I'm maybe going to take a fair amount of heat for this, but the obama administration was no friend to poker. Preet bahara was an Obama appointee and black friday went down under obama's DOJ.

**disclaimer** at the time I was extremely bitter against the obama admin against this, but by 2012 I was a staunch obama supporter and still am to this day.

I think trump's DOJ, under sessions, will be extremely hostile to poker and I see no reason that anything will change.

the only way poker revives itself is a relaxation in the current regulation, or from a complete overhaul of regulation that legalizes online poker. The economy is sort of secondary at this point - it's hard for me to sympathize with the simplistic viewpoint of "people have more money in this economy, therefore, it's good for poker."

in a vacuum, sure. But regulation is the biggest roadblock and will remain to be for the foreseeable future.

Even if you are a one issue voter, and your issue is poker, this is clearly not the administration for you.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/5...poker-1161889/

Romney also said he doesn't support legalizing online gaming. He's says he's against it because of the social costs and people's addictive gambling habits.

just give up, dude.

Just so much dishonesty

I don't think you'll get any heat for this. Seems 100% correct to me.

Man, shame on those people, right? No blame should be cast on the companies knowingly making predatory loans however. No personal responsibility should ever fall to companies doing terrible things, just the victims of those companies' predatory actions.

"The recession was caused by poor people who should take responsibility. My complete failure to capitalize on the poker boom is due only to my exceptional ethics."

Mason,

For the sake of argument, let's assume the premises of your argument are correct and that A) the tax cuts will improve the economy, and B) an improved economy makes poker games better. But, for the sake or argument, let's also assume C) that the tax cuts will increase the national debt, and D) the debt load will eventually cause a recession.

Under these premises we will see improvements to poker in the short term, but harm to poker long-term when the debt crisis hits.

In the real world, one has to be awfully sure that A & B are correct and that C & D are incorrect to support your core argument. It's a certainty that I, most posters, and most Americans don't share with you.

I also feel like I'm not getting his BEST unless I receive explicit verification thereof.

Best,

N12

I would say minimally the Democrats are better on the regulation, but the fact is as long as big casino owners are major donors you're going to have a hard time getting online poker going, regardless of party. Those donors can just as easily shift to Democrats if they want to protect their interests of course.

is the dji dropping 2k points in 2 trading days good for poker? clearly donald trump is responsible for this

Seems like a clear cut consequence of Congress ignoring the God Emperor and only cutting the corporate rate to 21% instead of 20% to appease Rubio's request to add more money to the child tax credit. Unfortunately for us poker players, families will get more money back instead of corporations, and we'll all be left to play against leatherass and 4 russian bots on ACR instead of 2005-like Party Poker 10/20 NL.

I would agree. Online poker is a niche hobby that doesn't have much pull with either party. The dems aren't going to go out of their way to spend political capital to help poker. If poker was literally all you cared about maybe you'd vote Libertarian, but that would obv be dumb.

Basically as long as the public sees poker as indistinguishable from slot machines, neither party has much incentive to be its ally.

Someone is either not as smart as they think they are, or not honest about why they like Trump (and hate Obama).

It needs to be repeated again and again and again that what killed the poker boom was the UIGEA (CREATED AND PASSED BY REPUBLICANS).

Why is this so difficult to comprehend?

Because Obama's DOJ enforced the law, so obviously it's all on them.

This is correct but, I mean, a lot of people on this board who now love him and listen to his pod on the reg absolutely HATED Preet because of Black Friday, rightly or wrongly.

Here's the Murdoch-owned NY Post hating on him https://nypost.com/2011/04/20/fold-this-case-preet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawf...lative_history

Among the Congressional supporters of the Act were Rep. Jim Leach [R-IA], a former chairman of the House Banking Committee and Rep. Robert Goodlatte [R-VA], who co-authored H.R. 4411 (the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act). Bill Frist [R-TN], former majority leader of the Senate, and Jon Kyl [R-AZ] are both credited with expediting the UIGEA's passage through the Senate. Though the SAFE Port Act's provisions related to Internet gambling were drawn exclusively from H.R. 4411, significant portions were removed, including text relating to the Federal Wire Act.[12]

The Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, a prior version of the gambling part of the bill passed the House in 1999 but failed in the Senate in part due to the influence of lobbyist Jack Abramoff.[13]

UIGEA § 5364 required that regulations be issued by the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury within 270 days of the passage of the Act. In October, 2007, these agencies issued a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking",[14] which effectively tabled draft UIGEA regulations for public comment. In response to the NPRM, four hundred and ten (410) responses were received from depository institutions, depository institution associations, public policy advocacy groups, consumers, “gambling-related” entities, payment system operators, federal agencies, and members of Congress.[citation needed]

The Bush administration had previously adopted the position that it would not finalize any rule subsequent to November 1, 2008.[citation needed] This last-minute rulemaking that binds the hands of an incoming administration is commonly termed the midnight drop.

The final regulations (termed the "Final Rule") were finalized and released November 12, 2008, and came into effect on January 19, 2009, the day before the Obama administration took office.[15] Compliance was not required until December 1, 2009, in order to give the "non-exempt participants" an opportunity to implement the necessary safeguards and procedures.

(R stands for republican) lmk if you can identify a pattern

Obama and his DOJ should shoulder some significant blame for deciding to pursue relatively small fish poker sites instead of big fish like the banks who caused the recession. Still hate Preet, no matter how much he coopts the resistance for publicity and fame. Preet was always masteful at publicity -- he would take down a small hedge fund or bank for infractions that were easy to prosecute and make it seem like he was taking on all the bad boys of wall street, when in reality he wasn't making an impact at all. Same thing with going after poker, general public thinks oh my gambling and he gets plenty of press out of it.

That all being said, none of this is possible without UIGEA, which was clearly and 100 percent driven by Frist and his conservative lackeys. It's silly to assign 50/50 blame between R's and D's here, because none of it at all occurs without the R's initiation. DOJ never sniffs a poker site without the UIGEA being snuck into a port security bill. It's definitely laughable for Mason to ignore the millions upon millions that he has lost out on because republicans implemented the UIGEA.

mason has been pretty clear that he wants a government that refuses to prosecute flagrant bank fraud. and he evidently feels that republicans are the party of lawlessness

Hi Money:

I agree. But you left out the idea that the tax cuts should grow the economy enough so that more tax revenue is collected in a he long run. This means s the gamble of the tax cuts.

Mason

Do you agree that E) the UIGEA, is responsible for way more than A, B, C, and D combined?

The problem with this idea is that there's a great deal of empirical evidence that it's not true given current marginal tax rates. The Bush tax cuts, for example, were clearly not self-financing in this way even prior to the crash. Laffer gets a lot of hate but even he recognized it was a curve, not an absolute truth.

Why do you constantly say things which aren't true? It's okay to have a different point of view, but it's not okay to make up false facts.

MM

you've said you disagree with eric holder and obama about black friday but you won't clarify. please clarify

because they prosecuted bank fraud, and you disagree with their decision. so it's not a huge leap to think you disagree with a government's right to prosecute bank fraud lol

To build off of this, I think applying poker concepts like expected value etc, to other aspects of life has helped me and looking at this "gamble of the tax cuts" it's pretty clear to see the angle shooting going on here.

First, the tax cuts are not distributed evenly, the richest get the biggest benifit while the poor are getting relatively paltry cuts and in some cases increases. Second, Republicans are already pushing for spending cuts to offset the tax cuts so the costs are going to be be borne by the poor of the country.

Third, we might say that that's because we're making a bargin; cut taxes, cut spending and this will unleash creativity, inequality might increase, but that's OK because the rising tide rises all boats. That's the deal they've made in China, inequality has increased but millions have risen out of poverty.

That's clearly not the case in the US. The median worker's wages has barely increased and in some cases decreased in spite of numerous tax cuts and spending cuts and inequality has exploded. Hard to say that this "gamble" is done in good faith given the past history and the risk vs payout.