This is both right and wrong. The big casinos (Harrah's, MGM) were heavily in favor. The small guys weren't because economies of scale work against them and there's a longer-term threat of dilution to B&M revenues, especially since it's likely that online poker will eventually lead to online slots/table games.

However, that's all irrelevant since there was no real way to get it passed federally (which is what online players should want - State by State is a disaster for players), and it wouldn't even be passed today if it weren't for Kyl and the DOJ letter.

Keep in mind, 5 years after the explosion of poker UIGEA passed (lolBush) and another 5 years later the sites got shut down (lolBama). It's not reasonable to believe poker was getting legalized regardless of what the casinos did (and there was definitely infighting among the casinos based on their respective best interests).

There was a lot of misinformation/bad assumptions due to a very poorly worded initial draft of the bill. The final, shelved, draft was pretty reasonable.

Keep in mind, this isn't enough money for the Feds to care about. This is more about preventing the wild west with the States legalizing one at a time, and preventing money laundering, and maintaining/ensuring control, and clarifying the wire act/preventing/delaying future non-poker iGaming expansion than tax revenue or making it a bad/punative business (and by extension bad for pro poker players) environment.

man, im almost positive i remember the big casinos lobbying against and using the press to denigrate online poker. guess im wrong?

So if it becomes legal and is set up reasonably well, should we expect another huge boom?

I wonder how many people stayed out because it was always a gray area. I also wonder if advertising and shows will bring as many people back in now that it seems like it was a fad that ran its course.

Shelden Adelson is against it (principal shareholder of the Sands, AKA Venetian/Palazzo), but Harrah's has always been in favor as has MGM (who had a failed online site, oh, maybe 5-10 years ago?).

The industry definitely wasn't aligned, and wouldn't be today if the writing weren't on the wall.

Most estimates are that the US-only poker market was like $1.5 to $2 billion in casino revenue. Assumptions are that legalization, based on European post-legalization trends, would triple the market. However, not every State will opt-in, so the true market is likely closer to say 2x what it was before. Rough estimates. Regardless, that seems like a good thing to me. Related topic, it's anyone's guess as to rakeback, but one can only assume competitive market pressures would ensure something reasonable (from a players perspective) becomes the standard.

The fad has died a little, but things like social media have gone nuts. Online has gone nuts. There is imo reason to think it could/should be better than before.

so when can i quit my cc classes and get back to grinding?

All that said, who knows. Never rule out the chances for something wacky and bizarre to come out of the political process. But I think signs are generally very favorable for players.

3 years I think. Don't remember the details, but will take time to get the regulatory bodies set up (they leveraged NV and NJ to help jump start last bill), then there will be a blackout period where every eligible casino licensee has time to get their stuff up and running and through regulatory. Gonna be a while, but better than an "even longer while".

Unfortunately it's totally true

I mean, I'm not an insider or anything, but it always seemed to me that one reason the casinos opposed online poker was their fear that it would siphon away action from their B&M business. Seems like terrible reasoning when held up against the idea that "more people playing poker = more people playing poker in casinos", especially when that actually did happen after the Moneymaker boom.

You know more than I do about what the casinos actually think on the issue, though.

Let me clarify this since I've been posting from my phone all day and it's hard to convey what I mean typing on my stupid android keyboard (without Swype, what a beat).

Why do casinos have poker rooms in the first place? I'm talking in Brick and Mortar joints... is it cause poker rooms bring in big profits? I don't think so. How many casinos even turn a profit on their card rooms?

It's like discount milk in the back of the grocery store. It brings people into the casino, where they spend money on hotel rooms, food and, best of all, pit gambling.

It only makes sense that they'd apply this same logic to online poker. Could you make lots of money from online poker? Sure... well, maybe.

The reason it was so profitable before (esp pre 2006), is it was a completely unregulated market offered to all 50 states. There was no complicated licensing, built in taxes (or extra sin taxes) and regulatory overhead to constantly worry about. You could quite simply just set up shop and go to town.

In a US federally regulated online poker world, things will be much different. First of all, forget all 50 states. You won't even come close. The bill will probably be opt-in and will most definitely, at a minimum, be opt-out. My best guess is the states (what are there like... 12-15?) where poker is explicitly legal will be auto opted-in w/ an opt-out option while all other states will have to opt-in.

There will be licensing fees, regulatory red tape, taxes, lots of hoops to jump through... essentially lots of overhead. You won't be able to just print money like PartyPoker did back in the day.

Casinos still want you at the blackjack table, the roulette table, the craps pit... that's their big money makers. In those games, you are playing against them and they have an edge. Statistically as it stands now, that's where they reap their profit. I read a stat that 90% of americans live within a 1 hour drive of a casino.

So if online poker can get you interested in the game, get you hooked, get you learning how to play... and then transition you to coming in to experience the "real thing," how great would that be? That way, you'd have to walk through the pit to get there.

I know their thinking as of 6-9 months ago was along these lines. Perhaps it's changed. Perhaps their financial projections have changed. I have no idea, but I don't think so. Maybe some want a pure online model, others prefer B and M. Is it wise? I have no idea. Is it what they were thinking as of last year? Yeah, it was.

You also need to consider the stances of the heavy hitter lobbying organizations as a whole (AGA, Chamber of Commerce, Horse Racing Industry, NFL, yes, the NFL, etc.).

It's possible the market has forced them to change their thinking. I hope it has. We'll see. Right now there's still concern about competition from the international market (Stars and such), despite what the DoJ has said and the crimes they've allegedly committed.

Thats a wall of text that is based on a 100% false assumption.

There are players in the market that think your way. There are players that think the other way. There's the PPA who obviously wants the best result for the individual poker players. These people all have seats at the table. We'll see who wins out. It'll be some sort of compromise. To think the big casinos have the best interests of players in mind is obviously really short-sighted.*

Also, that entire post was building up to the assumption. It can't be based on something it is trying to define. You should read it.

Without inside knowledge, I would guess most poker rooms are profitable but they would make more with slot machines or pit games in the same space being used, at least if they were all used.

Seems more like a steakhouse offering a vegetarian entree they make less on than a grocery store offering a loss leader.

Loss leader was a bad term. I obviously think online poker will be profitable in the long run for casinos, but I think they want to make sure it doesn't get out of control so there's no reason for people who primarily want to play poker to ever leave their homes (herp derp mother's basement).

Although I do know some card rooms lose money in BM casinos.

I think an interesting experiment would be to do the following (and perhaps some casinos have done this in the past 6 months and changed their views... who knows):

Look at the projected profit under a regulated system in the next 5 years, accounting for all the variables.

At the same time, look at how profit in and traffic to card rooms has changed since Black Friday. I assume there has to be some way to see if these players directly contributed to an increase in profit in the pit.

And get someone really smart and good at econometrics to throw all this crap together and see if the trade off of losing BM customers to online poker (but gaining their profit online) + getting new customers who would never go to BM is worth it (or if we can even get some sort of statistically significant result out of this study).

Karak, Online Poker is way more profitable because of the ability for tons of players to multitable, and reduced manpower per table required. Even after all the taxes/regulation fees/etc. I would be shocked if online poker was not a huge money maker for the sites in the US market.

This is wrong too tho.

It doesn't matter whether it's actually wrong or not. It matters whether the people making the decisions believe it to be true. Reality is one thing. Perception is another.

An important distinction.

That is, of course, unless we are assigning perfect decision making to all the old men running the show. I tend to blindly trust the market a lot, but some decisions of big casinos in the past few years have left a little bit to be desired imo.

I mean... look at the comments Sheldon Adelson made only a month ago.

lol karak. pokerstars is a billion dollar company bro.

fwiw I agree with you guys that online poker could be a huge money maker for casinso, but there's just so many variables at work here. Unless we look at the #s, it's based off a lot of guesswork.

And don't forget, legislators don't want to enact something that's just going to result in windfall profits and massive $$ shifting for the casinos. That won't look good. FoF and all them have a pretty loud bark with some bite behind it.

You are thinking on the first level. Think harder. Why is Pokerstars a billion dollar company? Read my big wall of text above. What advantage did Pokerstars have? How many states did they serve? Are they confined to one nation, or international? Were they only one of a few small players in a big market? Did they get the advantage of their biggest competitor fleeing? Did they get the advantage of starting their company in an entirely unregulated structure with no extra fees, taxes or red tape?

Will companies operating in a US regulated market get the same advantages? Will they serve all 50 (or 49/50, as it was in the end) states? Obviously as the UIGEA tightened its stranglehold, overhead got pretty huge for Pokerstars, but they had already established their business at that point and were serving a massive international market. You can "lolkarak" all you want, but try to think through the issues here.

I'm not talking out of my ass here with this stuff, if that wasn't clear.

you are just wrong. it will be a huge, highly profitable, highly concentrated business. existing casino companies are likely to get the money. yes sheldon adelson is ******ed, but not everybody is as stupid as him.

I mean, I can't really respond to posts of "you are wrong" that don't attack any of the reasoning, so I don't know what else to say.

Again, I'm not just basing this off of an educated guess. I 100% assure you that as of last year, this was the thinking of some of the big players. It is possible that has changed.