poker rooms. While obv there was a drop, were are only currently floating along a plateau which is not permanent.

The U.S. government, as I hope you would agree, is not going to overlook the $3+billion in annual tax revenue that online poker has been estimated to generate. With PartyGaming and other offshore companies having such a choke hold on the market though, the online poker market was very much out of the U.S.'s control.

Now that they have shut it down (as much as they can anyways) they can move through the obnoxious process of working appropriate regulations into law through the several proposed bills. From there, IMO, they will be very much willing to help U.S. based companies like Harrah's get the ball rolling with U.S. based online poker operations, and then they will see and control that tax revenue.

Edit: I'm actually going to post this thought in it's own thread to get some feedback, whereas it will easily get lost in this thread and is basically off-topic.