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Mass. Gambling Bill Would Criminalize Online Poker
timothy writes "Awesome: 'A gambling bill introduced by Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo criminalizes Internet gambling and online poker. The bill calls for two casinos.' Not that they're against gambling, you see... just against being deprived of a monopoly in such a perfect fleecing opportunity."
Actually this article only concerns the state of Massachusetts in the USA. So, I'm really not sure why this is on /..
Yes. That's why both the subject and the summary mention Massachusetts. It's a state. You may have heard of it. It is part of the United States of America.
How in the world do you enforce this? RIAA style dragnets?
NSA sniffs at ISP's.
Army and Air Force will take you down.
FBI will freeze your money.
IRS will collect taxes from your winnings even while you don't get your money back.
Next question?
> You, as a participant in online gambling, have ZERO ability to determine if you are being cheated.
> Only to ensure that their shills win at a slightly elevated rate.
It's not 0, it's just very close.
Slashdot is mostly centered around the United States. And in case you're unaware, the United States is a bunch of united states with their own separate laws. Not that much is legislated federally; news about Massachusetts law (a particularly influential state, in fact) is as notable as any other legal news.
I agree it's mostly stupid. The way most people do it is completely fucking stupid. The way some people do it is addictively self-destructive.
Table games are a losing cause, but the odds are posted and you make your decision with full cognizance of the risks and the way the chances are stacked against your being a winner, much less a big winner. So for people who aren't addicted, it's just stupidly expensive entertainment until you learn your lesson and stop doing that to yourself.
Poker isn't gambling against the house. The cards randomize the action, but they give every player an even chance, leaving the gaming down to a player's ability to present and interpret behaviors, and compute odds in real time. The house gets paid a capped percentage of the pot, which makes it only as expensive as any correctly-played table game.
Putting poker online doesn't alter the odds if the game is constructed properly. But it does create a massive opportunity for the server operator to cheat, massive enough that it is unlikely that any online poker server isn't being used to cheat. The only way to guarantee it's fair is to be the person who creates and operates the server. But that, again, is a massive opportunity for you to cheat, and nobody else can prove you aren't, so it's logical to make it illegal for you to even spread the game that way.
You don't have a very good grasp as to how online poker works.
That is a stupid assumption.
You sound like the many many people who try online poker, lose badly, and chose to blame the system rather than a lack of skill.
I doubt you've ever met two people who've acted that way, much less "many many".
I write high-zoot software. I play high-stakes poker. I've played poker online since it was done in email*. I've studied the laws of gaming by wire (before Janet Reno did, btw) and the history of online gambling, including the known cases of cheating, by both the operators of the servers and by nefarious employees of the operators of the servers and by organized colluders outside the company. It's clear to me that only the very, very, very stupidest of them have ever been caught. The ones with IQs over 60 are all still out there.
In any business, nobody is ever satisfied with the status quo, and the opportunity to turn the profit margins up by hiding the true odds of the game are far too great to allow for the situation where any gaming server isn't being crocked in some small way. Not enough to punish the customers beyond the implied pleasure they get from the service, just enough to make the operators happy that they're making a bigger killing than they're admitting. And here's where it goes all Kafka: because it's a business, and has competition, it has to spend money to compete. Because the other businesses are crooked, they can spend more, and compete better. That drives up the necessity of being crooked yourself, to stay in business at all. That further drives down the probability that any online gaming server isn't being crocked in at least some small way.
There is no reason for anyone to believe that any particular online gaming server is 100% legit.
* - I've never given a nickel to an online gaming website. Because, as I said, I knew all of this would be possible on the day the first one went live, and I've only ever had my analysis confirmed.
Some states have rules decided based on whether it's a game of chance or skill.
For example, pinball was hotly contested in some states, because there are some luck elements - especially because early pinballs paid out. (And they didn't have flippers, so it was almost entirely chance at first.) Some of those luck elements (free games, match, etc.,) must be disabled in some states, to be on the skill side of the chance vs. skill threshold.
Some states require that games of skill not pay out, some of them have a certain legal tests for what a game of skill is (they essentially boil down to something along the lines of, can a skilled player win even with all luck elements being against them, IIRC,) etc., etc.
Fortunately nobody but you has proposed banning everything pleasurable. So far they are just banning (actually just RESTRICTING) a few things that are pleasurable to some people but cause severe problems for many of those people, and for society at large.
To be accurate, they haven't proposed restricting the ability for people to gamble. They've only proposed restricting gambling at venues that are competing with the casinos they are proposing to create. Since Internet casinos don't require physical presence and physical ones do, this proposal will most likely increase the number of gamblers in the state.
Serious online poker players keep logs of their hands. Are you saying that we can't run simple statistical analysis with millions of data points? In online poker, it is not in the interest of the house to cheat the players. They take their cut in each normal hand. Why would they jeopardize their popularity trying to cheat players? They make more guaranteeing fair play.
Why would a site need shills to make money? They poker sites take rake out of pots to generate revenue. The more pots played, the more money they make. The ideal situation for them is for players to play as much as possible.
Please also consider this argument, which is completely parallel to your own:
How can you prove that some websites aren't scamming?
You are a complete retard if you let them scam you.
I have no problem with banning websites worldwide.
You, as a participant in online gambling, have ZERO ability to determine if you are being cheated.
All serious players at online casinos run programs which store each and every hand dealt at the tables they play at, and make various statistics based on that information. Some of them have a sufficient grasp of statistics to be able to figure out if they're being cheated. Certain things, like getting worse hands in a consistent manner, would be grossly obvious for instance. Furthermore, casinos already have a steady revenue stream: the rake. At tables where the big blind reaches 50 dollars, the casino takes about four dollars every single hand, so they're probably earning at least 200 dollars per hour per table at these stakes. There is absolutely no incentive for a casino to cheat his customers, which could just go elsewhere at the first sign of being cheated.
Here is a link to a blog about a cheating scandal at one of the major poker sites. The cheating was discovered by players, and it was not done by the casino, but by rogue employees.
I had written a long rant about the rest of your post, but I think it is best to simply say that you have no idea what you're talking about. I will, however, give a reply to the last sentence.
I have no problem at all with banning online gambling worldwide.
It's easy to call for a ban when it doesn't affect you or anyone you know.
I'll bite.
Ever done a technical integration for a gambling site? It's a little bit more than putting a box online, writing a PHP Poker script and making cash.
Depending where you setup (The majority are hosted in the Northern Territory, Australia, for its very, very gambling-friendly taxes) - every single piece of hardware and software you put online is scrutinised and tested by the government - yes, hardware as well (so you can't shave with a dodgy FPU, etc)
All hardware must be contained in the equivalent of a fire / waterproof bunker, and unaccessible to outsiders.
All hardware must be audited by the watchdog.
All software must be audited by the watchdog.
These policies are naturally invisible to those that don't know, so one may be forgiven for posting flippantly on an forum that cheating is almost 100% certain.