There’s an old poker game called Blind Man’s Bluff, which is played in a way that’s contrary to just about every other form of poker. Players get to see every hand but their own, and must make their decisions without that key piece of information.
Some players get so consumed at trying to figure out what they hold, based on the reaction of their opponents, that they lose sight of the best way to play … betting based on what they do know and not worrying about the rest.
To a large degree, what we’re seeing now with the federal crackdown of online poker reminds me of Blind Man’s Bluff. So many people are trying to see through the cards that they are missing what’s right in front of them.
Ever since Black Friday, the day about a month ago in which the feds arrested 11 online poker executives and shut down their services to U.S. customers, what’s surprised me the most is just how much false information there is out there.
Perhaps the only thing that trumps this is pinpointing the messengers of the false news. There are scores of media members, professional poker players and gaming industry professionals who have no clue what Black Friday was all about.
As someone who has covered poker and played since before the dawn of the pre-boom era, allow me a chance to clear up some misconceptions. This wasn’t about government suits having nothing better to do, an assault on the morality of online gaming, or a missed opportunity to make something of the industry.
An editorial in Time magazine read, “The outlawing of Internet gaming has excluded a potentially large business from the U.S. that could be mined for tax revenues …”
Well, hold on a minute. You can’t tax what you don’t own, and the online poker crackdown hasn’t “excluded” anything. In fact, it’s about “including” everyone in the upcoming windfall.
This is simply about helping the government find some money. The online poker industry has it, and we want it, and you sometimes get the sense U.S. lawmakers and gaming executives wish they had been the first ones to come up with this online poker idea.
They weren’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to steal it. Like a large dog nudging his sibling away from the food bowl, it doesn’t matter that someone else was there first, we’re hungry.
When the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was passed in 2006, the feds essentially opened the door for stepping in and taking control of the online poker industry any time it served their purposes. That time is now.
Lawmakers who have long been skeptical of online gaming could no longer deny the potential financial benefit of taxing and regulating it. One well-known financial analyst estimated that Nevada alone would bring in more than $65 million in annual tax revenue.
Several states tried to either pass their own gaming legislation or, the wiser, more recent trend, passed legislation that put regulations in place for if and when online poker became federally regulated.
Many well-known Nevada gaming brands aligned themselves with the top sites in order to get a foothold in the industry the minute online poker was green-lighted. Nevada political analyst John Ralston wrote an interesting column about just how close one site and one casino came to bursting out of the gate:
https://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/apr/20/how-pokerstars-six-month-plan-went-awry/
So, it came as no surprise a couple of weeks ago when it was announced that the sites would be given access to their domain names in order to process refunds for U.S. customers. That’s because, in a year from now, when you log on to play under wynncaesarsharrahs.com or wherever, the feds want to make sure you have a bankroll for them to tax.
It also came as little shock yesterday when attorneys in the Black Friday case speculated that the charges likely would be settled without trials and little or no jail time. Which makes perfect sense … these guys have no incentive to hand the U.S. government the blueprint to their business plan if they are sent to prison for 20 years. It wouldn’t shock me to see many of the former top online poker executives pop up again as “consultants” for future U.S. online gaming companies.
About the only thing that has surprised me since Black Friday is how many people refuse to read the cards that are turned face-up on the table.
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