Exclaims the Department of Justice (of USA) as it describes Full Tilt Poker’s business model / practices. We need to thank government of USA and other governments around the world for bringing the perpetrators of such schemes to justice.
Of course the government did create the environment (by not regulating the industry) which allows such schemes to flourish. But aren’t we all glad they are there to punish the guilty? Also they are now there with their “I told you so” parental rebuke to stop you from exercising your choice of entering into schemes. “You can’t place bets (sports, poker etc) online, there are swindlers out there who will take your money and financially ruin you” the government says. They don’t want to regulate the industry or introduce a bill. They want everyone to fear the unknown and then use this fear to justify their ushering a sort of “prohibition”. Now one may ask why government would want to do that.
Prohibition and absence of regulation are the two polarised scenarios from where governments around the world derive their power. And we all know governments love power. They want to mess about and feel important. An ideal government should be like a good football referee. The best referees are the ones which are invisible. They are not there to influence the course of the game or its result. They are there to ensure a player’s right to play are not impeded. The government of United States acted like one of the worst referees in the above case. Not acting when the opposition players kept fouling and then showing a red card when a player broke his leg and his career.
Having said that, USA actually has a pretty strong constitution and the constitution vigorously defends its citizen’s rights. I am an admirer of its constitution and its litigious civil society. No amount of screwing up / bad officiating by the government, things will be set right eventually. Sometime in the near future a law will be put in place and the online betting industry will get regulated.
My apprehension is when this controversy reaches our shores. Right now our poker playing community would be no more than a 1000 players of which around 250 could be classified as active. Once this reaches a critical mass, it would be shutters down to online poker as we know it. Our politicians / law enforcers are actively looking for soft pet projects (from under-25 drinking to stopping indecent dancing in clubs) and this would be ideal for them. If one thinks that day is too far away when poker reaches critical mass, think again. All it would take this poker boom to start in our sports bet loving / card playing country would be a Chris Moneymaker like win by one of our MTT grinding pros (Amit Varma, well known player in poker circles and a PokerGuru pro came close to taking down the Pokerstars Sunday Million recently) and then media to pick up that story.
Our constitution, unlike the US does not strongly protect a citizen’s rights. The civil society also does not do enough to fight for its rights. I cannot see an Anna Hazare like agitation getting much support for my right to gamble / place bets. Surprising since no one disputes a person’s rights to bet / speculate on equity markets and other such markets. Numerous ponzi schemes have abounded over the years in those markets and everything from people’s life savings to their own lives have been lost to swindle men. So while I fearlessly make the hero call on the river for the rest of my stack, I fear the day the “democratic” government of my country will restrain me.
Thanks for reading this blog entry. I would love to hear your views. I play micro-stakes 6-max cash games on pokerstars whenever time permits. Pokerstars id is “VinaySuchede”. Someday I hope to play and have a roll like the 6-max grinder idol, Randy Lew (id: nanonoko). Twitter: @vinaysuchede
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