Online Poker Has Another Set Back

Every night that I'm home, I play the American freeroll at Full Tilt poker at 9:05 pm. A freeroll is a tournament with no entry free and the American Freeroll is one only American players could enter. On April 15, 2011, I busted out at about 10:30 and decided television sounded like my best option. I played like a donkey and frankly, was too disgusted to enter any more freerolls.

In the morning, I received a call from my daughter. "They shut down Full Tilt! The Feds arrested the upper management for money laundering and the site no longer allows American players. The player's can't remove their money or even play freerolls." In this case, the laundering of money was sites set up so players in the US could add or take out their funds. As some of you might know from reading my articles, my daughter and I talk on speakerphone several times during the week when I watch her play tournaments as she watches me. This is our Norman Rockwell mother-daughter quality time together. That time has ended.

The site of Poker Stars and Full Tilt are now closed to the online American Players but Ultimate Bet and its sister site Absolute Poker still has the occasional freeroll and you can play the money you have there, but you can't transfer, cash out or put funds in the account.

During one poker tournament at Ultimate Bet, a player using the capacity to chat noted, "Call the Feds! I think I saw a man playing poker last night!" That's the attitude most players have taken. The government resources used to stop these obviously dangerous sites cost our taxpayers a considerable amount. It's ludicrous for our resources to go toward stopping online poker when a far better option would be to legalize it with the stipulation that only U S based companies be legal for our citizenry. According to one report, Poker Stars, one leading site has annual estimated earnings in the billions with daily estimates ranging from $5 million to $10 million. If our legislative branch had any common sense (Okay, I am asking too much of the donkeys in Washington.) they would legalize, regulate and tax that income. The national debt would reduce and everyone would be happy campers.

Instead, our government spends money to shut down a form of entertainment that requires more skill than gamble. Sure, I'll admit that in the finals of live or online poker tournaments, there's a lot of luck involved. However, you normally don't normally arrive to the final table by being a donkey. (For non-poker players, that's a stupid player.) You arrive there by skill. There's far more skill required than winning at slots or a scratch off, both of which are legal in the U.S.

The charge of money laundering comes from the fact that the online poker sites used various deceptive maneuvers to hide the transfer of funds into and out of the site. I'm sure the U.S. also has concern that some poker players don't report their online income. That makes sense since it's illegal....duh! By making the sites legal, you'd also have another source of income, the players, for Social Security tax and income tax. Instead, we talk of increasing taxes and spend the minimal funds in the federal coffers to shut down online sites and arrest the owners.

While most of the people reading this may not be players, they are intelligent voters. See how your representative stands on online poker. Legalization of poker sites with stipulations requiring U.S registration and location might just be what we need to increase those national coffer our government has so gladly emptied. If we can bail out large financial institutions that gambled with funds, surely we can support, regulate and tax moneymaking sites that could provide much-needed assets to reduce our debt and keep our taxes lower. Vegas pays their fair share, let the online sites do the same.