http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-1...tion-view.html

Very sensical and positive article on regulating poker in US

Mod edit: fixed title.

Great article OP. Thanks for posting.

good article, and for once comments arent a bunch of moral nutjobs

Very positive. Thanks!

I'm really confused. The average poster in the comments section actually seems to have an IQ above 50? Perhaps I've gotten too used to reading Faux News comments. Highly refreshing to be sure. Great article.

All the comments against it are concerning the question of morality.

Great article? It's not even internally coherent. Apparently the argument is that lotteries are legal therefore poker should be. Somewhere in there they make a leap from the state level to the federal level. There is no federal lottery.

Cliffs:
We have state lotteries
Poker is better than lotteries
Patchwork state regulation would be bad
Therefore we should have federal poker regulation

But whatever, anything pro-poker is a good article.

lol money argument at the federal level. 41.8 billion over ten years. 1.6 trillion annual deficit. Its problem.

Does the author have an IQ above 50?

Flame away.

US owned, thought FTP was based in California - strange no mention of this?? 'But it's offshore cried the US' ...'every offshore is shady' Is there anything left onshore?



(and ensure Casinos fleece you on land and virtually)

Other than the BS, I hope this article is positive you for guys!

I liked it but, it was kinda short and pointless

pretty much agree with that^

Maybe short but any pro poker article will swing the congress to poker player's favour, even if it is 0.1%.

The only argument people have against regulation is one of morality. They don't understand the game at all and will not make the effort to educate themselves. Most of these people are extreme conservatives older than 50. Unfortunately, a lot of them vote. Its a shame that these morons keep people from having certain freedoms that will actually benefit the country in the long run.

Explain the long run country benefit of regulated online poker.

Hint: there is none.

The only real hope for online poker is the "It's their money, let them do what they want with it."

The rest are non-starters. Poker is a zero-sum game. Actually, it's 0 minus rake. There is no societal benefit, it's just moving money around. Those who are better atit collect money from those who are not as good at it. The sites charge a transaction fee in between. That's it.

What an idiotic statement. That sort of asinine 'logic' is how you end up madly in the debt in the first place.

These numbers must be based on the ability to deduct tax at source (not leave US players to declare, sites do player calcs and pass payment direct to IRS)

The sites simply don't make enough to warrant these figures; and that's before you take into account the new additional costs of police force and retraining the judicial system taking care of the cheaters

"Explain the long term benefit of movie theaters.

Hint: There is none."

Trading is a zero-sum game. Actually, it's 0 minus commission.

The fact that online poker can profit in a (relatively) free market suggests there exists "societal" demand for it.

Frankly, I believe there should be an age limit of 14 to register on 2p2. I'm sick of your nonsensical posts.

Are you intentionally throwing out straw man arguments?

The benefits are obvious. The first is simple recreation, people enjoy playing it - much as they enjoy watching a movie or playing a video game. And banning sets an incredibly dangerous precedent of a morality based tyranny of the minority over the majority for the sake of an even smaller minority they claim to protect.

To those people saying this is pointless, I would just qualify it with the fact that this is not some columnist saying online poker should be regulated; it is a board editorial. That means it is the position of the editors (and thus Bloomberg, a media company with more than 13,000 employees) that online poker should be legal and regulated.

It still may not mean much, but it actually is a little more significant than your average newspaper column.

Very spot on. Well done.

Trading provides a market for moving capital to businesses. It's entirely different from poker. You can compare day trading to poker, fine. But the poker "market" is not a capital market.

Edit:
the long-term expectation for trading is that the company will create value and the investor will have something worth more than what was paid for the stock.

This principle does not exist in poker. The long term expectation is that somebody will bring in more money for the better players to take form the weaker players.

Entertainment value, ok. That's still "your money do what you want"

Good article. Thanks for posting OP

IMO it is written to get a point across quickly to a audience that knows nothing about it at all. It may seem simple and boring to us, but to random american readers of Bloomberg it gets the major facts and points across without becoming too detailed.

Many americans are still clueless on the issue and this gives them at least a outline to form a opinion.

Nice article man, ty!

I never said trading is "useless." I'm arguing that stating poker is useless because it's zero-sum is extremely illogical.

And elephants aren't giraffes. What's your point?

And long-term expectation of most poker player is to also make profits by exposing himself to thousands of EV+ situations.

Wrong. This is no different than the financial markets. What do you think I meant when I said trading is a zero-sum game? During periods where the # of stocks is fixed and there are no dividend payouts, when a trader makes a profit in the markets, where do you think that money came from? From god? No, it came from someone losing on the other end. When you buy, you buy it from a seller, and when you sell, you sell to a buyer. Excluding traders, the players of this game, there is no one else putting money into the market over any fixed period of time that does not include a dividend payout or a change in # of shares.

Guys,

Other than being the best source of financial information out there (especially for pricing, but also information and news), bloomberg has constantly shown poker in good light. This article is just another example. They also always provided updates of wsop on tv and website, interviewed the fund managers who went deep in wsop (i believe einhorn and another nov 9)) and also they had a long article on Andy Beal where they mentioned his love of the game in a good way.

So if there is a way to show our thanks, and encourage them to do more i think we should especially if it could come from the owners of this site or some big name pro (D.N., Helmuth etc...)