DOJ Seizes Online Poker Site Domains 379
An anonymous reader writes "Federal authorities have seized Internet domain names used by three major poker companies. The indictment charges eleven defendants (PDF), including the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, with bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling offenses, according to Federal authorities in New York. The United States also filed a civil money laundering and in rem forfeiture complaint against the poker companies, their assets, and the assets of several payment processors for the poker companies."
Victimless "crime" (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.
At least I assume that's what happened.
Re:Victimless "crime" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.
At least I assume that's what happened.
I was under the same impression when they started cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries and performing legwork for the RIAA and MPAA...
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I disagree.
I would rather have the freedom to choose whether or not I would risk my money in an unregulated gambling house than to be forced by the government to not gamble.
In either case, the result is the same...I wouldn't gamble. But I sill believe in the right to choose.
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Exactly.
I'm not against regulating online poker-- but I am against prohibition. The absence of regulation does not excuse the prohibition.
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The victim in the crime of online gambling is the government itself.
You see, online gambling amounts to essentially a taxation system. (Some people call it a tax on the stupid but I won't
be so judgemental.)
Problem (for the government): This highly lucrative taxation system is directing citizens funds to some organization
other than the government itself. Competition for the government. Hence, inherently bad (from gov's perspective.)
So to summarize:
A. Drugs are banned because they make people unruly (literal
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Christ this is ridiculous.
I live in a city that thrives off of gambling. The history of gambling and gaming is pretty much full of cheats, thugs, thieves and charlatans.
Unregulated gambling means you don't know if you're playing the online version of three card monte or instead a respectable poker game.
You anti-Government types all act like either history never happend, history is all rosy and perfect or that people getting screwed is something to be celebrated.
Fuck you.
Governments like that kind of business (Score:3)
Governments actually like that kind of business. First the sucker earns some money doing real work, and pays income tax on it. Then the sucker loses some of that money to the gambling house (which pays business taxes) and some more money to the other players (who may also be suckers or may be sharks.) The winners pay income tax on their net winnings, if any, and the suckers don't get to deduct gambling losses (except to offset any winnings), so the government gets to take more money off the top.
When I wa
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Which in no way invalidates the posters point. It doesn't tell how little you actually know about politics.
Actually, it does a good job invalidating it. The DOJ is under the control of the President, not the house of representatives. The DOJ routinely ignores things that the President wants ignored, and pushes agendas that the President wants pushed.
If the DOJ is going after someone, it's because the President wants it. And the President is a liberal democrat.
If this was four years ago and the DOJ was doing this, you'd hear the screams from the liberals about how a conservative President was raping the law, e
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Jon Kyl of Arizona was a big gambling-law pusher (Score:5, Informative)
Senator Kyl, a right-winger from Arizona, was one of the big pushers of Federal laws against online gambling. He didn't want it left to the states, and didn't want Americans to be able to gamble at non-US gambling houses. It's always nice to know how strongly Republicans believe in small government that stays out of people's personal lives and leaves decisions to the states when they don't need to be Federal.
Re:Victimless "crime" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Victimless "crime" (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree.
I would rather have the freedom to choose whether or not I would risk my money in an unregulated gambling house than to be forced by the government to not gamble.
In either case, the result is the same...I wouldn't gamble. But I sill believe in the right to choose.
Bro, read. Bank fraud and money laundering are among the charges. Not every act of prosecution is about is about attacking your right to choose. I know this is slashdot and people don't RTFA, but c'mon.
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That would be great if every man was an island, but we are not.
Unregulated gambling brings problems to people who don't gamble.
Plus, people who do gamblers have NO WAY to know if they are being cheated.
Your stance seems to come from a false belief that customers would have the knowledge to make a good decision.
For the record, on rare occasion I do gamble.
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Who did they cheat, exactly? The only fraud they committed was incorrectly identifying the purpose of the dollars exchanged because the U.S. unreasonably (and illegally, I might add) restricts online poker.
There are no allegations of cheating the users, who desire the services these sites are providing.
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i bet they'll find a cure soon.
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if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.
Which is perfectly reasonable. The bans on online gambling sites effectively border on having a government agent prevent you from entering a casino in Morocco because your local laws prohibit gambling.
I'm perfectly fine with the US gov't preventing gambling companies from being located in the US. But the internet is like someone in Canada making a sign that we can see from the US. You can try to put up walls to block the sign, but all I have to do is drive down the road and I can see it again. It
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The bans on online gambling sites effectively border on having a government agent prevent you from entering a casino in Morocco because your local laws prohibit gambling.
It "borders on" that like a Mazzerati "borders on" a Kia. Both are cars, but they're from different places.
What it IS is preventing you from gambling in the US when it is illegal to gamble that way in the US, even if who you are gambling with is outside the US.
But the internet is like someone in Canada making a sign that we can see from the US. You can try to put up walls to block the sign, but all I have to do is drive down the road and I can see it again. It doesn't work.
Awww, that analogy works even if you just WALK down the road, so you failed to accomplish the mandatory automobile analogy. And looking at the sign doesn't require you sending things to Canada, so it's a poor analogy anyway.
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It's a false dilemma, but if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.
And I'd choose the latter.
Absolute bullshit. I find this kind of intervention ridiculous. It all comes down to money. They saw a thriving business that they couldn't get their claws into, so they shut it down.
As I read on /. the other day: "It's fun, therefore it's not allowed."
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I agree with you that banning gambling is ridiculous moralizing that serves no purpose but to arbitrarily restrict the freedom of citizens. Especially in this case because the gamblers aren't even all U.S. residents. However, if these gambling establishments aren't regulated somehow, they tend to become, essentially, fraud engines. Either by the owners or enterprising players. And that level of laisez faire shouldn't really be allowed either. It's a false dilemma, but if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.
I agree. A bunch of people here where I work had most of their life savings in an essentially unregulated gambling fund. A couple of years ago they lost about 40% and had to put off retirement. It really screwed a lot of people up because they thought the gambling house was pretty reputable and said it was low risk.
Only the paranoid that kept their money in cash made it through as planned. The people that lost a bunch of money were a little upset, but the gambling houses got paid even though the people
Punching, not poking (Score:3)
I thought that a victimless crime was when you punch people in the dark [tv.com], not when you poke them.
Re:Victimless "crime" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.
At least I assume that's what happened.
I could also be about the $3 Billion [cnn.com] in civil penalties they are going after. From the link:
Prosecutors also filed civil charges against the poker companies and several individual "payment processors," seeking at least $3 billion in penalties.
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Poker makes its money by raking a little money from each pot and charging vigorish on tournament fees. They don't care who wins or loses. They just want more people playing more hands per hour for larger stakes.
Also, these poker sites have the randomness of their games analyzed by reputable neutral third parties. And if you want to collect up a significant sample of random card draws from these games and do your own analysis to look for cheating, nothing
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eh, my thinking was:
Doesn't the DOJ have better things to do than make themselves look like morons by trying to seize even more domains? Or did they forget that seizing domains essentially does nothing? [techdirt.com]
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I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.
At least I assume that's what happened.
Well, they did finally convict that notorious master criminal Barry Bonds (of acting like an a**, if nothing else.)
Have you ever knowingly used performance enhancing drugs while playing online poker?
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I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.
At least I assume that's what happened.
Hmmm, so bank fraud and money laundering are victimless crimes? I would have never guessed.
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Laundering money is not a victimless crime.
Committing fraud against their customers.
This isn't about gambling.
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what are you on?
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what are you on?
The wrong thread. I think he wanted this thread [slashdot.org].
Hmm (Score:3)
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's why online gambling is illegal. The guys behind those casinos don't want the competition, and have paid their lackeys in Congress to keep them off the playing field.
-Mike
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As far as I can tell from TFA the "other things they were pulling" were workarounds to the fact that online gambling is illegal. ie, they lied to banks about the nature of their business, thus the charge of "fraud".
Yeah, you don't want to lie to banks. Otherwise they'll lose money and we'll have to bail them out.
Domain seizures though? When is the US going to figure out that domain seizures are a) ineffective and b) pissing off the rest of the world to the point that they will want to take it out of US control to do that?
I mean, you can take US property, seize accounts in the US, etc - but the domain seizures shouldn't happen when the business isn't physically located in the US.
Weren't credit card processors alrea
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Online poker and other forms of online gambling are illegal in the US. The money laundering and bank fraud offences relate to collecting the gambling stakes from punters wishing to play the games.
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Online poker where the server is run outside the United States, does *not* appear to be illegal in the US. At least the wire act used to prosecute people sending money to sports books and the like does not appear to apply to poker specifically, nor has anyone in the US been successfully prosecuted for online poker. What *is* illegal as of the recent UIGEA act is for banks to provide you the ability to send your money to / receive money from these online gaming sites. Regardless of the facts, many stat
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This Is Not About Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the fuck is this story listed under "Censorship"?? The internet domain seizure is but a small piece of a huge case the Feds are bringing, and it has nothing do with censorship at all.
Its all a part of charging these sites with bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling offenses.
As usual Slashdot gets the story completely wrong.
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Re:This Is Not About Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States
Explain to me how a Government body can seize your private property when you have not even been charged with a crime yet, much less convicted. In the case of these businesses, the seizure is likely costing them millions of dollars in revenue. Their guilt is obvious but if the government can shut down your entire business by simply filing an indictment, which is not even an accusation until a grand jury reviews it, that is without a doubt censorship.
What if the the justice department files an indictment against a major candidate for president for election fraud and shuts down his website in the middle of an election? What they can do to the unsavory, they can do to us all.
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If you don't think it's a threat, read it for yourself: http://absolutepoker.com/
That right there is a message from your federal government, to all of us.
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Saving The World (Score:5, Funny)
Fucking Assholes.
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How so? A lot of his points seem valid to me.
I particularly liked: "white-collar gambling on stock market derivatives" - the SEC has done a fucking piss poor job of regulating Wall Street over the last decade or so, laying the path for Madoff and friends to take some of the biggest gambles and pull off some of the largest frauds in corporate history. If that's government regulation at work, I'll take my chances with the self-regulation of the online poker world.
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You forgot all of these banksters engaging in far worse fraud and gambling (with other people's money to boot) to the tune of trillions of dollars, not to mention actual money laundering for actual, card-carrying members of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels!
But going after DoJ officials' cocktail-party-circuit buddies would be "looking back instead to the future" or some such.
Those eeevil online gambling sites (who take all the money that rightfully belongs in the "official's" pockets and those of their
What's going to be their new TLD? (Score:2)
I suppose it's obvious that these domain seizures are nothing more than a minor speedbump and and really only specific to TLD's managed in the US. Thankfully, there are countless TLDs that are not US based so choices are aplenty.
I wish they took bets on how quickly they will be back....
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In the meantime you can just edit your hosts file: 77.87.179.116 www.pokerstars.com
Amazingly neither pokerstars.com nor their blog site [pokerstarsblog.com] have any news about this yet.
My ISPs dns servers are already dishing out the hijacked IPs for the other two domains (50.17.223.71) but I'm sure someone here can find the old IP addresses.
As for betting when they will be back, you want a regular bookie for that (not a poker site), perhaps betfair [betfair.co.uk] or Paddy Power [paddypower.ie]. Notice I gave the links to their sites on their home nations
Does anyone have a link to the indictment itself? (Score:2)
The Slashdot article links to a press release about the indictment (http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/April11/scheinbergetalindictmentpr.pdf), not the indictment itself.
In understanding legal issues, I am all about "reading the source code". Has anyone found a copy of the actual indictment itself that lists all the details about what these folks are being charged with?
Even better would be a link to the criminal complaint which I assume preceded the indictment. Those things are usually dozens of
Re:Does anyone have a link to the indictment itsel (Score:5, Informative)
OK, I did some digging in PACER, where it looks like the documents have probably been filed but are probably still sealed.
The relevant case is in the Southern District of New York (https://ecf.nysd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/ShowIndex.pl - anyone can sign up for a PACER account, they're free but you pay 8 cents per page, and if you charge less than $10 in a quarter it's free).
They're using an existing case, 1:10-cr-00336-LAK, which is all about the arrest and indictment of a gambling payment processor dude a year ago in April 2010.
See http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/arrests-follow-internet-high-flyers-release/story-e6frg6nf-1226039942478 [theaustralian.com.au] for more on the dude.
So the timeline is:
1) Gambling dude is arrested in 2010 and charged with some gambling-related crimes. See his indictment at http://tech.mit.edu/~mherdeg/10-cr-00336-lak-1.pdf [mit.edu]
2) Some time recently, he is (according to an Australian newspaper) secretly released from prison and prosecutors have not said whether he's still being charged
3) These 11 people are all being charged with 9 new crimes (documents not yet available, but apparently they'll be stored in this place / as part of this case number)
There have been a bunch of sealed documents added to the case recently; maybe they include the complaint and indictment that the press release talks about. You can see the history I got from PACER at http://tech.mit.edu/~mherdeg/10-cr-00336-entries.txt [mit.edu].
lobbying and online poker (Score:5, Insightful)
The online poker industry is young yet and has not had time to establish a strong lobby in Washington, DC. Once they do, it will become a respectable, job-creating industry run by innovators that make this economy strong... and these sorts of stories will disappear.
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I presume if they were not afraid of being arrested and hassled some of these companies would setup shop in North America. It wou
great, now where will the poker players play? (Score:2)
Now they are going to be without a place to play, and might actually do something constructive with their lives.
Wait? What? There's more online poker games for them to go play?
Great work again, Gov. I see my tax money is being used responsibly, mainly in this time of buget cuts.
Stupid twats.
The 2011 WSOP, live from Leninworth Penitentary! (Score:2, Funny)
Daniel Negreanu just went all in with 2 cartons of Marlboros, a carton of Camels, 4 packs of 305's and his bitch, Mike Matusow.
Washington D.C. Legalizes Gambling (Score:3)
http://www.gambling911.com/gambling-news/online-gambling-becomes-legalized-united-states-thanks-washington-dc-041211.html [gambling911.com]
"Washington, D.C., with its under 1 million population, has become the first jurisdiction in the United States to legalize online gambling.
The District of Columbia is looking to raise millions of dollars from a multi-billion dollar industry that, until now, has operated exclusively offshore from the United States. That apparently is about to change."
"Players are really loyal in this industry," Ifrah said. "You really have to ask yourself what is the incentive a player is going to have to leave a trusted site with global competition to play in a site that's untested and kind of unknown and doesn't offer you the same level of play."
Looks to me like they just want to get rid of the competition.
This is ridiculous (Score:3)
This domain seizure trend is getting out of hand. If the FBI, ICE and DOJ keep this up, it's going to finish with the UN administering the root servers.
I'm a paying, European customer of Full Tilt Poker... I hope this domain seizure doesn't interfere with FTPs non-US operations. What jurisdiction do they have to decide whether or not I can exercise my legal right to engage in an online card game for money?
I noticed that the forums are still up: http://pokerforums.fulltiltpoker.com/ [fulltiltpoker.com]
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Bad form to reply to my own post I know but FYI www.fulltiltpoker.org is still up as are the .fr and .it sites (as one would hope)
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Couldn't agree more. I didn't mean to imply that handing root control to the UN was a good thing :)
Illegal Gambling! Duh! (Score:3)
The statement on the site warns that taking part in an illegal gambling business is a federal crime. “It is also a federal crime to knowingly accept, in connection with the participation of another person in unlawful Internet gambling, credit, electronic fund transfers, or checks," the warning said.
Yeah! Don't these idiots know that this type of risky gambling behavior is only allowed for people's life savings and investments, and only to be done so by giant financial corporations who knowingly deceive the general public?!
According to the indictment, the offshore poker companies continued to operate in the U.S. despite...
And these guys are OFFSHORE and operating in our beloved US?!?! What kind of blatant hypocrisy is this. I miss the good old days of [right now] when home-grown companies like GE funnel the money they've earned to off-shore accounts and pay zero dollars in taxes on the money they made off of the American people with full support from the government. Who do these hypocritical poker bastards think they are!
You've gotta spend money to not make money (Score:2)
Instead of spending all this money to stamp out online poker, why won't they regulate and tax it? This demonizing makes absolutely no sense. Especially when our country's not exactly flush with cash. The way our government spends money to eliminate the possibility of making money continues to amaze me.
Online poker may not be illegal, sending money is (Score:5, Interesting)
Online poker where the server is run outside the United States, may not be illegal in the US. At least the wire act used to prosecute people sending money to sports books and the like does not appear to apply to poker specifically, nor has anyone in the US been successfully prosecuted for online poker.
What *is* illegal as of the recent UIGEA act is for banks to provide you the ability to send your money to / receive money from these online gaming sites. Regardless of the facts, many state and federal officials persist in calling online poker illegal, despite it not apparently breaking any laws.
See this quote:
The indictment sets up a complicated global legal battle between the Department of Justice and the online poker entrepreneurs who have long argued that their operations in the U.S. do not violate U.S. law. Indeed, in recent days, one of the nation’s most prominent casino billionaires, Steve Wynn, announced a strategic relationship with PokerStars and said “in the United States of America the Justice Department has an opinion but several states have ruled and courts have agreed that poker is a game of skill, it’s not gambling. PokerStars rests their argument on that.”
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You did no such thing. You merely spouted nonsense about "played perfectly". The only way to play perfectly is to precisely know your opponents strategy. If your opponent is remotely good, their strategy is constantly adapting to what they think YOUR strategy is. The only way to
New law passed, coincidence? (Score:2)
This seems to be a many pronged approach. 1) The government loves to interfere with your life to give you the idea that you're being controlled, not them.
2) The government is going to make online gambling taxable, and wants no competition.
3) The government will seize all the cashouts for the next few months like they did in 2009 for extra money.
(The following is a joke, don't get upset), Obama must be tired of making spending cuts so he needs to take
Online poker: Not a Zero Sum game. (Score:3)
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Actually, estimates are that about 20-25% of online players are winning players. There are sites that track all online play at some of the major sites, so data like this isn't that hard to come by. Pokertableratings.com and sharkscope.com, for example.
If that sounds low, consider a lot of people play with money they don't care about (me) and that those numbers are monstrously larger than the percentage of undeniably legal, US run lotteries where far less than 1% of players are winners over time. Consider
PokerStars - still in business, apparently (Score:3)
I am a fairly skilled poker player (have a positive bankroll) and play on PStars and Full Tilt, and have for years.
At least at this moment, MY accounts are still live and my money is still there. Didn't try to withdraw any, so that may be the litmus test.
But, I can still buy into a cash game or tourney, so I not sure what the DOJ has done that is having any actual effect on the sites doing business as usual.
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Particularly obnoxious here is the stench of utter corruption and duplicity when it comes to US government and gambling: you see gambling is eeeevil ..... unless its the US or State governments who run the casinos, or their anointed cronies, in which case its just an innocent, family past-time ...
Re:Fed up (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fed up (Score:5, Insightful)
So don't play? It's not rocket science.
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You would be hard pressed to find anything in life "fair" let alone something as inherently corrupt as "gambling" By all means though, continue beating the drum and giving your money away to people for no reason at all. If you think Vegas or any casino is "fair" you clearly don't know what gambling is.
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Re:Fed up (Score:5, Insightful)
It's entirely possible to imagine a fair gambling establishment, or of playing with a group of players where no one was cheating. The fact that many WOULD cheat doesn't mean that it's impossible not to.
Many gambling games (slots, etc) are stacked in the house's favor, yes. Poker, though, is a game of skill (with some random factors) between players, where the house takes a cut of the pot. A fair gambling establishment would ensure that no player was cheating the other players, and that the dealer was not favoring anyone. It would be like having professional Magic the Gathering leagues that play for big money: fairness is both possible and desired, but some people will always want to try to cheat. Good establishments will try to minimize that.
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Except it is completely impossible once Internet is involved. Online gambling (which is what we are discussing here) is by its nature prone to all sorts of collusion between players via alternate communication channels, insecurities in their computers that could allow other players to see their hand, etc and so on.
So unless you demand that all poker games are conducted in a
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Much in life is fair.
Gambling regulation is about the gambler getting the odds he is told.
A casino is fair. The tell you the odds, they tell you the payout. With that information the consumer can then make an informed decision. That is fair.
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'Fair'? The casino can claim that a machine malfunctioned after you win a jackpot, and you call that fair?
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And how exactly do you expect one country's government to oversee and regulate an activity going on in another country? You don't. So if you want some "impartial oversight" in your gambling, then do it in a country where you believe the government to be doing its job there. If you're going to a gambling website located in Zimbabwe or Nigeria, and lose, then you got what you deserve.
Besides, even with all that vaunted "oversight", the odds are overwhelming that you're going to lose if you travel in person
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Poker is different. At a fair game the house only gets a fixed cut no matter who wins. You are paying the house to hold the game and the players are competing against each other not the house.
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You say that as though people were rational actors.
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So don't play? It's not rocket science.
That would be the answer, except that some people become psychologically addicted to playing these games and in a very real sense can't just "walk away." You can stand around saying they're stupid for getting themselves into that situation in the first place, but they are in that situation regardless, and now are being preyed upon. Maybe for you it's okay to prey upon people if they made a stupid decision and are now addicted to gambling, but to me that seems uncivil
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One of the companies. AbsolutePoker.com involved was caught in a very serious cheating scandal.
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"My brother knew a guy". Really?
[citation needed]
I play regularly with real money on one of the sites. I have seen the improbable happen. There have even been a couple of scandals which all but killed a couple of cardrooms (and said scandals were not comitted by the "house"). There are ways to collude via software...there are ways to collude via telephone. But all the reputable cardrooms all work their asses off to prevent this, because they make a shitton of money off the rake, and they don't want the
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The key words here being "tax revenue". The governments do not give a flying fuck about "fairness" of gambling. Commercial gambling being "fair" is one of the most ridiculous concepts I ever heard of and its only useful fools like you who believe such nonsense. The government's only concerns are financial: that is to prevent any activity that does not feed their coffers.
Gambling is a particularly painful thorn because it involves a large number of very small cash transactions without receipts and thus it a
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Particularly obnoxious here is the stench of utter corruption and duplicity when it comes to US government and gambling: you see gambling is eeeevil ..... unless its the US or State governments who run the casinos, or their anointed cronies, in which case its just an innocent, family past-time ...
Which is the point entirely. Those gaming entities that do pay their protection money to the government were facing stiff competition from the online sites. So the government did what it promised, it smashed up t
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The only reason for the fraud in the first place is because of the government's other laws. In other words, they would have been fine if it was legal for credit card companies and banks to do business with the sites. Don't try to excuse the government's actions here by claiming they "broke the law".
Re:Fed up (Score:4, Interesting)
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GOATSE (Score:2)