Why is online poker illegal?

[Ladewig]

Indian reservations are tolerated because the Feds treated then so badly in the past, but finally developed a conscience about their promises.

I have never heard of that line of reasoning. Is it widely held?

 

[Cavemonster]

I think cheating on the part of the sites is a more important concern than cheating by players.

When I was living in Nashville, Taco carts were outlawed because their food safety couldn't be regulated. When one was put out of business by a bad health inspection, it would re-open a couple blocks down the road with a repainted sign.

If an online store is a fraud, it becomes clear as soon as the first customer gets ripped off, the potential for profit is limited. If a poker site has fake players and dealer together run by an ai or human who knows everyone's cards, you can easily take in a lot of money before anyone knows anything is wrong. Then, if the site gets shut down, it can open the next day at another address, under a different ownership name for the cost of a $10 domain registration and a couple hours of graphic design.

I don't think many other businesses share these opportunities for abuse. If a casino is using these tactics, there will be physical evidence. There are agencies that specialize in finding it. If they do get caught, relocation is prohibitively expensive.

It seems like there is a unique possibility for fraud that isn't present in other gambling entities or other online businesses.

 

[Rob Lister]

Poker is a game of skill-reading your opponents, deciding whether he's for real or bluffing, and whether your cards are worth gambling on. That skill requires face-to-face. Otherwise it's just a game of chance.

There's [quite a bit] more to reading an opponent than looking at his face.

 

[balrog666]

It is illegal in the USA because it cannot be taxed and regulated by the US government.

 

[Fredrik]

What planet are you living on?
Poker is a game of skill-reading your opponents, deciding whether he's for real or bluffing, and whether your cards are worth gambling on.

On what planet does that question make sense? Nothing you said after quoting one of my posts in its entirety has anything to do with anything I said.

That skill requires face-to-face. Otherwise it's just a game of chance.

This is very very wrong. If there was any truth to that, there wouldn't be any online poker professionals, but there are lots of them. The fact that there are no physical tells is of course a significant difference, but you can still have a read on your opponent, based on his actions on previous streets of the same hand, on his actions on previous hands, on the size of his bet, and occasionally on the time he uses to make a decision. And those things are actually a pretty small part of the game. You need to know a lot about poker to be able to play with a sound basic strategy, and you also have to know how to adapt to different types of opponents. To say that online poker is just a game of chance is beyond ridiculous.

And manipulating chance to certainty is not particularly hard with computer control...

It would be extremely hard for someone who doesn't work for the site to do that.

Card cheats used to get shot at the table, and now you want to give 'em free rein while also giving them access to a whole pot of your money?

If you think I said anything even remotely like that, you need stronger medication.

 

[Fredrik]

It is illegal in the USA because it cannot be taxed and regulated by the US government.

First of all, it's not illegal to play online in the USA. Maybe you're talking about the fact that it's illegal to run a poker site from the USA, but in that case, it's the illegality that makes it impossible to tax and regulate it.

 

[NewtonTrino]

The poker sites themselves have no incentive to cheat. They already take a % of all of the action going on. What could be better than that? Would they cheat just to up their %? There have been rogue employees that cheated and have been caught. There are a lot of people playing for large amounts of money on these sites, if there was a lot of cheating they would find it pretty quick.

Anyway in WA state it's a class C felony to play online poker.

 

[rwguinn]

There's [quite a bit] more to reading an opponent than looking at his face.

well, Duh!
Perhaps terms that have been common usage are now no longer known to the "Gimme" and Entitlement generations?
Face-to-face= in person; co-located; in the same place; physically in the presence of one another.

As far as what I care--
It's your money. But do not expect any sympathy from me when you get taken. And don't go crying to the law. You knew going in that it was risky.
Play to your heart's content.
I
Don't
care

 

[Checkmite]

I think cheating on the part of the sites is a more important concern than cheating by players.

When I was living in Nashville, Taco carts were outlawed because their food safety couldn't be regulated. When one was put out of business by a bad health inspection, it would re-open a couple blocks down the road with a repainted sign.

If an online store is a fraud, it becomes clear as soon as the first customer gets ripped off, the potential for profit is limited. If a poker site has fake players and dealer together run by an ai or human who knows everyone's cards, you can easily take in a lot of money before anyone knows anything is wrong. Then, if the site gets shut down, it can open the next day at another address, under a different ownership name for the cost of a $10 domain registration and a couple hours of graphic design.

I don't think many other businesses share these opportunities for abuse. If a casino is using these tactics, there will be physical evidence. There are agencies that specialize in finding it. If they do get caught, relocation is prohibitively expensive.

It seems like there is a unique possibility for fraud that isn't present in other gambling entities or other online businesses.

I agree with this. Online poker and other games of chance cannot be regulated; therefore, there's nobody to ensure the system isn't cheating. Such a system cheating you is ridiculously easy and an irreducible possibility.

 

[Sir Robin Goodfellow]

It's because the religious fundamentalists who make the laws are worried that someone might be enjoying themselves.


Actually, it likely has to do with taxation, with a small amount of concern over cheating, with lip service paid to gambling addiction.

 

[Merko]

Two (or more) players can share information about their cards without the other players knowing.

Sure. I was referring to the site cheating, not cheating players. Players can cheat, but I don't think it's harder to reveal them online but on a real casino. In tournaments, it's probably very hard to cheat this way, because you're unlikely to be at the same table as your partner in crime.

There was one case with a guy playing as his sister or something like that, who won a tournament and then wasn't paid when that was revealed. But I don't think there was an allegation that he actually gained something by managing to be on the same table as himself or anything, just that there was a *possibility* that he could do that.

It seems much harder to me to detect collusion at a real-world poker table.

 

[Merko]

If a poker site has fake players and dealer together run by an ai or human who knows everyone's cards, you can easily take in a lot of money before anyone knows anything is wrong. Then, if the site gets shut down, it can open the next day at another address, under a different ownership name for the cost of a $10 domain registration and a couple hours of graphic design.

Except nobody would play at a site which just popped up like that. There's lots of sites that have been around for a long time and which is known to, you know, actually pay people who win.

If you spend the time developing a functioning poker site and attracting a good number of players, you'd be much better off living off the rake, than trying to rip people off and then escape. And it's not like the worst that can happen is that your site gets shut down. I'd expect quite serious prison sentences if systematic cheating was revealed.

 

[gdnp]

That is all true. The poker sites state they have software than can determine if a user is using an outside chat tool (I have no idea how effective that is though, could just be a bluff) and they can also check ip addresses.

Only if you are running the chat tool on the same machine, or through the same IP. Easily defeated if it is worth your while.

And a lot of times they will investigate to see if the win was real or if it was chip dumping, if they suspect chip dumping the accounts are closed and all the money is conficsated, no appeals, no nothing.

Another reason not to play. No due process.

The poker sites themselves have no incentive to cheat. They already take a % of all of the action going on. What could be better than that? Would they cheat just to up their %? There have been rogue employees that cheated and have been caught. There are a lot of people playing for large amounts of money on these sites, if there was a lot of cheating they would find it pretty quick.

This is like saying that slot machine owners have no incentive to cheat, since their take from slot machines is huge compared to other games. Yet slot machine tampering has been taking place as long as there have been slot machines. As much as you make, there is always the incentive to make a bit more...

If you spend the time developing a functioning poker site and attracting a good number of players, you'd be much better off living off the rake, than trying to rip people off and then escape. And it's not like the worst that can happen is that your site gets shut down. I'd expect quite serious prison sentences if systematic cheating was revealed.

I guess that depends which foreign country you create your poker site in, and which officials you have paid off. It's not like the US justice department can just go in and examine your software.

 

[Cleon]

well, Duh!
Perhaps terms that have been common usage are now no longer known to the "Gimme" and Entitlement generations?
Face-to-face= in person; co-located; in the same place; physically in the presence of one another.

well, Duh!

And the point Rob was making (and you're missing) is that reading someone does not require being in the physical presence of the other person.

 

[Merko]

I guess that depends which foreign country you create your poker site in, and which officials you have paid off. It's not like the US justice department can just go in and examine your software.

Sure, but I don't think a poker site registered in Somalia would get a lot of visitors, really.

 

[Brendy]

I think credit card companies should not be allowed to collect debts based on gambling. That is, if you tranfer money that you actually have to a gamling site, that should be just fine. But if you try to use your credit, it would be in the best interest of credit card companies to refuse.

In the USA, i think all credit cards do not allow you to deposit onto gambling sites. So that's already taken care of.

However you can use a prepaid credit card to deposit. But since it's prepaid, it is not debt.

 

[Brendy]

Oh and on the cheating thing, there was a big cheating scandel not long ago.

But most people play small stakes and no one would bother cheating small stakes when you could cheat high stakes. So i'm not worried.

For those who are interested the cheating scandel happened at Absolute Poker. One player was able to hack the system and see the hole cards of the other players. He played high stakes no limit holdem. Every time someone was bluffing he could just move allin. And every time someone had a hand, he could just fold. He was making millions of dollars. Finally the other players caught on and were able to provide evidence he was cheating using hand histories.

The poker site offered the cheater a deal. Tell them how he did it and they wouldn't charge him criminally. I think alot of the money was refunded to the losing players, but this cheater still got away with millions of dollars.

So it can happen. Just not at my $10 dollar tournies. That'd be a waste of time.

 

[shadron]

Indian reservations are tolerated because the Feds treated then so badly in the past, but finally developed a conscience about their promises.

I have never heard of that line of reasoning. Is it widely held?

This is a derail, so I won't carry it further than this, but, no, it probably isn't widely held. My reasoning is that the USG didn't pay much attention to any promises made to the Indians before about 1960, breaking them at will. In the 60's they seemed to develop a conscience wrt Indians (call it PC, if you will), to the point that when the Indians tested it with developing gambling on their lands in violation of state law, the USG not only backed them up but kept the states from even gathering taxes on the new loot. Why would that happen, all the sudden? Don't mistake a governmental conscience with moral do-goodism, but it does seem the Feds have developed an institutional respect for the indigenes that was not there before. I'd accept another interpretation, almost anything other than Russell Means being such a mannerly cutie.

 

[Fredrik]

For those who are interested the cheating scandel happened at Absolute Poker. One player was able to hack the system and see the hole cards of the other players.

It's also worth mentioning that he (this guy) was working at Absolute Poker, as a consultant, but still near the top. I think there was only one guy above him in the hierarchy, and that guy was an old friend of his. (Edit: I see now that the article I linked to describes him as a "low-level supervisor". I could be wrong about his relative position in the company, but I'm pretty sure that one of the top managers was a college buddy of his). He didn't "hack" the system. He just used a feature that was already built into it.

The poker site offered the cheater a deal. Tell them how he did it and they wouldn't charge him criminally. I think alot of the money was refunded to the losing players, but this cheater still got away with millions of dollars.

I doubt they let him keep the money, but I wouldn't be shocked if they did. It was clear from the start that they just wanted the whole thing to be over as soon as possible. There are lots of other things in this story that are disappointing and/or disgusting. For example:

* Lots of poker players were arguing at the time that we should just keep quiet about this so that it doesn't get reported in the media. (The reason was that they felt that any publicity about something bad will make it more difficult to make poker completely legal in the USA).
* None of the poker players who got robbed even tried to get a law enforcement agency to look into this.
* Absolute Poker didn't lose many customers because of this. (The poker players of the world proved to all the poker sites that they can abuse us any way they want without risking a significant financial loss. Seriously, why would any site bother to make anything more than a minimal effort to prevent cheating after this?).
* The gaming commission didn't revoke their license, or anything like that. They only gave them a relatively small fine.
* The gaming commission in this case is the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, run by the Mohawk tribe at Kahnawake, Canada. Guess who owns Absolute Poker: Joe Norton, former chief of the Mohawk tribe and one of the founders of the gaming commission.

 

[JWideman]

Because it's really hard to effectively tax.