Disaster for online poker?

[boldie]

The US Senate yesterday passed a bill which makes will make it illegal for Americans to gamble online. The only exemption to this is online betting on horseracing.

This ban includes poker, surely this is trouble for all European pokerplayers aswell? The Americans spend a lot of money on all pokersites and now surely we will see prize money from tournaments drop and a lot of the cash games will have much fewer players....

how big a disaster do you guys think it is?...I personally reckon this will also have a major impact on live events (such as WSOP, WPT etc) as the bill effectively procludes Americans for Qualifying for these events online (no more sattelites..unless the sites find a way around it)

IMO the US senate justabout killed online poker when this bill takes effect.

[marcro]

The US Senate yesterday passed a bill which makes will make it illegal for Americans to gamble online. The only exemption to this is online betting on horseracing.

This ban includes poker, surely this is trouble for all European pokerplayers aswell? The Americans spend a lot of money on all pokersites and now surely we will see prize money from tournaments drop and a lot of the cash games will have much fewer players....

how big a disaster do you guys think it is?...I personally reckon this will also have a major impact on live events (such as WSOP, WPT etc) as the bill effectively procludes Americans for Qualifying for these events online (no more sattelites..unless the sites find a way around it)

IMO the US senate justabout killed online poker when this bill takes effect.

Doesn't this have to be approved by Congress before it can take effect?

[Gryff]

The house passed it, the senate has not yet passed it.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=12409.0

[RED-DOG]

hello Alun, welcome to the forum.

[AndrewT]

The US Senate yesterday passed a bill which makes will make it illegal for Americans to gamble online.

It already was illegal for Americans to gamble online - nothing has changed on that front.

The bill prohibits US credit cards from being used to finance gambling transactions. This is no big deal - people will use Neteller instead.

It does publicly harden the stance of the US Governement against internet gambling which makes it less likely there will be any favourable legislation on this issue because all the internet gambling companies are offshore so the US Government can't tax them they have the best interests of the US people at heart.

[mikkyT]

Actually, nobody knows if it is illegal for americans to gamble online. The legislation, typical of a nation who cannot even spell "colour", is as clear as mud. Federal laws prevent Americans from wagering on "games predominately based upon chance" across state boundaries (wire act 19something) but, as is the arguement in this country, poker is not a game just based upon  chance. US laws indeed refer elsewhere to poker being a game predominantely based upon skill. And as yet nobody has ever brought a successful prosecution upon anyone gambling online. And to do so would create a tax nightmare.

Now, back to the act in question. Does it prevent americans from gambling online? No, it does not. It will prevent american banks from allowing their customers with their american based credit cards to directly fund a gambling operation based anywhere in the world. It applies to the banks, not to individuals. What it does not do, however, is prevent americans from transferring their money into off shore accounts. This right to buy and transfer outside of the USA is protected by the constitooshon. So, you fund NETeller or Paypal, and from there, transfer your money into a gambling site.

This law is a nothing law. And until those in the senate bringing these bills before the senate learn to word them correctly, the lawyers on America will continue to do what they are best at and find ways around it.

[mikkyT]

Anyone with 10 mins to spare I really recommend they read this article:

http://www.cardplayer.com/magazine/article/15416

Under current federal law, it is unclear whether using the Internet to operate a gambling business is illegal. The closest useful statute currently is the Wire Act, which prohibits gambling over telephone wires. The Wire Act, which was written well before the invention of the World Wide Web, has become outdated. My legislation amends the Wire Act to make it clear that the prohibitions include Internet gambling and the use of other new technologies."

For 10 years, the federal government and anti-gaming proponents have taken the firm stance that the 1961 Wire Act bans online poker. After 10 years of asserting this position, but filing no lawsuits to test their supposition, those on Capitol Hill finally concede that the Wire Act does not speak to online gambling.

Rep. Goodlatte thinks his new bill cures past legal problems, but as we shall see, it cures certain problems while simultaneously creating new ones. What the bill says and what it accomplishes is quite different from what Goodlatte represents it says.

For the last 10 years, I have read sloppy news reports claiming that pending legislation will ban online gaming. This is a severe and careless overstatement. There has never been legislation that would ban online gaming. Bills have been introduced that affect the transfer of moneys from U.S. financial institutions to online gaming sites, but this is quite different than banning online gaming. The proper language always should have been that legislation has been introduced in an attempt to curb the rapidly growing online gaming industry. The current bill attempts to ban certain forms of online gaming while sanctioning others.

Although Goodlatte claims that the current bill prohibits all gambling on the Internet, it does no such thing. While this bill is admittedly more ambitious than past attempts, it is fraught with built-in, foreseeable problems and contradictions.

[boldie]

thanks for that link...great article.