It is the catch phrase Sheldon Adelson has chosen to define his mission.
When Adelson or his people speak or write about the gambling billionaire's personal project to ban U.S. online poker, they often invoke this language, in one form or another:
Online gambling takes gambling too far:
"... Internet gambling takes gambling too far ..."
"... (it) takes gambling too far ..."
"... Internet gambling is a bridge too far ..."
There are dozens of other sources where Adelson's camp harks on that phrase - "too far" - to both convey and summarize the very heart of their objections.
Let's ignore for a moment the facts as we know them.
For example, ignore that online poker actually provides far better social protections for gamblers than land-based casinos ever could. That technology makes it easier and more effective to ferret out underage and problem gamblers online.
That to-date, there have been no known instances of underage online gambling in regulated markets in NJ, DE or NV.
Let's ignore recent reports that Adelson's establishments have been
fined various times for allowing underage patrons not only to gamble - but also to drink alcohol.
Let's ignore that millions of people in dozens of countries worldwide play online poker with very few negative consequences. That today's U.S. debate has already played out worldwide, that online poker works and has proven to be a safe, profitable and fun compliment to land-based casinos.
Let's ignore that Adelson's mouthpieces repeatedly claim in their missives that online poker "
is a bad idea" despite the fact that it is not an "idea" - it is a real thing that currently works very successfully on a global billion dollar scale. And it's a real thing in the U.S. right now on an unregulated basis. And, of course, it's not bad, either - it's actually quite wonderful to allow people to make their own personal decisions on whether to participate in online gambling or not. But let's ignore that debate, as well.
Let's ignore that the games we play define who we are. That millions of law abiding taxpaying Americans want to play poker online in their own homes.
Ignore the fact that arguably poker - not baseball - is the real American pastime and has been for decades. That tens of millions of Americans play poker, and across all layers of society, races, and groups, presidents and poor, it is one of the few things that unites us in this time of divisiveness.
Let's ignore that amid growing inequality, that poker is a solution, not a problem - that it offers everyone the same odds, the same cards, and the same opportunities, and leaves it up to one's own abilities to play their cards.
Yes, let's ignore that poker is not only the most popular American game - it is also the most American of games. Skill, cunning, book study, psychology, and luck define the game just as they do American life.
And let's ignore that the United States - a nation of poker players if there ever was one or will be - is one of the only developed nations on Earth that does not today offer a simple framework to allow its citizens to play regulated online poker, for which there is a tremendous demand.
And finally, let's also ignore that the U.S. government does allow massive financial institutions to make enormous highly obscure and opaque wagers with taxpayer money in games of skill and chance on a vast scale across electronic networks while it will not allow individual Americans to play the great game of poker online with their own, hard-earned money, in a game with clear rules, defined regulations, and exceptional oversight.
Let's ignore all of that, not because they are unimportant - but because I want to talk about the single phrase that encapsulates Adelson's very mission:
Internet gambling takes gambling too far.
Read that again. Hear his message.
And then understand the truth:
No person in the history of the human race has taken gambling as far as Sheldon Adelson.
Across millennia, from the very first moment when someone held an object in their hands and desired another and sought to pursue it through a game of skill or chance - throughout the entire history of any living being wagering on anything, tangible or otherwise - Sheldon Adelson distinguishes himself by leaps and bounds as the single greatest embodiment of gambling gone too far.
According to a Forbes report in April 2014, Adelson's net worth has reached $40 billion,
"cementing his position as eighth-richest in the world..."
$40 billion.
How many hands of blackjack is that?
How many slot pulls?
How many patrons who might have had too much free alcohol and wagered too much?
How many lives affected by gambling's negative social consequences?
Indeed,
how much gambling was required to make Sheldon Adelson $40 billion? I don't even know how to start doing that math. I'm not sure anyone knows how to do it. How much wagering nets a casino owner $40 billion? It's a vast mathematical problem of unfathomable numbers.
Yes, $40 billion is a large number. I'm not sure anyone can immediately grasp the vastness of the wealth Adelson has generated in the gambling industry or indeed "how far" he has taken gambling.
When Forbes reported that Sheldon Adelson was the 8th richest person in the world, Bill Gates was the 1st richest. Number 8 and Number 1 - they occupy the very same rarefied air as the wealthiest of the world's very weathy.
How did Bill Gates get rich?
He was the world's foremost technology entrepreneur who envisioned the personal computer. He imagined and then developed the software that is at the very heart of technology itself and that fuels almost everything that anyone has ever done on any computing device. This is heady, Earth shattering stuff. Indeed, the reach of Bill Gates' creation is profoundly, deeply ubiquitous, and he has earned substantial wealth for that work.
Sheldon Adelson has made similar wealth in the gambling industry.
You can imagine his similar heady, Earth-shattering reach.
Indeed, no one has ever taken gambling as far as Sheldon Adelson, and yet, for him, it's still not far enough.
He's in the active pursuit of growth, new customers, and new markets - he is currently seeking to take gambling even
farther yet. And he's willing to spend vast amounts to do so.
According to a Reuters article from today: "The CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp, who Forbes says is worth close to $39 billion, has pledged to spend $10 billion as Japan opens up to legal gambling - an offer he says his rivals can't match."
If "gambling gone too far" hurts vulnerable people, exploits the poor, and damages families - as Sheldon Adelson so suggests in his arguments against online poker - then it would seem that no one in history has done more such harm than he.
