I honestly do not understand why some people are pissed off about the new ban on online gaming. Online casinos are a profit machine that do their customers no favors.
I would never trust an online casino to not rig the game somehow. Given how relatively easy it is to put in "streakbreaker" code or something that skews probability more in favor of the house, combined with the fact that these online casinos are virtually unregulated -- there's just no reason to NOT do it.
So when I see comments like this about the online ban:
"We're going to have Prohibition, and what happened then?" said champion poker player Annie Duke, a former University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate who began playing professionally in 1994. "We had people running around with tommy guns and drinking moonshine because they weren't given a safe product."
My response is, give me a freaking break! There is a perfectly safe product out there already. It's called a brick-and-mortar casino. A quick Google turned up this fact: There are 47 states in United States which have 1492 legal gambling facilities available. That's plenty of product. Don't live close enough to one of those casinos? There's always poker night at your buddy's house.
As my statistics teachers were fond of reminding us, even in an honest game, every casino game is set up so that the odds are in the house's favor. That's why casinos make so much money. But at least in a US casino, you can be reasonably sure that it's a clean game.
And by the way, I'm not an anti-gambling crusader. Scott and I don't gamble often, but when we have the cash, we've been known to hit a few blackjack tables and while away some hours. Well, actually, Scott plays blackjack and I either kibitz or wander off to lose some money in the slot machines.
At any rate, I want to be clear that I am not against gambling per se. I just think that anyone who's upset about the Internet gambling ban needs to get over it.
Comments (2)
The problem i have with the ban on internet gambling is that it was 'sneaked' into law by the fact it was attached to the bill on port security, and not as a seperate issue. I'm not a fan of internet gambling but i dont believe that the government has the right to attach issues such as online poker games to that of port security.
Posted by Jim | October 17, 2006 11:08 PM
For that matter, I think that adding ANY riders to bills should be banned outright. Laws should be voted on by their merits or voted against for their lack thereof. This business of assclown lawmakers deliberately adding something onerous in a bill to get it voted down is reprehensible. It's a typical Republican tactic, so they can turn around and say nonsense like, "Oh, look at how the Democrats hate freedom! Look at how they don't want to raise the minimum wage! They vote against things that can help the average American."
Fuckers.
Posted by Skawt | October 18, 2006 3:07 AM