I think Wil Wheaton (who has become quite the online renaissance man: his retrospective reviews of Star Trek: The Next Generation are hilarious) is right that recent changes in US law, along with some prominent law enforcement, mean that online poker in the United States is going to be impossible for the foreseeable future. I know at this point I wouldn’t put money in an online poker site even if they reassured me that there was a safe way to make a deposit and a guarantee of being able to withdraw my funds.
Some time ago, I did try a bit of online poker with real money. The good thing about playing that way, from my perspective, wasn’t the prospect of making money (I eventually lost my small initial stake, but it took a long while) but simply that once the money is real, the quality of play goes up a huge amount. I learned a lot from doing it, and was a lot more confident about my play when I was in Las Vegas recently. A lot of players were (and are) convinced that there’s something dubious about the shuffle algorithm at many major online sites, but I really think on balance that this has to do with the fact that you see many more hands online, and that there are more players who will foolishly chase cards to the river, and so hit what seem like improbably miraculous hands from time to time.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently with casinos in offing for Philadelphia. They won’t have table games, just slots. I really don’t get the logic of this choice. I frankly don’t think we should have them at all, but if you’re going to have them, why just slots? Casino poker is the one thing I would play, partly because I find poker endlessly fascinating, but also because the house has no interest in whether I win or lose, just in whether the hands get played at a good clip and the pots are large enough to make a good rake. If you’re concerned at all about the impact of gambling on vulnerable players, slots don’t seem like a good choice: they’re a game that the house wins by a large and rigid margin. (If you’re concerned about the profits of the casinos, on the other hand, they’re obviously a premium feature.)
Gambling is another of the areas where the policy framework for sinful industries seems conceptually incoherent to me. That’s one thing when you’re dealing with a crazy-quilt inheritance of old statutes, and another thing when you’re introducing something. Pennsylvania typically seems to be in a rush to maximize its incoherence. Gambling will now join the state’s alcohol policy, which is breathtakingly freakish and dysfunctional. (For the uninitiated: 1) wine and liquor are sold only in state stores which cannot sell tonic water, club soda and so on; 2) beer is sold in privately-owned stores but can only be bought by the case, not the six-pack; 3) unless you buy a six-pack of beer to go from a bar at a high premium. In the not-too-recent past, Pennsylvania also stationed police officers to try and keep state residents from buying alcohol over the border into New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and other states.)
I can see a better case for regulating online poker, but I’m not sure how much sense that makes when American municipalities and states are now routinely turning to gambling (casinos, racing parlors and lotteries) as revenue instruments. Of course, that is one reason why online poker is a big target: because the big players in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and a number of Native American reservations object to the way it devalues brick-and-mortar play.
Oh, well. None of this takes away from my fascination with poker itself, which in the context of games and play strikes me as easily one of the four or five most interesting and potent games ever invented by human beings. It’s vastly more compelling to me than chess, for example, partly because it so explosively interweaves probability, skill and insights into the consciousness of other human beings.
For the uninitiated: 1) wine and liquor are sold only in state stores which cannot sell tonic water, club soda and so on; 2) beer is sold in privately-owned stores but can only be bought by the case, not the six-pack; 3) unless you buy a six-pack of beer to go from a bar at a high premium.
Has this changed recently? When I was going to college in PA, there were six-pack shops in town, but you could only buy two at a time. The markup wasn’t particularly bad ($6-$10 each, depending on what you were buying). Still not as convenient as being able to go into any convenience store or supermarket and buy as much booze as you want, though.
My favorite ill-fated attempt of Pennsylvania liquor bizareness was the law that was briefly passed in 1988 or 89 that required a Pennsylvania idea to buy booze. It got repealed before I could file my full-faith and credit lawsuit.
I do think Penn gets the mail order wine thing right. You order, it’s delivered to a wine store, where you pick it up and pay appropriate taxes. Works for the shippers, who don’t have to worry about liability, criminal charges on selling to minors etc., and the state gets their cut.
I also like the fact that I can take advantage of the pretty cheap prices on big winery wines in the state wine store (they ruthlessly negotiate with large wineries to get the best prices) and hop across the river to Moore Brothers for my exotics.
But yeah, the gambling thing is just completely horrific from start to finish. Even the people that support gambling are pissed off at this point.
From the argument over video poker in South Carolina, one point I remember against poker specifically (in the context of gambling law) was that people are much more likely to play addictively when their actions seem to have a real effect on the outcome. So poker, and video poker, are more addictive than slots, and thus need heavier regulation.
Note: I’m not making this argument; I’m reporting it.
Personally, I’d rate bridge as the best card game.
Yeah. We’ll see if the democrats have the balls to undo a piece of legislation that, virtually overnight, made criminals out of millions of citizens… for no reason other than “we conservatives don’t think people should be gambling (unless their last name is Bennett).”. As the legislator who wrote the law stated: Gambling is immoral and bad for society. Unless, of course, we’re talking about the state lottery, gambling on horses at state run tracks, or driving a truck for Halliburton — the most patriotic version of gambling. If you win, you get to take home a salary. If you lose, you get killed and replaced by another player. Either way, Cheney and his friends suck in a little more money. It’s truly a win-win game!
The version of gambling that they really have a problem with is any in which those who play with skill and brains will yield superiour results to those who play ignorantly. This is why slots are good, poker is bad. From the point of view of the people who passed this law, society should never reward anyone for the application of intelligence. Ever. Success should go to the privileged, the well-connected, the racially-pure and (when all else fails) to the LUCKY. A society that rewards citizens for competence, knowledge, creativity… that society could end up being RUN by people with those attributes. And if, god forbid, THAT ever happened the the people who passed this law will find themselves without a gig.
easily one of the four or five most interesting and potent games ever invented
Ok, don’t just leave this hanging. What are the others you’re thinking of?
Diplomacy? Spin the bottle? Werewolf?