Hey 2+2 I have a great questiong regarding a speech I have to give in a college class. I have to give a persuasive speech on why online poker should be legal in the US. I'm very interested in this topic so i chose it and i love playing poker and was just wondering what my main focuses should be in this speech.

I feel like describing black friday in the intro will really hook the audience in and then describing the reasons online poker is illegal (taxes, gambling problems, etc) and then throwing out conter arguments why these points are not valid reasons as why to online poker should be illegal. Also I want to say online poker can be good for the economy (jobs for pro poker players, big scores typically by fish lead to spending on goods that they typically wouldn't buy; think expensive watches, etc). Does this sound like a good speech or am I doing it wrong lol? The grade doesn't mean much to me since i'm taking the class at a community college just for credit and the speech has to be 5-10 minutes long with my estimations going towar 5-7 minutes.

Thanks for any advice.

The most persuasive argument i think would be how regulated US poker would create jobs. Not pro poker players but the computer geeks and support staff. That and the taxes and revenue that would go to help the financial crisis that the country and world are in. Poker sites generating revenue would be taxed, players winnings would be taxed the poker sites employees income would be taxed. If online poker ever gets legalized and regulated it will be much more expensive than it used to be, maybe to the extent where it won't be profitable for anyone.

For the people who like to take the 'poker/gambling is immoral and ruins people's lives' stance, one good fact (it was said by a senator on the news a while ago, so assuming it was at least fairly accurate...) is that the average online poker account has ~$80 in it

Extrapolating from that, you could argue that online poker provides a cheaper 'fix' for the recreational gambler. There are much smaller games to play if one wants, .02/.04 blinds for example vs. 1/2 in casinos. There are of course arguments for the other side too, such as no one is watching so it's easier to go off the handle or whatever, so you'd need to research some. I'm guessing the average gambling loss online is smaller than in live scenarios, but I don't have hard numbers to support that.

thanks a lot for responses. These are both very valid points you bring up that I will probably touch in my speech. Thank you.

first and foremost is, it's a freedom. We cant play a card game with our own munies??

To start, please don't dispense poor information by saying "online poker is illegal in the United States." The legislation forum is probably better for this kind of question, but as far as I know, online poker in itself is not illegal in the United States.

Poker Is Good For You

prob wrong forum to post this in...

that being said, you can watch some of the arguments that chris ferguson used in some of those online poker debates a while ago if you can find them.

one of the things he said was that the average player uses poker as a form of entertainment. $10 might get you into a movie but you'll never have a chance to actually win money when seeing one. alternately, $10 might buy you into a tournament and give you the same quality entertainment.

another thing you might be able to bring up is the lottery (in terms of gambling). obviously that's just one of many forms of legalized gambling methods in the U.S. you could probably go somewhere with that.

there is obviously a ton of literature out there on this subject...gl.