Legal issues for online poker
All of a sudden there are legal cases flying around and robberies of poker tournament/casino are becoming a daily occurrence. legal issues and poker have always had a uneasy relationship, but, it has somehow been kept under wrapped during the great poker explosion of the last few years. Now, every time you read an article or two about poker there is some legal or criminal activity surrounding it.
On the whole poker blogs do not write about the dodgier side of poker as it can frighten straight, nice, middle class people away from a game which is a natural for rogues and vagabonds. It seems that the poker establishment want to create an image where poker is no more than a harmless pastime for intense concentration between consenting adults. However the truth is that poker is the purest form of capitalism and there are going to be winners and losers and the winners will be those who understand psychology and those that let personal prejudice get in the way of rational thinking.
I was recently in a pub game because I was at a loose end and my friend had a new bar so what better way to spend a night – have a drink and play poker! After sussing out the opposition it was quite easy to see which players were the good ones and which players were the idiots, and, as night turns into day the chips fell into place. At the end of it I wanted to investigate the nature of the school and was basically told that I should not come back, why? Well it was simple I upset the balance of power and deflated egos – pure and simple!
Now this has consequences as those who are part of the establishment of society will dabble in the game of poker and cannot understand that with their education and breeding that they will get shafted by a illiterate who cannot write his own name, therefore, it is a game of chance and should not be tolerated. Those who understand the game and come from the right social class will be looked down at by their contemporaries because they allow the hoi poloi to treat them as an equal and subsequently fleece them if they are not good at poker.
Being a bad loser is not confined to any particular class, bad losers are everywhere. So i put down the recent spate of robberies to bad losers who have the criminal mind and intent to reclaim what is ‘rightfully theirs’ in their own eyes. The rational behind robbing casino/poker games is quite simple – cash.
To a criminal cash is king! Easily cleaned up so that it can be used in society, lack of money trail and easily disposable. Which brings me onto the other legal issues that are filling a lot of poker blogs, the never ending campaign for legal online poker in the US and the various issues with online poker legal stance.
With the accusations of money laundering being thrown about it will mean that the issue of legal online poker business model, as seen in the UK, maybe further away on the horizon. A lot of criminals in the past have used gambling as a way to launder money from ill gotten gain. So when online poker became a big thing it stand to reason that it could be a great way of cleaning up dodgy money. However, with electronic transfer of money there will always be a massive electronic paper trail. Plus, if players are colluding then again this can be easily establish.
Lets say a team of colluding players get together on a cash table – either they can control the table ie everyone of the team is occupying a seat, or, they can occupy a number of seats and then communicate via telephone the strength of each others hand. These scenarios are not difficult to imaging, what would be unimaginable is if the poker site were in on it! This would be too much for any state legal department, but it is not beyond the possibility, and, I am surprised that no blogs on poker have never tackled this subject. In fact most poker blogs will talk about anything other than the dark side of online poker, which is like the proverbial ‘elephant in the corner of the living room’.
I know my thoughts are not what the industry would like to talk about but it is the nature of humans that something such as poker will always be associated with the basest of human nature – greed, avarice, sloppiness, lust and other enjoyable naughty stuff. They maybe risk, but on the whole I think they are risk worth enduring since it is fun. If you are worried about the nature of online poker, then I put this to you – check your Google email and look at the right hand side, look at your cell phone bill and re-read your bank statements.
Your googlemail account pre-reads your email and targets you with relevant adverts, your cell phone is a tracking device, keeping an eye on your movements and your bank statement informs all those credit agency the state of your finances. Your information is out there already.