Support Online Poker

This is from Professor Bainbridge, linked on Volokh:

The Poker Players Association has an urgent action item:

Tuesday, the House Financial Services Committee will review a bill, H.R. 5767, that would block the implementation of UIGEA regulations. In order to get this bill out of Committee on onto the House Floor, we need your help. We need you to contact the committee and express your support for H.R. 5767, as well as the King amendment which will refine the bill language. PPA strongly supports H.R. 5767 and the King amendment, but this important bill and amendment won’t pass without your help!

Call or Fax the House Financial Services Committee* Democrats’ Committee Office:* Ph: (202) 225-4247 - FAX: (202) 225-6952 Republicans’ Committee Office:* Ph: (202) 225-7502 - FAX: (202) 226-4301

Click Here To Contact Via E-mail

The UIGEA regulations will demand that banks block “unlawful internet gambling” but there is no definition of this vague term. Banks will be forced to block millions of transactions that are not in fact illegal. As a result, you may not be able to play poker or any other game of skill online. HR 5767 will prevent this regulatory nightmare. The King amendment will force the regulatory agencies to define “unlawful internet gambling” through a formal rulemaking, with due process and opportunity for input from affected parties.

Groups that oppose your right to play poker are working to defeat this important bill. Don’t count on someone else to take action for you – call today, there’s no time to waste!

US Delaying WTO Online Gambling Settlement

Negotiations continue on concessions after the US lost its WTO case on online gambling. The settlement amount discussed was $100 billion, which may have been exaggerated. Even so, its shocking how little press this case has received. So far most of the coverage has been from online gambling sites and an editorial in Bloomberg

The United States has been forced to negotiate the compensation package because of a 2003 case filed by the Caribbean nation Antigua and Barbuda, which challenged U.S. Internet gambling restrictions at the World Trade Organization.

A WTO panel ruled two years later that a U.S. law allowing domestic companies to provide online horse race gambling services discriminated against foreign providers.

Dershowitz on the Gaming Ban

Two unusal opponents on the gaming ban in the WSJ Law Blog:

Gaming law is in vogue. Indeed, there’s a Harvard Law course taught on the subject, by visiting professor Keith Washburn. “This class will address questions like these in dealing with an industry that lies at a shadowy and uncertain gray area where law meets morality, commerce and social problems,” reads the course description. “The evils attributed to gambling are subject to widespread disagreement and the justifications for prohibiting or regulating gaming have varied across time and across particular gaming industries.”

Nesson told the Herald and says here he was “affronted” when Congress banned online poker and other types of Internet gaming last year. Said Nesson: “The idea of Internet freedom is a core notion of modern political freedom.” As for Dershowitz, he argues that because poker is game of skill it should be legal. “It’s certainly not a game of chance,” Dershowitz told the Herald. “It is ridiculous to call either poker or sports betting a game of chance.”

US Internet Gaming - “The Most Significant WTO Case Ever”

Essentially the US is going to pander to the special interests rather than follow the rules it helped put in place at the WTO. After all, what do the politicians care for fines? It’s not coming out of their paychecks. Too bad the WTO can’t force performance of the rules. More on the US internet gaming dispute:

Withdrawing from a binding treaty commitment could undermine U.S. negotiating credibility and risks discrediting the WTO as an effective rules-based body. Essentially, the U.S. is disregarding the rules it helped put in place with the creation of the WTO.

Barney Frank’s bill could be a solution:

“Rather than face paying billions in trade compensation, which would have a significant adverse impact on the American economy, the U.S. should embrace the legislative solution presented by the Frank bill, which brings the U.S. into compliance by regulating Internet gambling and creating a level playing field among domestic and foreign Internet gambling operators,” said Jeffrey Sandman, spokesperson of the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative.

How Much is US Online Gaming Industy Worth?

According to the US: $500,000

According to Antigua, who recently won a WTO claim against the US, the figure is much higher:

The United States has objected to Antigua and Barbuda’s $3.4 billion compensation claim in the ongoing online gambling dispute, telling the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that $500,000 would be more reasonable.

This figure represents less than 0.015 per cent of the amount Antigua and Barbuda has requested.

Legalized Gambling Debate

This debate on BusinessWeek.com about legalized gambling uses the standard two-sided format and misses the point. In the US gaming is banned for political reasons not moral ones. So why pretend that the debate is about morality? They did find an educated stooge (from Provo, Utah BTW. Whats next week, the other side of the alcohol debate from Tehran?) to represent the "moral side" of the debate.

Almost laughably his argument states, "Solid citizens with no previous criminal record commit outrageous crimes when addicted to gambling. The rate of divorce, spousal and child abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, bankruptcy, and suicide rises disproportionately high with gambling addiction."

Well...ok. Read the rest here and don't miss the comments.

WTO vs US Gaming Laws

From the New York Times:

But a W.T.O. panel ruled against the United States in 2004, and its appellate body upheld that decision one year later. In March, the organization upheld that ruling for a second time and declared Washington out of compliance with its rules.
…
Complying with the W.T.O. ruling, Professor Jackson said, would require Congress and the Bush administration either to reverse course and permit Americans to place bets online legally with offshore casinos or, equally unlikely, impose an across-the-board ban on all forms of Internet gambling — including the online purchase of lottery tickets, participation in Web-based pro sports fantasy leagues and off-track wagering on horse racing.
…

“Think of this from the W.T.O.’s point of view,” said Charles R. Nesson, a professor at Harvard Law School. “They’re this fledgling organization dominated by a huge monster in the United States. People there must be scared out of their wits at the prospects of enforcing a ruling that would instantly galvanize public opinion in the United States against the W.T.O.”

Professor Nesson has misread the public. The majority of US citizens think that the online gaming ban is absurd; the WTO could score points with the public by taking it as far as possible.

The article also points out that allowing US residents bet with Youbet.com and not other services was one basis of the complaint against the US.

Legalized Gambling Will Clean Up Sports - Bloomberg

A dramatic headline, "Woolmer's Murder Shows India Must Allow Betting" for a unique idea:

India, however, should allow professional bookmakers to price sporting outcomes.

Until that improvement takes place, mobsters will keep collecting bets through illegal bookies from Mumbai to Kolkata. And they will keep running the business according to their core competence, which is to try to control some results by bribing or intimidating players.
...
As long as a big chunk of this money is being collected by shadowy, crime networks, there's a powerful incentive for them to rig matches and perhaps even commit murder.

The idea should be to encourage legitimate bookmakers and get the Securities and Exchange Board of India to regulate them.

Once the underworld loses its monopoly power, its henchmen would stop hanging around competition venues looking for players to manipulate. The taxes collected from legitimate gambling could be spent on nurturing new sporting talent.

The Plan To Take the Online Gaming Market - US Gaming Firms Tale of Shame

1. Pass legislation to get rid of foreign competition - The US Casinos had fallen so far behind the competition at this point that they didn’t have a chance of winning on merit. No matter - Senators are cheap. Although the majority of Americans disagreed with its contents, the bill was snuck through by Bill Frist with the laughably stupid claim it would protect children and stop terrorism.

2. Establish an Online Presence – Of the majors, only LV Sands has had the gall to announce it was starting to establish an online presence. For now it will stick to Europe through a partnership with Cantor Gaming. Make no mistake, this is a trial run for the US market. Other casinos are sure to follow.

3. Repeal the Gaming Act – The majority of Americans support it. The senators have already been paid off. And Chanos is long (kidding!). The trial balloon was floated today by Barney Frank who called it: one of the “stupidest laws” ever passed and said he wanted to “repeal” the law.

The entire affair, the arrests and the tough talk were exactly what they seemed - protectionist measures by "useful idiot" politicians.

HOW ONLINE GAMBLERS SET LINE ON HOLLYWOOD - NY Post

Basically they google it and guess:

First, they scour the most popular entertainment Web sites, reading every fragment on the candidates' behavior.

Next, they do a Google search to scratch up more information and to try to get a feel for whether the information on each of the potential fathers is positive or negative, plausible or implausible.

Third, they do what's called a "blog pulse," seeing what those in the blogosphere are writing and what they might believe.

DOJ To Criminalize More Americans

The DOJ is dropping any pretense that the Gaming Ban was to hunt terrorists and help kids and is now on a massive fishing expedition. For what purpose? One can only guess at this point. Gambling911 reports:

THE US Department of Justice has ordered the world’s biggest investment banks, accountants and law firms to hand over all e-mails, telephone records and papers connected with internet gaming firms as part of an investigation into illegal online gambling in America.
...
The source went on: “The Department of Justice has taken a shotgun, not a rifle approach in relation to lots of gaming companies and has just asked everyone to hand over all the information they have.”

The request could force banks and other advisers or former advisers to the gambling companies to hand over hundreds of thousands of e-mails and files to American investigators.
...
“UK plc should be really worried about yet another encroachment of American investigators on to British territory. The City is clearly under threat,” said one British businessman who asked not to be named.

We know from experience that Bush lapdog Tony Blair won't do anything about it

Real Life 'Ace' Rothstein - WSJ

Stats are not enough, you need a voice! These are gamblers ready to risk what they can't afford for what they can't have, you're selling the world's rarest commodity: certainty, in an uncertain world. - Two For The Money

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article about a full time sports handicapper:

Each Thursday morning at precisely 10 a.m. Nevada time, every major casino sports betting operation in the world from here to Costa Rica was being simultaneously pounded by thousands of bettors wagering millions of dollars on the same few college football games. Odder still, most of these lock step bets were turning out to be winners, costing the casinos a fortune.
...
There were rumors. Some thought terrorists were involved, or hackers, or maybe a shadowy international gambling syndicate known as the Asian Group. But as the month wore on, the truth began to bubble up through the Las Vegas whisper pool.

Turns out there was no grand conspiracy. The global business of sports betting was being jolted every week by one person: an obscure 41-year-old statistician from San Francisco named Dr. Bob.

If you've never placed a sports bet in America, you are fast becoming a member of the minority. Since its beginnings at Colonial horse tracks in the 17th century, the amount of money Americans wager on sports has grown to rival the gross domestic product of New Zealand.

He won't disclose his revenues but its hard work:

As well as these methods have worked, they have done nothing to cut his workload. In the months when basketball and football overlap, Mr. Stoll works 18 hours a day nearly every day, sleeping in bursts of no more than four hours.

The full article is excellent, if you can't get paste the gated version send me an email for the full one. Do not miss it.

BetonSports Clients Still Don't Have Their Money

Shades of Refco in this collapse. The US gov't has no incentive at all to help - consider it the cost of disobeying a too powerful State:

BetonSports PLC, the London-based Internet gambling company barred from doing business in the U.S., owes money to at least 4,863 customers and cannot repay any of them because of an Antiguan court order, its lawyers say.

Betonsports can't comply with a November directive by U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson in St. Louis that it return the money because the funds are controlled by the company's Antigua subsidiary, which is subject to the authority of courts in that Caribbean nation, attorney Jeffrey Demerath said in papers filed with Jackson Wednesday

Legalized Internet Gaming in New York

A buried NY Post article has the details, so far, just for horses:

Racing and Wagering Board yesterday issued guidelines for internet wagering in N.Y. State, which becomes legal Jan. 22. NYRA is optimistic it will have its internet betting system up and running by that target date, according to COO Bill Nader, while NYCOTB president Ray Casey expects to be operational by end of month.

US Gambling Firms to Offer Online Gaming

Its not moral here apparently but OK for them to do in Europe.

The US gaming industry is getting ready to re-enter the US market when online gambling is legal again. Step one was getting rid of the competition. Step two is what they are working on now- getting into the online gaming biz started in the UK. Its only a matter of time before they enter the US market. As LV Sands COO Bill Weider puts it,"As the Internet gaming landscape continues to evolve, this effort will put us in a strong position to evaluate and react to other potential opportunities."

They will be back here soon.