I got a couple of headsups about Obama's change.gov site where he is allowing people to submit issues they think are important and then have them voted on, up or down. When I see things like this, it reinforces what I already know... that Obama and his people "get it". They understand the changing times and are really utilizing social networking sites like twitter and change.gov really well.
The highest rated issue right now on the change.gov website is "Ending Marijuana Prohibition". Eighth down is "Boost America's Economy With Legal Online Poker". If you care about either of these issues, I urge you to go to http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ click on popular issues and vote them up. I'm not sure if the votes matter as much now as they did a week ago, since they are being compiled and presented to the President tomorrow after he gets inaugerated. But it can't hurt.
Both of these issues are important to me and I'd really love to see Obama actually change these. And I think the order of importance is reflected accurately: legalizing online poker is important, but it is nowhere near as important as legalizing marijuana.
First issue : Marijuana.
Each year over a hundred thousand americans die from cigarettes. Tens of thousands die from alcohol. Both of these drugs are legal. But marijuana isn't legal and there isn't a SINGLE GOOD REASON why smoking a joint or growing a pot plant should get you prison or even a ticket. It shouldn't be treated any differently than alcohol.
It really makes me sick when I hear stories of people doing hard prison time for having a joint in their wallet (20 years for 2 joints?!?). We're wasting tons of money prosecuting non-violent drug offenders, but it's not about the money... what matters is that we as a nation are taking away the freedom of our people for
no good reason. It's immoral. Legalize it!
Second issue : Online Poker.
I remember eavesdropping during a conversation that Chris Ferguson and Todd Brunson had about the online poker industry a few years back. Todd said something like "won't it be nice when online poker is legal", and Ferguson replied that he would prefer it stay illegal for as long as possible. It made me kind of mad at the time and I eventually figured out why. The current state of things is that the operators see the writing on the wall and are operating their business like they are on borrowed time and that they only have a few years to squeeze as much juice out of the poker industry as they can.
If it were legal, it would bring in legitimate companies instead of shady hypothetically-offshore outfits. Operational costs would go WAY down and there is no way that poker sites would still be able to get away with the shady shit they do like completely raping their players in tournament juice (do the math... if you multitable 15-30 limit full-time you're paying $15,000 a month in rake!).
Take a minute and think about it from another perspective... imagine for some reason making a cell phone call was illegal and a bunch of black market companies popped up selling cell phones through refer-a-friend programs. Do you think there is any way in hell you'd be able to talk to your friends on your iPhone for .10/mo? Not a chance. There would be far fewer companies offering cell phone service and the ones that did would be black-hat operators who were looking to make as much money as possible.
The illegitimacy of online poker presents a barrier of entry for would-be operators... namely, in order to be an operator you have to be comfortable with breaking US laws. That barrier keeps the competition in poker low and makes sure that the only people running the sites are the kind of people who do NOT have your best interests at heart. Look around. There is very little competition in the online poker industry when you consider the size of the market. And the people who own, promote and operate the sites... Howard Lederer, Dan Goldman, Doyle Brunson, Russ Hamilton, Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, etc... they are very bright people. They understand they are taking a risk operating and promoting illegal gambling. I have very little doubt that Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer probably had a conversation at the very beginning that went a little like this :
"This whole online poker thing is a great idea and it's going to make us rich. Like super rich. Uber-bill-gates-is-my-bitch rich. Look at these numbers!" - Ferguson
"But isn't it illegal?" - Howard
"Yeah. But the worst case scenario is that we do a couple years in prison. And if it gets to the point where it's big enough for a law enforcement agency to notice, we'd already have 8 or maybe even 9 figures in a foreign account somewhere that they wouldn't be able to touch. Besides, they have poker in prison and can you imagine the publicity a trial and conviction would bring?" - Ferguson
"Dude... I don't know if I could handle prison. After all, I can't kill a man with a playing card like you can." - Howard
"Then fuck it... if it starts looking bad we'll just all move to Ireland." - Ferguson
If online poker were legalized, the big money would swoop in and take over the online industry, and people would be playing at a Harrahs-owned online site, or even more likely, Microsoft Poker. It needs to be HEAVILY regulated so that cheating scandals (like the ones that ravaged UB and Absolute) don't happen. And the operators should be heavily, heavily taxed on anything that they rake to encourage them to stop raking altogether and start looking for alternate and better ways of converting their traffic into money.
I've been saying this for a long time and feel like I have a unique perspective having been one of the pioneers in this industry and having been on the other side of the box.
The poker industry as it is right now is a social negative. There is no reason poker should be played in casinos. It would be bad enough if it were an even-sum game, but because of the rake it is a negative sum game and the vast majority of people who play for real money are losers. The only way poker can become a social positive is if it is somehow turned into a positive-sum game (e.g. baseball, golf) where people aren't losing their life savings. It's a tough pill to swallow, but the hard fact is that gambling losses cause families to break up and people to jump off Vegas parking garages. If you're reading this, maybe you are one of the very lucky few who have never lost money in a poker game that you couldn't afford to lose. Maybe you've never had to pawn anything off to get a new bankroll... but make no mistake about it, if you are making your living off of poker you are doing so at the expense of people who are losing and hurting because of it.
I <3 Vegas and I <3 Poker. But it doesn't mean that either one of them are socially positive things. I love Camel Lights too and nobody is going to argue that there is any positive social value coming from those little killers.
