Poker, other games, B+Ms and their lobbying for the ban

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Not being in the US or a US citizen, I was paying peripheral attention to the legislation, knowing that I could not affect it's progress or the lack of it in any meaningful way, and if I did somehow get involved it would likely only be counter productive.

Something interesting really caught my attention in the recent posting frenzy though. That being that as far as I understand it the large B+M companies were lobbying in favour of the ban. It seems to me that they, along with a lot of other people, though I have seen this mentioned here on occasion lost sight of the clear differences and distinctions between poker and other games. Emphasising those distinctions should have represented, and should continue to represent the very core of opposition against this bill.(Forgive me if I'm stepping on anyone's toes here, as I said I only followed this on a reasonably superficial level, if someone was pushing the differences strongly then feel free to ignore).


Quite simply from a business point of view the B+M industry should have had very differing attitudes between games played against the house and poker. It's hard to argue that banning online blackjack slots et al benefits them. The money customers spent online would have disappeared straight into the pockets of the operators and be lost to the land based industry. Without the opportunity to throw your money away online the B+Ms would reasonably expect to pick up much of the slack . With poker though a thriving internet scene, is I'm pretty certain of great benefit to land based operators. Quite apart from both promotion and importantly boosted numbers at flagship events which help to boost prize pools and hence exposure, money stays within the poker industry for much longer periods of time, and unlike games against the house money which starts its journey online I would expect frequently makes the journey to a B+M casino both through the large buy in tournaments and through the online winner having a shot at live events, not to mention familiarity and comfort within the game. I would expect that if the ban really does come into full effect the B+Ms would actually have cost themselves a substantial amount of revenue.

So as well as the moral arguments against games where you never even have a chance of winning in the long term and the need to separate poker from them, there is also a powerful business case to be made, and if the B+Ms did indeed lobby in favour of the ban I'm surprised that they did not push the distinction. Poker should have been pushed together with Blackjack and other casino games, the trend towards that online recently was incredibly short sighted in my opinion and now every effort needs to be made to separate the two, and importantly to stress the benefits poker has to all parties (expect of course the online casino owners) over the alternatives.