Candidates on poker

The Epic Poker web site has put up two pieces in recent days about the presidential candidates' positions on online poker (and/or online gaming more generally).

First is Jen Newell's short assessment of where the candidates stand. Not surprisingly, Ron Paul is, as always, for maximal personal freedom, so he opposes not only prohibitions on online gaming, but any governmental attempt to control the Internet. Also not surprisingly, Mitt Romney is opposed to any expansion of gambling. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have not taken official positions. Which, if you ask me, means that they can't be counted on to be supporters. Also, given their naked appeals to hard-core religious conservatives, who think they are tasked by God to impose their moral values on the rest of the world by force, it's hard to believe either one would ever come out in favor of online gaming.

Last in the "not surprisingly" category is candidate Barack Obama, who has never lifted a finger to help poker players or even bothered to promise that he would. (Not that his promise means anything, given the appalling rate at which he breaks them.) And if you think he gives a rat's ass about personal freedom as a general principle, well, you just haven't been paying attention the last four years, have you?

Second is Dan O'Brien's opinion piece, explaining his support of Ron Paul. He nails the reasons that poker players specifically, and fans of personal liberty generally, should vote for Paul.

My only disagreement with O'Brien comes at the end of his essay, where he says that if Paul is not on the ballot in November he won't vote. Hey, why not vote for Gary Johnson, who is likely to be the Libertarian Party candidate, and thus on the ballot in all 50 states? Sure, he's probably not going to win, but why not use your vote to show your enthusiasm for freedom, rather than sit out the election? Johnson is as good as Paul on leaving people alone to live their lives the way they choose to, which includes playing poker online. As Newell reminds us, Johnson was the only candidate to show up at the World Series of Poker to make an explicit appeal to poker players for their support. He's solidly, unquestionably on our side.

Addendum, February 7, 2012

One of my Twitter followers told me that Santorum was on local channel 3's show "Face to Face" with reporter Jon Ralston last week. I found the January 31 program online here:

http://www.mynews3.com/content/programming/local/facetoface/default.aspx

Ralston asks him directly about online gaming, and Santorum's response is completely negative. He is opposed to it, thinks it's "dangerous." The discussion starts at the 15:00 mark (note that the counter runs backwards), and goes on for about three minutes.

Santorum has gone on record as saying, "The essential issue in this race is freedom." By his own standard, then, he loses. He is decidedly not a champion of freedom. He has openly denounced the "idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do...that we shouldn't get involved in the bedroom (and) we shouldn't get involved in cultural issues."

So if you relish the thought of having the federal government force your most personal decisions to go just the way Rick Santorum thinks they ought to, by all means, throw him your vote. Me? I'd vote for a mummified Richard Nixon before I'd support a would-be tyrant like Santorum.

Ron Paul on the UIGEA

Do not miss the exclusive interview with Ron Paul about the UIGEA posted a short time ago at Card Player's web site, here.

Obviously, I agree with nearly everything he has to say on the subject. But I did have one significant difference of opinion, regarding this portion of the interview:

CP: What should be done about Internet gambling in America?

RP: I think we should just take a hands-off position. I don’t think the
government should be involved in any way at all. If I take a personal viewpoint
that gambling is bad and I don’t like it, the way I should attack that is that I
personally should avoid doing it and teach my kids the way I think they should
act. But I don’t want the government coming in and doing this.

CP: Not even at a state level?

RP: Well, at a state level there are no prohibitions to [regulate] it. If I
were a state legislator, I would probably argue against just about all that
regulation, and taxing, as well. But as a federal official, I have to no
authority to prohibit states from being involved.

I'm glad that he is a respector of states' rights, but I think he's dead wrong that Congress couldn't stop states from regulating and/or taxing Internet gaming. Isn't that pretty clearly within congressional authority to regulate interstate commerce and international trade? In fact, Congress has previously acted in exactly this way, prohibiting states from imposing Internet-specific taxes. The primary purpose of the interstate commerce clause in the Constitution is to prevent states from meddling in and gumming up commerce that transpires between states, which surely encompasses money trading hands over the Internet. In my view, Congress could flatly prohibit states from interfering in any way with Internet gaming, and be fully within its rightful constitutional boundaries--and it should do so. (Not that I'm holding my breath expecting it to happen....)

Many thanks to Bob Pajich at Card Player for getting Rep. Paul to open up on this topic.

A rant about poker and politics

On days like today, when election news is all that's on, I can't help thinking about how screwed up American politics are, and what a pathetically small place the whole concept of liberty has in the platform of most politicians and the minds of most American voters.

To the extent that they talk about it at all, those who tried (and continue to try) to make online poker difficult or impossible justify their actions by saying that they wanted to protect children and/or compulsive gamblers.

I look at it differently, and suggest that you should, too. What I hear those politicians telling me is, "The ability to choose to play poker on your computer is really just way more freedom than I think you should have, so I'm going to take it away from you."

Doesn't that piss you off? Isn't that about as horrendous and insulting a thing as somebody you elected to serve your interests could say or imply to you? Doesn't that make you want to devote some time and money to making sure that such arrogance gets soundly renounced on election day?

It isn't just about poker, though. As much as I love the game, I'm not so delusional as to think that it is the central issue of our day. But I submit that what a politician thinks and does about poker is a pretty good surrogate (the term "litmus test" has acquired a bad reputation as regards things political, but I think it's legitimate) for what he thinks and does about personal freedom generally. After all, if a politician thinks that you can't handle a low-stakes poker game in your pajamas, you can just imagine what else he will think is too much freedom for you.

Many of the same politicians who voted for the abominable UIGEA also recently voted for the repulsive energy bill late last year. Among other things, this will eventually ban all incandescent light bulbs. The supporters couch their victory in terms such as saving the planet from global warming. Rubbish. What I hear in those votes is this message, loud and clear: "You really can't be trusted with a decision as monumental as what kind of light bulbs to put in your house." These arrogant bastards think that they know how to make that decision for me better than I can make it for myself, so they arrogated the power to decide it for everybody. (Do you see anywhere in the Constitution that Congress shall have the power to decide what kind of light bulbs you buy? It's not in my copy.)

Again, doesn't that make you deeply angry?

You can take nearly any political issue and look at it through the lens of personal liberty. Do your elected representatives want to raise the minimum wage? Well, another way of looking at it is that they don't think you, as either an employer or an employee, are competent to make a good bargain as to the value of one's time and labor.

Do they support mandatory increases in automobile fuel efficiency? That means that they don't trust you to decide for yourself how to balance, optimally for your specific situation, vehicle capacity, initial car cost, operating costs, power, and safety (and rest assured that every notch upward in fleet economy means that more people will die, because manufacturers will cut weight, and lighter cars are less crashworthy, all else being equal). That's just far, far too complex a set of of factors for you poor, stupid people to weigh on your own.

Do they want to restrict your right to donate money to the candidate or party of your choice, or limit what political advertising you and/or groups you support can purchase near election time (read: McCain-Feingold amendment)? That is a perfectly clear message to you that you're incompetent to spend your money on your political goals wisely--and the First Amendment be damned.

Do they oppose even partial privatization of Social Security? If so, it's because they see you, the foolish citizen, as way too stupid to make sound long-term investments on your own behalf.

Do they support the horrendously expensive boondoggle called the war on drugs? That's because they think that they, and not you, should be entitled to decide what substances you ingest, inhale, imbibe, or inject.

And perhaps most importantly, what do they think about money? I remember that moment of clarity in 1999 when Bill Clinton slipped and let his real thoughts show, when he was asked about the possibility of refunding some of what was then a budget surplus to the people. He said, "We could give it all back to you and hope you spend it right."

Do you hear that--you might not spend your own money "right." He knows better than you do where that money should go. What he wants to do with it is more important than anything that you mere citizens could possibly want to do with it. The same idea is reflected, though a little less flagrantly, in his wife's recent unguarded moment, when she admitted that the nation couldn't afford all the ideas she has for federal spending. There is simply no doubt that she thinks you are keeping too much of your own money--she needs to take more of it from you, and do things with it that really matter, unlike your own pathetic little goals and preferences for it. She is far from alone in this desire.

The politician who thinks you can't be trusted with the decision to play poker will most likely also think that you can't really be trusted with how you raise your children, school choice, the decision to purchase a firearm, decisions about alcohol and tobacco use, picking your own health care plan, selecting a mortgage you can afford (some want a huge increase in regulations on that whole industry), and a million other choices that we have to make as citizens and consumers. It's all just too much for you to handle, they think (and occasionally say out loud). We need to do it for you.

I cannot even begin to express the contempt I have for elected officials who bring such condescending attitudes to their term of service. It is positively vile. It does not begin or end with poker, but their views on your freedom to play the game make a pretty good single-issue sample test for the larger question of whether they really, truly, deeply believe that you should be left alone to make virtually every other decision for how to lead your life.

Sadly, and to my great consternation, there are very, very few politicians who genuinely think you can live your life without the government guiding you at every turn.

There is, as far as I know, only one presidential candidate who goes against the grain on all of this. Ron Paul (http://www.ronpaul2008.com/) says in every stump speech, "I don't want to run your life"--and he means it. How sad and ironic that in the "land of liberty" this message makes him a maverick and an outcast.

If my words and thoughts here have not roused you to a sense of righteous anger at how nearly every current office-holder and candidate treats you and thinks of you, then I have failed. But I'll make one last effort, by embedding below one of the greatest scenes in movie history. Maybe Peter Finch, in his masterful portrayal of Howard Beale ("Network," 1976), can accomplish what I have not, and make you want to "throw the bums out," as the saying goes.

You've got to get mad!

I can't vote for Ron Paul (grrrrrrrrr) (non-poker related)

After writing the post below, I started looking for information on where I needed to go Saturday for the Republican caucuses to put in my vote for Ron Paul. I discovered, to my chagrin, that I can't. It turns out that the stupid Republican party put in place a rule that one has to have registered as a Republican 30 days before the caucus in order to participate. I'm not thrilled about changing my registration from Libertarian to Republican (I think it should be illegal for the state to collect data on one's party affiliation as part of voter registration, but that's another issue), but I would have done so temporarily for the purpose of voting for Paul.

I moved here from Minnesota, which had open caucuses--just show up and you can participate. I had just blithely assumed that things would work similarly here. The Democrats basically do the same in Nevada. But not the Republicans.

Why does everything have to be stupid and difficult?

On top of that, I have a painful stye in my left eye, and it was 28 degrees here a couple of hours ago, which is way too cold for existence. I am super grumpy today.

Funding online poker accounts is still a pain

I wrote a couple of months ago about my frustrations trying to get money into one of my online poker accounts (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/10/funding-online-poker-accounts-is-pain.html). I don't play particularly well online, so don't do it often, but once in a while I take another stab and see if I'm getting any better at it.

My epassporte account works, but there's a $5-$10 charge every time, and it's slow, with the money I send to it from my online bank not available for a week or two. Completely ridiculous and unacceptable in an age of instant transactions for everything else.

I had read several places that Visa gift cards worked like a charm, and were accepted at online poker sites where regular credit or debit cards would not be. So I decided to try it. I stopped at a local Walgreens and purchased a $100 Visa gift card for $105.95. I figured the worst that could happen would be it got rejected, and I'd be out the $5.95, but still be able to spend the $100 on whatever expenses came up in my life.

I naively assumed that all Visa gift cards were equal. Turns out not to be so. When I found that the one I bought would not be accepted at Full Tilt, Poker Stars, or Ultimate Bet, I did a little more searching around the poker forums where this subject is discussed. Various cards are issued by different banks, and some of them tend to get accepted and others not. By coincidence, the one I bought ("gift2go") is one that many users have reported success with, but for whatever reason, I couldn't make it work. Other users say that whatever brand is sold through Target has the best track record of being accepted, but I haven't tried that yet.

In the process of this after-the-fact research, I also came across favorable reports for gift cards purchased through http://www.giftcards.com/, so I gave that a try. The most detailed account I found online described the whole thing going through in a couple of hours. That wasn't my experience. They only gave me the option of buying the card via a direct withdrawal from my checking account (i.e., I couldn't use another credit or debit card to buy it), and my bank doesn't process such transactions any faster than two days. I put in the request Monday afternoon, and got the approval about noon today. It cost $105 for a $100 card.

I sent the "virtual gift card" to myself, and received an email telling me how to access it. That all worked fine. Then the big test: will it be accepted for online poker? Full Tilt: No. Poker Stars: No. Ultimate Bet: Yes! The card issuer charged a transaction fee of $0.06, and $99.94 showed up almost instantly in my UB account. (Yeah, I know about their association with Absolute Poker and the big scandal. But I still like playing on UB more than the other two big ones.)

There is another potential problem with funding an account this way: you can't withdraw by the same means, which probably means that if I start turning an actual profit and want to cash out, I'll have to settle for a slow paper check to be mailed to me. But that's a small problem, and I'll deal with it when the time comes. (Nevertheless, I'm bracing myself for a possible nightmare of an experience, after reading this account of trying to make a simple withdrawal from UB: http://hardboiledpoker.blogspot.com/2007/11/ub-kidding-me.html.)

When Full Tilt rejected the card, it suggested instead a new option, something called an Ultra account. So I went through the tedious process of signing up for one of those accounts, typing in all the usual redundant information, answering its questions to see if I was really who I was claiming to be, etc. Then I clicked "submit," and got one of those horrible error screens that tells me their server crashed or something. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

This is all so pointless and stupid, and all due to that idiotic, anti-American UIGEA passed in 2006. If you vote for a presidential or congressional candidate who is on record as supporting that awful piece of legislation, well, you deserve all of the obstacles and frustrations that are now attendant upon trying to engage in the simple pasttime of running a bluff in your underwear. It is said that people get the government they deserve, so if people of this country are so ignorant and/or apathetic not to punish politically the people who visited this insanity upon us, I guess we're just getting what we deserve. (Quick hint: Ron Paul is far and away the most freedom-loving presidential candidate this country has had in my lifetime. Shame on us all if we let slip away this opportunity to have such a man in the White House. I'm afraid he'll be too old to run ever again.)

Addendum, January 18, 2008

I created accounts at two new (to me) sites last night, Carbon Poker and Players Only. The "gift2go" card mentioned above was rejected (as with every other place I tried it) at Carbon, but sailed through at Players Only. If there is any logical reason for this discrepancy, it completely escapes me.

Addendum, January 18, 2008

An amazing breakthrough! One of the commenters said that Poker Stars can be funded diretly through one's checking account. I was skeptical of this, because nothing has been that easy since Netteller stopped doing business in the U.S. But I dutifully went to PS to try it. It's the "E-check" option. And it worked like a charm! In about two minutes, I had $100 sitting in my Stars account--with zero fees! Simply amazing. It's just like the old days. I wonder if it will last.


Addendum, January 19, 2008

Another commenter mentioned the gift cards issued by http://www.allaccessgift.com/. They are sold locally at, among other places, Von's grocery stores. I needed a couple of things last night and was going right past a Von's anyway, so looked for and found the cards, right by the cash registers. The highest they had was $50, but that was fine, since it was just to see if it worked. Bought the thing for $55. The first place I tried to use it was a new account I just set up at Carbon Poker, and it went through without a hitch. Looking more closely at the card, it is issued by "Inter National Bank," which is the same place I've seen mentioned in the forums as the bank whose cards tend to work most consistently for this purpose. It seems that that information is correct. The commenter also mentioned something I hadn't seen anywhere else, which is that not all of this issuer's cards work equally well, and you need to check to see that it also gives the name "NetSpend" somewhere on the card's packaging before buying it. I can't confirm that exactly, but this one did have that label, and worked fine on the first try, so it's probably worth checking for that notation.


Addendum, February 5, 2008

I tried another one of those Inter National Bank NetSpend Visa gift cards on Full Tilt, and they wouldn't accept it. I tried it on Bodog and BugsysClub, and it went through instantly on both. There is no logical pattern to what works and doesn't work. It's all just trial and error, as far as I can tell--which is why I'm reporting my experiences here for each specific combination of funding method and site I try.

Addendum, April 9, 2008

Another of the same type of card worked like slick on both Poker Host and True Poker. I couldn't get it to work on Eurolinx, because that dumb site requires you to go to a third-party intermediary, which appears to accept only standard credit cards, not gift cards.

Poker players and dealers should support Ron Paul (shameless political plug)

Ron Paul is one of only two candidates (the other being Bill Richardson) who have stated clearly that they would repeal the UIGEA (the 2006 law that put such a huge dent in online poker). (See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/10/poker-players-are-political-wimps.html.) If that isn't enough reason for lovers of the game to throw their support behind him, I just learned of another one.

With the Nevada caucuses approaching early next year, today I heard a radio ad for the candidate in which he announces his support for a measure that would exempt tips from the income tax. (See http://dailypaul.com/node/2513.) This is a pretty smart move to set onesself apart from the field, in a state where so many people rely on tips for a living. I have done no research on what kind of support this proposal has received from others in Congress, but it's easy to imagine that it will become popular. Republicans who claim to be for cutting taxes get a chance to prove it, and Democrats who claim to champion the working stiffs can do the same. Not many millionaires are dependent on tips for their sustenance.

One of the obstacles to becoming a poker dealer is that one typically starts off in smaller rooms on the shifts with the least action (because the more senior dealers know when the tip income is most available and take those shifts when they can). You can end up "on break" for the majority of a shift. But the government still collects tax at a rate of presumed tip income that they have negotiated with each casino, whether or not you earned that much--or anything at all--on a given day. In other words, it's not too difficult to finish a pay period owing more in taxes than you actually earned. That's just insane, but it's going on all the time. It makes it hard to break into the business to spend the first few months in a negative-income situation.

So if you're a poker dealer, or a poker player who would rather see the dealer be able to keep the tips you offer rather than forwarding them straight to the IRS, Ron Paul should be your guy in 2008.

Poker players are political wimps

In the nearly one year since passage of the abominable "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act" (UIGEA) I have overheard quite a bit of discussion on the subject of politics around the poker table, as well as on TV, among well-known professional players, on "High Stakes Poker" and "Poker After Dark" (the only two poker programs that have a lot of table talk). I am repeatedly astounded by how players so readily forgive--or forget?--those who tried to make online poker difficult or impossible to play.

I don't play online much, because I'm just not very good at it. (Not that anybody cares, but I think the main reasons are that (1) live players give off oodles of information, and I seem not to function well without it, (2) I get bored and impatient with nothing to do but stare at the screen, and feel compelled to play hands that I should just fold; real people are a lot more interesting to watch, (3) players enter and leave virtual tables much more quickly than real ones, not giving me the time I need to figure out how they're playing. At least I'm in good company; both Daniel Negreanu and Barry Greenstein admit that they're similarly handicapped.) But there aren't very many more victimless "crimes" than sitting at home in one's underwear playing $0.05-0.10 limit hold'em on the computer. It's insane for "the land of the free" to be making this activity of questionable legality and putting up hurdles for casual players to jump over.

I guess what brought this to a head for me was hearing Daniel Negreanu and Doyle Brunson chatting, during a "Poker After Dark" episode, about presidential candidates, with both of them endorsing Barack Obama. There aren't many people in this country who were more negatively affected by the UIGEA than these two. Both of them had online poker sites that were about a year old, and both operations went belly-up shortly after the legislation was signed. I have no idea how much money they may have lost, but it must have been millions of dollars of potential revenue. And then they're openly talking about their support for a guy who voted to close them down!!! Have you guys lost all sense of reason???

The usual canard is that this was "must-pass" legislation, because Senator Bill Frist, seeking to polish his reputation with social conservatives for an abortive presidential candidacy, used his position as majority leader to push an unrelated bill about port security into conference committee, where he attached the UIGEA. This forced members of Congress in both houses to vote on the whole package. (Never mind what might have been done in that conference committee to prevent the attachment.) So even poker players who are reasonably informed about how this law came into being tend to go easy on the politicians: They had to vote for the port security legislation, and the online gambling unfortunately came along for the ride.

I don't buy it. I won't let them off the hook that easily. There is no such thing as a "must-pass" bill, in my view. Suppose that instead of a gambling provision Frist had attached, say, a bill repealing the 19th amendment (which gave women the right to vote). Would any senator or representative have said, "Well, we have to pass the port security stuff, so I guess we'll just have to hope that women don't notice this other little provision"? Of course not. They first would have prevented Frist from attaching that amendment in conference committee, or, failing that, they would have denounced it from the hilltops, voted against it, then quickly pushed the port security bill back through committees and to a floor vote, this time unencumbered by the anti-suffrage bits.

So why didn't they have the fortitude to do the same when the unrelated amendment was about gambling? Because they either actually liked the measure, or at least decided that few of their constituents would care deeply enough about it for it to hurt them at the next election. To be blunt, even those who might have thought the bill to be bad public policy put their fingers to the wind and decided that they could be more hurt by political opponents saying "He voted against making our ports secure" than "He voted to make it really difficult to put money into one's online poker account."

They could have kept the ports bill and the gambling bill separate if they wanted to. They just didn't care about the matter enough. I, for one, think that they should have to answer for such lack of integrity when it comes to protecting individual liberties.

So who voted for the combined bill? Here's the full, official legislative history of the bill. (The part about online gambling is the “Conference Report” stuff on 9/29/06.) http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR04954:@@@X

Here’s the roll-call vote from the House of Representatives:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll516.xml. For Nevada residents, you’ll note the names of Jim Gibbons (now our illustrious governor, with more scandals accruing before he took office than most governors get in a full term), Jon Porter, and Shelley Berkley all voting for the bill. In the Senate, they were so cowardly that they passed it by “unanimous consent,” meaning that there was no roll-call vote recorded. Therefore, every member of the Senate gets the blame for it.

Even the politician I like the most, Ron Paul (http://www.ronpaul2008.com/) (I'm a strongly libertarian kind of guy--live and let live, and all that jazz), voted for it. I was surprised to learn that last night when I was poking around at the details of the history, because I've heard it said and seen it written that he voted against it. To be precise, he voted against a similar separate bill that the House defeated earlier in 2006. But as the links above show, he voted for it when it was attached to the ports security bill. Shame on you, Ron Paul.

But at least he has since then come out strongly in favor of either repealing this legislation or reducing its impact by carving out a provision for licensed gaming companies. There are at least two bills in the House that would have such an effect. See http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-2046 (listing Paul as a co-sponsor) and http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-2610.

Now, I'm opposed to federally licensing gambling establishments, because it's just not a proper or necessary role of the federal government, and it will inevitably lead to the licensees being subjected to more and more regulation as time goes by. That's the way of all federal regulations and licensing, unfortunately. But at least I can be confident that if outright repeal of the UIGEA ever managed to get put to a vote, Paul would unquestionably support it, as either a congressman or as president. See http://www.gambling911.com/Ron-Paul-Internet-Gambling-042707.html.

But what about the other presidential candidates? It's hard to say, beyond the fact that all of the ones who are currently senators or repesentatives voted for the UIGEA, and therefore must be presumed to be enemies of poker players, absent strong contrary evidence. And, frankly, there just isn't much contrary evidence, except for Paul.

The very fact that it's hard to find clear, definitive position statements from any of them supports the theory that they are counting on this not being much of an issue in the presidential election. For those willing to invest the reading time, there have been at least three lengthy threads in the 2+2 poker forums on the subject, though, as always, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low, and nobody seems to have found much clear information:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=11872919&an=0&page=0#Post11872919

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12016409&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10351539&an=0&page=2#Post10351539

Bill Richardson appears to be the only candidate, aside from Paul, who has openly supported repeal of the UIGEA. See http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2007-04-30-4052419200_x.htm (page down to the third story).

Rudy Giuliani has reportedly received the most money from the gaming industry. But that's hard to interpret. It was the brick-and-mortar casinos that first pushed through the law several years back that made it nearly impossible to use credit cards to fund online gambling accounts. (And their lobbyists did this on the ironic grounds of the immorality of expanded gambling!) Unless Harrah's, Station Casinos, MGM/Mirage, Wynn, etc., start running online operations themselves, they're likely to see Internet gaming as competition to be stifled, rather than as part of the same industry. Giuliani was definitely part of the crackdown on New York underground poker rooms, so his track record is pretty suspect.

As for the other candidates, it's a crap shoot (pardon the pun). They haven't committed themselves. But to me that's pretty telling. If a politician is dodging an issue that he knows a relatively small constituency cares passionately about, it is most likely because his position will anger that group, so he decides it's better to keep quiet. In my view, this is definitely in the "if you're not clearly with us, you must be against us" category.

If you love poker and you love personal liberty, you can't logically support any current presidential candidate except for Ron Paul or Bill Richardson. As far as I can tell, there aren't any other supporters out there. If there are, we have to wonder why they're keeping mum about it.

While I'm on this rant, just a word about one of the other related things I read in poker magazines frequently. The relatively new Poker Players Alliance (http://www.pokerplayersalliance.org/) is actively seeking federal regulation in exchange for recognized legality. Other writers repeatedly urge Congress to "regulate and tax" online poker specifically, or all online gambling generally. I think this is dangerous and completely wrong-headed.

As I said before, regulation always begets more regulation. Regulation means expense to the operators--and in this case that would translate to lower profits for the players. Opponents of anything who can't get it completely banned always go for regulation, incrementally making the regulations more onerous and expensive as time goes by. Look at abortion, cigarette smoking, alcohol, nuclear energy, mining, logging, or a zillion other examples. Inviting federal regulation is letting the camel's nose into the tent, and sooner or later, inevitably, the whole camel will be in there.

We also don't need regulation to protect us. The businesses that run online gaming risk bankruptcy if they are caught cheating or letting others cheat, because their customers will flit away in a heartbeat. They have much more to fear from loss of their investments than from not following every federal regulation. Despite the number of people I have heard calling for regulation, I haven't heard even one specific proposal of what these folks think the regulations should do, in terms of protecting players, that the online poker sites aren't already doing. Not even a phone-book-sized set of regulations would make me feel any safer about online play than I already do.

The same is true, but even more so, for those who casually say "regulate and tax it." Taxation would even more surely sound the death knell. The amount of the tax would simply get ratcheted up over time, and we would be spending our political energy trying to prevent that creep. But it would happen anyway. Just look at how the Nevada legislature treats the casinos--as cash cows to hit up for more revenue every time there's a budget shortfall. Just look at how tobacco taxes have moved over the years. The so-called "sin taxes" are the very easiest ones for politicians to support. If you think it's hard to make money playing poker now, when even good players have a fairly small percentage return on total wagers, wait until the feds hit you with, say, a 10% tax on every pot, on top of the house rake. Of course, it would start out at, say, just 1%, but there's no doubt in my mind that it would slowly increase until nearly all of the profit has been squeezed out of the game.

The message from poker players to politicians needs to be this: Leave us the hell alone. Don't ban it, don't make the financial transactions illegal or difficult, don't regulate it, don't tax it. Leave it alone. Let us play our little games in peace. You get your share from our income taxes, and that's more than enough.

As others have pointed out, it is now easier and more clearly legal to play online poker in Russia than in the United States. That's crazy. It should be unthinkable. It has come to this because we poker players haven't exercised any political muscle. Politicians have no reason to seek the support--or, alternatively, fear the wrath--of poker players, as they do with the NRA, the AARP, labor unions, etc. We're political wimps. That has to change.


Addendum:

I posted a link to this rant on the http://www.allvegaspoker.com/ forums, and soon thereafter found posted this interesting and thoughtful response, which is well worth reading, if this whole subject interests you:
http://www.allvegaspoker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=27128#27128

Addendum, November 18, 2007:

I just stumbled across this nice summary of where both parties' presidential candidates stand on internet gambling, so far as it is known:

https://pokerplayersalliance.org/news/newsandarticles_article.php?DID=289