MURICA

Not sure if people are leveling or not, but just in case you don't know: the issue they are talking about with money-laundering and organized crime and terrorism is that it is fairly easy to launder money using poker sites. It's not that they're claiming terrorists are going to be frequent poker players making money off of poker; it's more like criminal organizations would pay poker players, or have accounts themselves, to transfer money between accounts, to move money from one person or country to another.

That may be obvious, but just wanted to make sure because some people were acting like the issue was criminal groups playing profitable poker or something.

I don't agree with that being any sort of reason to make online gambling illegal, but just wanted to clarify.

Once this happens online poker is going to be back for real. No reason to ever leave California, either.

"Lets shut 'er down until we can find a way to tax it."

Or

"We must save everyone from themselves... Don't want y'all going to hell."

The Hells Angels have run a few gambling sites online. If fairly lower level crime groups like this have run gambling websites than the Italian mafia has to be involved with gambling sites too, similar to Asian crime groups or the Russian mob.

The one big thing the don't legalize crowd in this thread, and elsewhere, is missing is the fact it's not legalization without regulation. What's being proposed is legalization WITH regulation.

But did they run it in a regulated environment?

No they ran at least two websites through either a Caribbean nation or the Indian reserve outside Montreal. Both "regulatory boards" rubber stamp any sports book or casino as long as you pay the yearly fees.

Yes, the FBI opened and ran a major payment processor in California.

But think of the children.

That is the job of parents, not the government, to control what the kids do at home.

Bingo.

Not true. There is more cheating in live poker than online poker. The human element of dealing and handling the cards makes it more common.

Also, it's far easier to play underage in a live casino if you're doing so without the help of your parents. Unfortunately, much like buying tobacco, alcohol, or even buying online porn, if your parents are helping you what on earth do you expect the government to do to prevent it? A vast majority of underage players played under their parent's names, with the help of their parent's depositing for them. You can't expect to stop that.

Otherwise, it's so difficult to play online underage without committing pretty serious theft. Playing live is easy, what happens if you're 12 years old is you can go into any casino and just put money in slots. Sure, you get caught in 2-20 minutes almost always, but they just tell you not to come back. If you look old enough you might last hours playing something like slots in a live casino. They sacrifice security in order to make people feel more comfortable. That doesn't happen in online poker at legitimately regulated sites (even a lot of the gray area operators are serious with KYP/ID requirements).

How do you move money out of the country with state regulated online poker?

Even if you partner up with UK and other markets, how come casinos can send and receive wires (same with banks) to and from other countries? The reason is they log everything and it's there to be checked if there are money laundering suspicions.

Is it easier or harder to launder money on regulated sites in California compared to the sites like Lock Poker out there now with shady reputations? Lock once let a player (Jose Macedo, if he even existed) deposit 100k onto a brand new account of another player, then chip dump it to another player without any security flags going off. I'm pretty sure a regulated poker room would not let that happen.

Has regulated poker in the UK, France, Spain and Italy led to a bunch of money laundering through state regulated sites?

The answer to these questions really points out how overblown and non fact based the arguments against online poker in the USA really are.

Hiltzik and his coworker George Skelton are the two biggest d-bags in the newspaper reporting pool.

There is a reason why Smuckers rhymes with Suckers. Its obviously a terrorist plot to extract money from the US while making us fat and complacent. Terrorists are everywhere. They are on our kid's pbj, and melting our kids icecream with their hot fudge.



This is a picture from safeway. They want you to think its safe. But its terrorism. I know its true because I thought it with my mind. Its the opposite of family frugal fun, but that's not what they want you to think.



I mean seriously, no crust and you don't have to heat it? Its thaw and eat people, how much fatter can they make us, trying to make us feel safe and cozy while they extract our hard earned US dollars to fund their terrorist endeavors.

zero

PS. Wet nuts? Pedophiles? I rest my case

lol good stuff