DOJ Seizes Online Poker Site Domains

An anonymous reader writes "Federal authorities have seized Internet domain names used by three major poker companies. The indictment charges eleven defendants (PDF), including the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, with bank fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling offenses, according to Federal authorities in New York. The United States also filed a civil money laundering and in rem forfeiture complaint against the poker companies, their assets, and the assets of several payment processors for the poker companies."

Comments

Victimless "crime"

[jrj102]

I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.

At least I assume that's what happened.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

In kind (although a different Fed organization), I'm also equally glad that GE and Donald Trump paid their fair share of taxes this year, so when I get audited you don't hold any kind of grudge whatsoever.

At least I assume that's what happened.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.

At least I assume that's what happened.

I was under the same impression when they started cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries and performing legwork for the RIAA and MPAA...

Re:Victimless "crime"

[i kan reed]

I agree with you that banning gambling is ridiculous moralizing that serves no purpose but to arbitrarily restrict the freedom of citizens. Especially in this case because the gamblers aren't even all U.S. residents. However, if these gambling establishments aren't regulated somehow, they tend to become, essentially, fraud engines. Either by the owners or enterprising players. And that level of laisez faire shouldn't really be allowed either. It's a false dilemma, but if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[HungryHobo]

what are you on?

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Samalie]

I disagree.

I would rather have the freedom to choose whether or not I would risk my money in an unregulated gambling house than to be forced by the government to not gamble.

In either case, the result is the same...I wouldn't gamble. But I sill believe in the right to choose.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[WrongSizeGlass]

what are you on?

The wrong thread. I think he wanted this thread.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[jrj102]

Exactly.

I'm not against regulating online poker-- but I am against prohibition. The absence of regulation does not excuse the prohibition.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[pixelpusher220]

if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.

Which is perfectly reasonable. The bans on online gambling sites effectively border on having a government agent prevent you from entering a casino in Morocco because your local laws prohibit gambling.

I'm perfectly fine with the US gov't preventing gambling companies from being located in the US. But the internet is like someone in Canada making a sign that we can see from the US. You can try to put up walls to block the sign, but all I have to do is drive down the road and I can see it again. It doesn't work.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[SolemnDwarf]

It's a false dilemma, but if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.

And I'd choose the latter.

Absolute bullshit. I find this kind of intervention ridiculous. It all comes down to money. They saw a thriving business that they couldn't get their claws into, so they shut it down.

As I read on /. the other day: "It's fun, therefore it's not allowed."

Re:Victimless "crime"

[WrongSizeGlass]

I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.

At least I assume that's what happened.

I could also be about the $3 Billion in civil penalties they are going after. From the link:

Prosecutors also filed civil charges against the poker companies and several individual "payment processors," seeking at least $3 billion in penalties.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[poetmatt]

eh, my thinking was:

Doesn't the DOJ have better things to do than make themselves look like morons by trying to seize even more domains? Or did they forget that seizing domains essentially does nothing?

Re:Victimless "crime"

[i kan reed]

Well, I can see the basic point of your argument. Either way though, the fault lies with (U.S. style) conservatives. Their fiscal wing is anti-regulation, making proper regulation hard, and their social wing is anti-gambling, making them ban it. Quite the obnoxious pairing.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[jrj102]

Who did they cheat, exactly? The only fraud they committed was incorrectly identifying the purpose of the dollars exchanged because the U.S. unreasonably (and illegally, I might add) restricts online poker.

There are no allegations of cheating the users, who desire the services these sites are providing.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[ackthpt]

I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.

At least I assume that's what happened.

Well, they did finally convict that notorious master criminal Barry Bonds (of acting like an a**, if nothing else.)

Have you ever knowingly used performance enhancing drugs while playing online poker?

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Samalie]

The only people who have been taken advantage of in this are the people who have real money in accounts on these gaming sites.

They have been taken advantage of by the US Government.

This shows what a fucking joke the USA has become. Die away from me.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Obfuscant]

The bans on online gambling sites effectively border on having a government agent prevent you from entering a casino in Morocco because your local laws prohibit gambling.

It "borders on" that like a Mazzerati "borders on" a Kia. Both are cars, but they're from different places.

What it IS is preventing you from gambling in the US when it is illegal to gamble that way in the US, even if who you are gambling with is outside the US.

But the internet is like someone in Canada making a sign that we can see from the US. You can try to put up walls to block the sign, but all I have to do is drive down the road and I can see it again. It doesn't work.

Awww, that analogy works even if you just WALK down the road, so you failed to accomplish the mandatory automobile analogy. And looking at the sign doesn't require you sending things to Canada, so it's a poor analogy anyway.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly though, in the case of off-shore gambling, the taxation needs to take place on the outgoing money in order to ensure that the government gets paid, as well as the return winnings. And as I'm sure most would agree, online poker seems a lot less lucrative if the government is getting their slice of the pot on both the outgoing and incoming finances. Although that might also work as a good way to leave it legal and deter it at the same time :D

- vranash

Re:Victimless "crime"

[dnahelicase]

I agree with you that banning gambling is ridiculous moralizing that serves no purpose but to arbitrarily restrict the freedom of citizens. Especially in this case because the gamblers aren't even all U.S. residents. However, if these gambling establishments aren't regulated somehow, they tend to become, essentially, fraud engines. Either by the owners or enterprising players. And that level of laisez faire shouldn't really be allowed either. It's a false dilemma, but if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.

I agree. A bunch of people here where I work had most of their life savings in an essentially unregulated gambling fund. A couple of years ago they lost about 40% and had to put off retirement. It really screwed a lot of people up because they thought the gambling house was pretty reputable and said it was low risk.

Only the paranoid that kept their money in cash made it through as planned. The people that lost a bunch of money were a little upset, but the gambling houses got paid even though the people didn't get their money back - some gambling houses even did so well after that they gave huge bonuses! I guess it worked out okay in the end.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[benjamindees]

It does say they filed civil charges, but not what those charges were. It just has a quote from some FBI agent alleging fraud:

"These defendants, knowing full well that their business with U.S. customers and U.S. banks was illegal, tried to stack the deck,"

So how did they "stack the deck"? Who did they defraud? Banks? Who is the victim?

Governments bring frivolous charges against innocent people every day. This is a circus sideshow.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[luis_a_espinal]

I'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.

At least I assume that's what happened.

Hmmm, so bank fraud and money laundering are victimless crimes? I would have never guessed.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[pixelpusher220]

The lameness of my analogies also nicely highlights the ridiculousness of applying location based laws to something that doesn't have 'location'; i.e. the web.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[RicktheBrick]

There is a new site called Quibids.com that disguises itself as a bidding site but is actually a gambling site. The site charges 60 cents a bid. It is so deceptive because if one goes to the site one sees things being bid for at less than 10 per cent of their retail value. One thinks at such a low price maybe I should bid on the product. Now suppose they have a $1,000 product and start the bidding at $1.00. Now most people bid only a penny more each bid therefore after the bidding for the product reaches $17.67 one can calculate that 1,667 people have bid on that product. Multiplying that by 60 cents a bid one can see that the site has received the $1,000 for the product so the product should be given to the lucky last bidder. It is all a sham since the honest thing to do would be to sell raffle tickets for the product and after the required amount of ticket were sold than have a computer choose which one of those people is lucky enough to get the product for free. I have gone to the site and I just feel the greedy part of me trying to get me to bid but the intelligent part tells me to stay completely off the site. I can see where others will get hooked on it and lose a lot of money.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[luis_a_espinal]

I disagree.

I would rather have the freedom to choose whether or not I would risk my money in an unregulated gambling house than to be forced by the government to not gamble.

In either case, the result is the same...I wouldn't gamble. But I sill believe in the right to choose.

Bro, read. Bank fraud and money laundering are among the charges. Not every act of prosecution is about is about attacking your right to choose. I know this is slashdot and people don't RTFA, but c'mon.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Tackhead]

'm just glad to hear that all of the crimes against victims have been solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, giving the DOJ time to focus on victimless "crimes" like online poker.

At least I assume that's what happened.

I was under the same impression when they started cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries and performing legwork for the RIAA and MPAA...

GE? I can Trump that!

I was under the same impression when found out about Tim Geithner not paying his taxes. The Senate dispensed rapid justice, confirming him as Secretary of the Treasury.

Which reminds me, it's April 15th! Better hurry up and get your taxes filed, because we can't all get to run the IRS when we fuck up our taxes.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

One of my friends got his $ frozen/confiscated just because there is a virus on their computer. Unless these sites willing to comply with regulations and all that, including paying their lobbyist to get it legal, it should be outlawed.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[ravyne]

And I'm certain that, once victorious, they will make all due effort to return all $3 Billion dollars to their rightful owners -- the 'victims'.

Yep. Every last penny.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice theory. Now back to reality where gambling turns cities into filthy shitholes riddled with criminals and the otherwise unsavory.

Gambling is one of the few markets that should be regulated.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

Who did they cheat, exactly? The only fraud they committed was incorrectly identifying the purpose of the dollars exchanged because the U.S. unreasonably (and illegally, I might add) restricts online poker.

There are no allegations of cheating the users, who desire the services these sites are providing.

Actually, there are allegations being made on this very article's discussion, that the players have been cheated.

So...yeah, I would doubt that these companies are upfront and aboveboard.

But even if they are, the real point is that freedom is not a license.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Obfuscant]

The lameness of my analogies also nicely highlights the ridiculousness of applying location based laws to something that doesn't have 'location'; i.e. the web.

It isn't the web that is violating the law, it is the people, and people most certainly DO have a location.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[presidenteloco]

The victim in the crime of online gambling is the government itself.

You see, online gambling amounts to essentially a taxation system. (Some people call it a tax on the stupid but I won't
be so judgemental.)

Problem (for the government): This highly lucrative taxation system is directing citizens funds to some organization
other than the government itself. Competition for the government. Hence, inherently bad (from gov's perspective.)

So to summarize:
A. Drugs are banned because they make people unruly (literally, hard to rule, uncooperative and unmotivated).
B. Gambling is banned because it is a tax that is not going to the government, but to (organized crime) organizations
that could get so much money and power they would compete with the government.
Alcohol was a tough call. At one point it was banned because of A. but it was too hard to stop, so it became
highly taxed and regulated instead. Probably the same thing will happen with gambling. I know lotteries and gambling
(regulated and highly taxed in my locale) are what pays for the MRI machines and medical research, not to mention amateur sport
and a whole host of other government services around here.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[mikes007]

I agree with you that banning gambling is ridiculous moralizing that serves no purpose but to arbitrarily restrict the freedom of citizens. Especially in this case because the gamblers aren't even all U.S. residents. However, if these gambling establishments aren't regulated somehow, they tend to become, essentially, fraud engines. Either by the owners or enterprising players. And that level of laisez faire shouldn't really be allowed either. It's a false dilemma, but if I had to choose between no gambling and unregulated gambling, I'd likely choose the former.

OK, except that they haven't tended to become fraud engines. The poker community is very active in investigating any allegations of fraud or collusion both among the proprietors of sites and among other players. There have been several revelations of wrongdoing which have been revealed by poker players and communicated to the poker-playing community. Certainly there has been some fraud and deception throughout the history of online gambling. But with resources such as casinomeister and the twoplustwo forums is it relatively easy to see which sites are playing fairly and which are just scams.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Sheik Yerbouti]

There's a victim here. It's all the moneyed powerful people that run brick and mortar casinos in the U.S.

These filthy low down criminals are stealing food right from the silver spoons of the rich and powerful and that gets law enforcement attention real quick.

Yet another example of who runs this country and who is corrupt.

Steve Wynn and Donald Trump would like to extend there thanks to the Federal investigators and there leash holders in the form of a check if possible.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[ZombieBraintrust]

I wonder how that works with internet gambling.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[presidenteloco]

I see where you're going with that.

It gave me an idea for a conspiracy theory.

Maybe the real reason the government bans online gambling is because it takes money away from the stock market and thus away from the engine of the capitalist economy (not to mention the pocketbooks of the scamming investment banks and brokers and mega-corporate CEOs and shareholders).

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Lawrence_Bird]

Here's a hint for you: The current President of the US is a DEMOCRAT. The current head of the DOJ is a DEMOCRAT. The US Senate is held by the DEMOCRATIC PARTY. The House of Representatives for the four years prior to Jan 2011 was held by the DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Please place blame where it is due correctly.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[barrtender]

Actually, since today's a friday Tax Day is April 18th (Monday). It doesn't really make sense why, but that's the rule this year.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[geekoid]

Are you Fox news's bitch or something? did pay his taxes, please. You make it sound as if he paid nothing. What happened is more complex then that, look it up.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[geekoid]

Laundering money is not a victimless crime.
Committing fraud against their customers.

This isn't about gambling.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[geekoid]

That would be great if every man was an island, but we are not.

Unregulated gambling brings problems to people who don't gamble.
Plus, people who do gamblers have NO WAY to know if they are being cheated.

Your stance seems to come from a false belief that customers would have the knowledge to make a good decision.

For the record, on rare occasion I do gamble.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[geekoid]

Which in no way invalidates the posters point. It doesn't tell how little you actually know about politics.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[geekoid]

What about the gamblers that where cheated? oh wait, that goes against your confirmation bias so you ignore it.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Obfuscant]

Which in no way invalidates the posters point. It doesn't tell how little you actually know about politics.

Actually, it does a good job invalidating it. The DOJ is under the control of the President, not the house of representatives. The DOJ routinely ignores things that the President wants ignored, and pushes agendas that the President wants pushed.

If the DOJ is going after someone, it's because the President wants it. And the President is a liberal democrat.

If this was four years ago and the DOJ was doing this, you'd hear the screams from the liberals about how a conservative President was raping the law, even when the liberals were in charge of the legislative branch. So put the blame where it belongs.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's a torture facility of course. Then the location of the place matters a lot!

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Obfuscant]

I agree. A bunch of people here where I work had most of their life savings in an essentially unregulated gambling fund.

Except the gambling fund wasn't unregulated, it was regulated by a bunch of morons who kept denying that there was any problem and refusing to modify the rules to prevent it from happening. And the problem stemmed from regulations from other morons who thought it was more important that poor people could pretend they owned their own homes even if they couldn't afford it and the banks actually owned the properties.

When a bank, I mean, "gambling fund" is forced to create loan terms that allow people with no money to gamble, and then those people lose, who is at fault? The bank, or the morons who made the rules telling them they had to make the loans? When someone chooses to gamble by taking out a loan with an adjustable rate and a known balloon payment, and then can't pay it, who is at fault? The person who voluntarily accepted the deal, or the "gambling den" that was forced to offer it?

Re:Victimless "crime"

[theshowmecanuck]

More to the point, the laws against online gambling were enacted by a republican president, and continued under a democrat. Meaning that blaming one side or the other here is a ridiculous.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Christ this is ridiculous.

I live in a city that thrives off of gambling. The history of gambling and gaming is pretty much full of cheats, thugs, thieves and charlatans.

Unregulated gambling means you don't know if you're playing the online version of three card monte or instead a respectable poker game.

You anti-Government types all act like either history never happend, history is all rosy and perfect or that people getting screwed is something to be celebrated.

Fuck you.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[TexVex]

It is trivial to make a poker game that cheats.

Poker makes its money by raking a little money from each pot and charging vigorish on tournament fees. They don't care who wins or loses. They just want more people playing more hands per hour for larger stakes.

Also, these poker sites have the randomness of their games analyzed by reputable neutral third parties. And if you want to collect up a significant sample of random card draws from these games and do your own analysis to look for cheating, nothing is stopping you.

It is in the best interest of the poker sites to provide a fair game, and towards that goal they do a great deal of cheat detection of their own. They catch people colluding. They also cooperate with governments in money laundering investigations.

The poker industry is aching for a court test of "is poker a game of skill, or gambling" in the courts. Maybe this will be a good opportunity for that, at least on the gambling-specific charges.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[jonwil]

Ask a bricks & mortar casino who is loosing money to online poker if they think its a victimless crime...
Ask a government who is loosing gambling tax revenue if they think its a victimless crime...

Re:Victimless "crime"

[TexVex]

They saw a thriving business that they couldn't get their claws into, so they shut it down.

The poker industry has been lobbying the US federal government and state governments for a decade for explicit legalization and regulation on the basis that poker is a competitive game of skill, and not gambling. There is a grey area there.

Unfortunately, the federal government just responds by coercing the banks to stop processing transactions for poker sites, forcing them underground, and passing little laws here and there that makes it harder for the poker sites to do business. Meanwhile, poker has the status of a spectator sport on ESPN and a half dozen other cable channels.

The poker industry has been trying to play ball but Congress has just kicked them in the teeth. Online Poker wants to be taxed and regulated and legal in the U.S. They have gone to great lengths to cooperate with state governments the world over in criminal investigations, as well as legislation.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[zvar]

Poker makes its money by raking a little money from each pot and charging vigorish on tournament fees. They don't care who wins or loses. They just want more people playing more hands per hour for larger stakes.
 

The thing is that's easy to know if all 5 people are at the table. If you are on-line and have say 4 people in 4 states at the 'table' how does one know they actually lost to another player. All 4 people could have lost the same hand as the program doesn't have to show player 1 and player 2 the same things. House gets the plot plus all 4 players bets (Of course sometimes it does let a player win, have to keep the player spending you know.)

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Grygus]

Regardless, it signals a serious problem: either a man qualified to be the Secretary of the Treasury can't figure out our byzantine tax laws, or he purposefully committed fraud and therefore wasn't qualified. Neither outcome is at all desirable.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[julss]

Fuck the US in this issue, don't the americans understand the whole world isn't your playground.

Do like China does, block your shit there. LEAVE REST OF THE WORLD ALONE.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[sumdumass]

Your fair share of taxes are the least amount of taxes you are required to pay by law.

So yes, even if they found loopholes and deductions, as long as they didn't cheat, they paid their fair share.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[sumdumass]

What? This justice department is completely controlled by the democrats. If there was anything to blame here that is separate from all the politicians, it sure as hell wouldn't be one type of politician. Obama could have simply told the justice department not to go after them like he did with medical pot in states that it is legal in or some of these other laws that he said he wasn't enforcing.

You cannot blame it on any one politician. the problem is that gambling is a state issue in which the federal government does not have authority over and has not had authority over at all. Nevada is a prime example of this, while most gambling was illegal at a federal level, Nevada has allowed it since it's inception as a state. The Feds simply cannot run in and make gambling legal in states where it's illegal. At best, they have limited control over Indian reservations but that's even minute.

If you look past your own bias and see the truth, you will understand a lot more.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[sumdumass]

Have you not been paying attention to the arguments against the federal government making online gambling legal? They do not have the power to do so, it's a state's rights issue. This is brought up every time the gambling initiatives gain tractions, it was brought up in the WTO suit.

For fucks sake, then the federal government actually admits to not having a power to run roughshod over the states for once. The least you could do is actually pay fucking attention. They cannot make gambling legal in states that have outlawed it. There is the entire problem and the interstate commerce clause does nothing to fix it..The best they can do it look the other way and refuse to prosecute like this administration has done with medical marijuana in states that it is legal in.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[ncgnu08]

Thank you. If we are going to pass blame around, which is not helpful to begin with, then let us acknowledge the online gambling bans were started by a Republican president. I find this lack of perspective just as funny, and useless, as the overlooking of which president actually created our massive deficits. Its like blaming the janitor for creating the mess he is cleaning up.

Side note: both parties are to blame. And actually, it is always worrying about blaming someone that hurts us so much. No one actually wants to together to clean up the mess. After all, if you do something, then you can be blamed for any outcome.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[ncgnu08]

For the record, I am on PokerStars as I read this...

Re:Victimless "crime"

[mattack2]

Google ""why is tax day april 18" for your answer.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[mattack2]

The UIGEA was added by right wing Republicans into a 'safe ports' bill that 'cannot be voted against'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIGEA

Re:Victimless "crime"

[mikes007]

The thing is that's easy to know if all 5 people are at the table. If you are on-line and have say 4 people in 4 states at the 'table' how does one know they actually lost to another player. All 4 people could have lost the same hand as the program doesn't have to show player 1 and player 2 the same things. House gets the plot plus all 4 players bets (Of course sometimes it does let a player win, have to keep the player spending you know.)

Well, all (or almost all) poker clients allow players to chat with each other in a chatbox. Players often comment on the hand saying such things as "Wow 4-of-a-kind. nh!" or "you moron, how could you call with just a pair of 88?" or "You luckbox...winning 4 pots in a row" If the program was showing different things to different players, then the players would be chatting about different occurrences and would quickly realize that something was amiss. Or the program would have to simulate chat from the different players, which is no trivial feat. Additionally, there is a vibrant and thriving community of poker forums such as twoplustwo and poketfives. Many players post their hands in order to solicit feedback from others. Sometimes someone else who was in the same hand sees the post and adds their commentary on the hand. If the sites were showing different things to different players, this would quickly be discovered on the forums.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[mysidia]

The site charges 60 cents a bid. It is so deceptive because if one goes to the site one sees things being bid for at less than 10 per cent of their retail value. One thinks at such a low price maybe I should bid on the product. Now suppose they have a $1,000 product and start the bidding at $1.00. Now most people bid only a penny more each bid therefore after the bidding for the product reaches $17.67 one can calculate that 1,667 people have bid on that product.

Uhuh... 60 cents a bid penalizes placing multiple bids. That means you should place as few bids as possible to win the item.

That should mean bidding as much as you're willing to pay the first time, so you only pay once $0.60.

I'm not sure why most people would be willing to spend $0.60 to only add $0.01 to the bid, that doesn't make sense -- to be willing to spend so much to bid with such a small increase in price, and such a high probability someone else is willing to pay at least $0.01 more for it.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the charges stem from the UIGEA which do specifically limit our (including your) ability to choose. Sometimes it's not about reading, so much as being well-read.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[mattack2]

What it IS is preventing you from gambling in the US when it is illegal to gamble that way in the US

[citation needed]

Are you implying that Internet gambling is illegal in itself in the US? If so, why aren't they going after the players.

Yes, this is from a pro-gambling site:
http://www.gamblingplanet.org/legality_main.php

and yes, I did see other links that claim that it's illegal due to the Wire Act.. (which the above link also mentions)

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

Unregulated gambling brings problems to people who don't gamble.

That's an incredibly slippery slope, nearly every human activity could potentially have some negative impact on someone else. Personally I'd rather live in a free country than a nanny state even with the understanding that sometimes people will do stupid things.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you dumb? Do you think "tried to stack the deck" means anything beyond rhetorical nonsense?

Re:Victimless "crime"

[GaryOlson]

Please stop giving them ideas. Next thing you know, Las Vegas will be replaced by the LVSE -- Las Vegas Stock Exchange. And the shows and music and other entertainment will suck.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

The fake "auctions" go on and on as long as anyone is still "bidding".

What it really is... people are betting 60 cents that they will be the last bidder. But then a few seconds later, someone else "bids" and the countdown timer is reset (to 30 seconds or whatever).

It's called an "auction" but it isn't anything at all like an auction.

Oh, and you can't bid a higher price, like jump from $10 to $100. No sir, it's only in 1 cent or 10 cent increments. Because it's not an auction at all.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[rtb61]

Some people of course lack the wherewithal to make sound judgements and more readily believe the falsities put forward by unregulated gambling houses. So laws to protect them are quite reasonable.

Let's be honest, it isn't and never was gambling once the odds where tilted in favour of so called gambling houses, from on side (those with the odds in their favour) it's properly called cheating and from the other side (the mug punter) it's called losing. It is high time that gambling was forced equally.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker are still up for me, but http://absolutepoker.com/ has the purdy FBI Notice/Warning.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Lawrence_Bird]

There was no Federal ban of online gambling so please, get your facts straight. What Bush signed into law on 9/30/06 (as an attachment to Port Security Act) was a ban on financial institutions knowingly transferring funds to companies/individuals that are involved in gambling operations where those operations are already illegal.

A conference report resolving those differences passed in the House of Representatives, paving the way for enactment of the bill, by roll call vote. The totals were 409 Ayes, 2 Nays, 21 Present/Not A conference report resolving those differences passed in the Senate, paving the way for enactment of the bill, by Unanimous Consent. A record of each senator’s position was not kept.

In Nov 2006, The Democrats took control of both houses of congress and in 2009 Obama took office. Yet it is the DOJ, under Obama, which has led this prosecution - a decision to prosecute made by AG Holder. And it continues the trend of going well beyond the statute by seizing the domains of those accused of illicit fund transfers and in fact is targeting not those transfering the funds but those getting the funds. From the original article: "The takedown marks the first widespread charges targeting Internet poker by federal officials and is likely to impact billions of dollars of gaming revenue."

So yes, please place blame for this where it is due. This is an intential prosecution led by the Obama DOJ. If the Democrats were some how tricked by Bush and wanted to amend or reverse the original law, they had over four years to do so, including over two with no fear of veto. If they did not have the stomach for that, the DOJ could simply chose not to persue prosecution.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Sheik Yerbouti]

You mean the ones in Wynn's Casino or Trumps or just any of the casinos ?

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Aeternitas827]

There was no Federal ban of online gambling so please, get your facts straight. What Bush signed into law on 9/30/06 (as an attachment to Port Security Act) was a ban on financial institutions knowingly transferring funds to companies/individuals that are involved in gambling operations where those operations are already illegal.

So, what you're saying is, they didn't ban online gambling, they banned financial institutions from relaying money from the U.S. to abroad for the purposes of online gambling; they instituted a de facto ban on online gambling, without so many words--if US financial institutions aren't able to send the funds US residents are wanting to use for this, then those residents aren't going to be able to play. The only difference between the two is who gets tagged; an outright ban, the player is in hock; with current law, it's the institutions that get nailed.

Further, it's not just those receiving the funds who have been targeted; the first two arrests where those involved in processing the payments (Chad Elie and John Campos)--the payment processors are the ones transferring the funds (on behalf of someone else--however, the payment processors do have the ability to question and say no...similar to why my electric, cable, and auto insurance payments got flagged by my card issuer today).

Last, you can blame the DoJ and the AG appointed by Obama, but bear in mind that Obama's control over the DoJ is pretty much getting rid of AG Holder and working to get someone else confirmed in his place...otherwise, Holder and Co. are free to do as they will at peril of losing their positions--the President cannot force the AG to pursue or not pursue charges against a person/entity, he can only make recommendations. Take Holder's actions as his, unless you have something to demonstrate the President or the Democratic party were in full force behind it.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[mbkennel]

They saw a thriving business that they couldn't get their claws into, so they shut it down.

The poker industry has been lobbying the US federal government and state governments for a decade for explicit legalization and regulation on the basis that poker is a competitive game of skill, and not gambling. There is a grey area there.

Unfortunately, the federal government just responds by coercing the banks to stop processing transactions for poker sites, forcing them underground, and passing little laws here and there that makes it harder for the poker sites to do business. Meanwhile, poker has the status of a spectator sport on ESPN and a half dozen other cable channels.

The poker industry has been trying to play ball but Congress has just kicked them in the teeth. Online Poker wants to be taxed and regulated and legal in the U.S. They have gone to great lengths to cooperate with state governments the world over in criminal investigations, as well as legislation.

The poker industry which happens to compete with large entrenched interests and campaign donors has been trying to play ball but Congress has just kicked them in the teeth.

Fixed that for you.

There will be an online poker industry in the U.S. fairly soon of course. The point is to destroy the existing successful companies first, so that other favored ones can take their place, or buy them at a forcibly distressed price.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Kalriath]

What it IS is preventing you from gambling in the US when it is illegal to gamble that way in the US, even if who you are gambling with is outside the US.

Actually, no. Due to the way they seize domains, it prevents you from gambling in Uzbekistan because it is illegal to gamble that way in the US, even though who you are gambling with is outside the US. Hence, it's complete bullshit. Pretty typical from the US government (ever wondered why the rest of the world doesn't like you guys? There's why. And no, I don't blame the people of the US, except insofar as they voted for the pricks in power).

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Kalriath]

You mean destroy the existing foreign successful ones first, so that other favoured local ones can take their place.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Kalriath]

Isn't it? One of the three that was taken down is the largest online poker site in the world, also operating the largest free play poker site in the world, and sponsoring tournaments the world over, and most importantly - headquartered in a country which actually enforces laws. Hardly a fly-by-night organisation out to scam anyone.

The other two are the second and third largest poker sites, also headquartered in countries where rule of law applies (e.g. not Russia or Ukraine or Vietnam or whatever).

Interestingly, none of the companies or their principals have been to court yet, so how can you say they're guilty? Doesn't your law explicitly enshrine the principle that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty? Or does that only apply to US citizens, not foreign nationals the corrupt US government has bribed other countries into arresting and extraditing for committing acts not illegal in their home territories? I'd bet they'll be extradited to the US, be cleared of wire fraud, then ... ooh, they're on US soil now! ... arrested for running "illegal" gambling sites.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[hairyfeet]

Actually I'd say you are BOTH wrong. You see the words "liberal" and democrat haven't actually gone together (except in the minds of the right wingers) in quite a long time, probably not since Carter.

You see, here in America we have the right wing party (the democrats) and the ULTRA right wing party (the republicans) and then we have...well that's pretty much it. BOTH are for more power for themselves and the elite, BOTH are for less rights for you and more for the government and BOTH treat the constitution like more of a guideline than any kind of hard or fast rule.

That is why you'll never change things by voting here in America, because it is basically Coke VS Pepsi. Either way you are getting nothing but gas and empty calories for your time.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[BigSes]

That's called a weak consumer, or better known as a fucking idiot. A fool and his money are soon parted. If someone thought, even for a second, that you can get a 2011 Camaro for $500 or an iPod for $3, are you dumb as hell or what?

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

And these guys are OFFSHORE and operating in our beloved US?!?! What kind of blatant hypocrisy is this. I miss the good old days of [right now] when home-grown companies http://abercrombie-it.com/ like GE funnel the money they've earned to off-shore accounts and pay zero dollars in taxes on the money they made off of the American people with full support from the government. Who do these hypocritical poker bastards think they are!

Re:Victimless "crime"

[TheCarp]

But you don't get that choice.

People are going to gamble, whether you pass laws against it or not.... case in point. I used to run a "friendly game" (no rake) at my house. I know people who run professional games... where it is illegal. You think this is going to kill online poker? No way. Hell there is a bitcoin poker room out there.... good luck regulating that.

Unregulated gambling exists, and will continue to exist no matter what you do, so really, yours is the false choice. No gambling was never on the table. Its regulated gambling with diminished unregulated, or its totally unregulated. There is your choice.

I will note... the old "Italian Lotto", had better percentage payouts and better odds of winning than ANY state lotto. They typically took in a rake of between 20-40%,... most state lottos take 50, and then tax you on the income. That is a piss poor payout schedule for any gambler....a huge rip off.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[garaged]

You have the freedom to fund all kinds of criminals that way, but you are already funding a few wars, so not big deal

Re:Victimless "crime"

[kaatochacha]

This is fine, as long as everyone is held responsible for their actions. But in some cases, someone will do something stupid ( like gamble away their retirement) and them promptly demand someone else support them so they don't sleep on the street. There are times where people get treated like babies because allowing them freedom results in greater harm all around. And no, i'm not advocating this ALL THE TIME, just in some cases.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why you people are against online gaming... I am a poker player and did not know it was supposedly illegal Which let me add Should not be, it is Not harming none of us, no worst than these scratch offs and lottery tickets... I am Very Upset today and you others should think about our feelings too. This gave us something to entertain ourselves to get thru the bord times of life, something to look foward too.. Ones that can not afford to go out and do things often..

Re:Victimless "crime"

[guruevi]

They don't have to match ALL games to real players. Sometimes players don't chat at all and could technically be a 'house' bot. There have even been bots on those sites from other players so it's not that difficult to do. All they have to do is win 'some' of the games while still profiting of the transaction and game entry fees or leftover funds that people never play with or that's under a certain payout limit, the hard part is figuring out how much you can do this without people starting to notice - is it 5% of the players, 10%?

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

Laundering money is not a victimless crime.

Actually, that's exactly what it is in this case - victimless. The laundry came from the fact that the banks recorded txns as "lady's size 6 mittens" and crap instead of "playing online poker." The players didn't care. The sites didn't care. Victimless.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, people who do gamblers have NO WAY to know if they are being cheated.

No, that's false. You can track your results over the long term with statistical software. After 25,000-50,000 hands you will start to see your results 'normalize' and be able to tell if you are getting cheated.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[MicroRoller]

The reason that the sites had to allegedly resort to fraud and money laundering is because of the way the law is structured and that there is some grey area if whether poker is classified as illegal internet gambling for various reasons. One of which is that poker is a skill game.

It's not illegal for most americans (excluding those in states like WA that have state specific laws against it) to play online poker. The legal problems revolve around the transfer of money in and out of US financial institutions.

The poker sites or their processing tried to circumvent some laws to be able to conduct what they believed to be a lawful business. At least I think that's their take on things?

The way the UIGEA was implemented seemed a bit rushed and left some ambiguities.

The whole thing just sucks. Online poker was becoming a big part of my life and the poker apocalypse bums me out.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[mikes007]

They don't have to match ALL games to real players. Sometimes players don't chat at all and could technically be a 'house' bot. There have even been bots on those sites from other players so it's not that difficult to do. All they have to do is win 'some' of the games while still profiting of the transaction and game entry fees or leftover funds that people never play with or that's under a certain payout limit, the hard part is figuring out how much you can do this without people starting to notice - is it 5% of the players, 10%?

Yes, it is true there are some players who run bots, contrary to the terms & conditions of the poker sites. Such bots are usually breakeven or slight winners, and anyone running such a bot is at risk of having his funds confiscated. I have seen it happen several times that bot-operators have been investigated and had their accounts banned and funds confiscated and redistributed to other players. So there is some of that botting going on, but the sites usually make a good effort to combat them. There was one instance reported in the twoplustwo forums of PokerStars suspecting that a user was running a bot due to the high number of tables he played and the long sessions that he played without breaks. So they called the player in question and inquired if they could visit him at his home. They sent an observer to his house who watched him play, and verified that he was capable of playing such a large number of tables for many hours, so they determined that he was not a bot. So the most well-regarded and reputable sites do indeed take these things very seriously and expend a lot of time and money to defeat bot users.

There was one site from several years ago which was very strongly suspected of running "house" bots. I'm not sure if that site is still is around anymore; but their bots were horrible players and served mainly to keep games running rather than directly making a profit for the house. They did not disclose the fact that they were using bots, which was quite a dishonest business practice. But users at that site were able to put several facts together to determine that the site was in fact almost certainly using bots. Then this information was widely disseminated throughout the poker community, and anybody searching for information about that site would discover this information.

Some sites do confiscate funds from unused accounts after a certain period of inactivity. The rate at which this is done is spelled out in the site's terms & conditions. And many sites do have a minimum cashout amount. So they can make some money in that manner. But again these practices are spelled out in full in their terms & conditions or in their cashier information.

Re:Victimless "crime"

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a new site called Quibids.com that disguises itself as a bidding site but is actually a gambling site. The site charges 60 cents a bid. It is so deceptive because if one goes to the site one sees things being bid for at less than 10 per cent of their retail value. One thinks at such a low price maybe I should bid on the product. Now suppose they have a $1,000 product and start the bidding at $1.00. Now most people bid only a penny more each bid therefore after the bidding for the product reaches $17.67 one can calculate that 1,667 people have bid on that product. Multiplying that by 60 cents a bid one can see that the site has received the $1,000 for the product so the product should be given to the lucky last bidder. It is all a sham since the honest thing to do would be to sell raffle tickets for the product and after the required amount of ticket were sold than have a computer choose which one of those people is lucky enough to get the product for free. I have gone to the site and I just feel the greedy part of me trying to get me to bid but the intelligent part tells me to stay completely off the site. I can see where others will get hooked on it and lose a lot of money.

I'm not necessarily defending Quibids.com but you should mention that its Buy-it-now feature (which is probably not used as much as it should be) allows bidders to apply the money they spent bidding on an item toward the purchase of the item. So really (if the documentation is correct) you are bidding not on the item itself but on its discount. If one does not use 'the buy it now' feature, it most certainly does amount to gambling... How much they take in for an item that they have collected bids on depends upon how many bidders are willing to complete their purchase vs walk away from the amount they spent bidding.

I have also been on the site, but my sense is that the greed is what gets you into trouble. If you are disciplined and recognize that you are bidding for a discount vs an item, it may work out for you. That's my theory anyway...

Fed up

[darjen]

These government assholes can go fsck themselves. America is screwed. Free country my ass.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

These government assholes can go fsck themselves. America is screwed. Free country my ass.

Particularly obnoxious here is the stench of utter corruption and duplicity when it comes to US government and gambling: you see gambling is eeeevil ..... unless its the US or State governments who run the casinos, or their anointed cronies, in which case its just an innocent, family past-time ...

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

Well, these guys broke the law. The decided to do fraudulent transactions that disguised "money for the purpose of gambling" as "money for X goods". That is a clear case of fraud. The money laundering part is probably the fact that they created other companies that they paid for some service with the illegitimate money, and this money was actually going into other bank accounts they had access to. There is a distinction in US law. You don't like current gambling laws? Lobby to change it.

Re:Fed up

[i kan reed]

Free country with purchase of politician. Please see Citizen's United for offer details and limitations.

Re:Fed up

[darjen]

The only reason for the fraud in the first place is because of the government's other laws. In other words, they would have been fine if it was legal for credit card companies and banks to do business with the sites. Don't try to excuse the government's actions here by claiming they "broke the law".

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

These online sites had no regulation. They could have just stacked the deck with a computer algorithm every time, or had house players cooperating with eachother at the table. My brother use to play these sites and he said many times there would be teams of players that all knew eachothers cards. It makes it a lot easier to find out what the other opponents have and bet accordingly with unfair advantage. They presumably split the winnings.

Re:Fed up

[geek]

So don't play? It's not rocket science.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

The point of regulation is to make sure that the gambling is fair. Otherwise you have a shit load of cheaters. I don't gamble, so I agree with you. But some people want to do that, and want to make sure the places they gamble have some impartial oversight.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

These online sites had no regulation.

.... and they also have mean bet size of $.05 at their tables. The ones that actually use real money that is. Vast majority of players on sites like Poker Stars use fake, in-house, "play money". No real world value of any kind.

If people are to gamble with real money, it is their (not government's) responsibility to make sure the casino is not crooked. After all gambling is for fools who have money to burn in the first place and not some essential like food or shelter.

Your attitude is the classic example of extreme "government nannyism". If casinos are to be regulated by government, so should kindergarten soccer matches. After all mothers could gamble on their kid's performance and just think of all the deal making and cheating possible!

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

Its still fraud. Whether or not online gambling should be legal, they still lied to banks, and created shell companies to launder illegally obtained money. No doubt they knew this day would come someday and have secret accounts overseas. I don't feel sorry for them.

Re:Fed up

[the eric conspiracy]

One of the companies. AbsolutePoker.com involved was caught in a very serious cheating scandal.

Re:Fed up

[Samalie]

"My brother knew a guy". Really?

[citation needed]

I play regularly with real money on one of the sites. I have seen the improbable happen. There have even been a couple of scandals which all but killed a couple of cardrooms (and said scandals were not comitted by the "house"). There are ways to collude via software...there are ways to collude via telephone. But all the reputable cardrooms all work their asses off to prevent this, because they make a shitton of money off the rake, and they don't want their users jumping ship to another cardroom.

These rooms ARE regulated...just not by the almighty US Government.

Or to better phrase...the US Government isn't getting a cut, so they're shutting them down.

And seriously, how in the FUCK does the US Government have the right to sieze domain names OUTSIDE of the fucking USA? Pigfuckers have now tied up $500 of MY money that is in a site, and its NOT fucking illegal for me to play (I'm in Canada). Seriously, USA...go fuck yourself.

Re:Fed up

[geek]

You would be hard pressed to find anything in life "fair" let alone something as inherently corrupt as "gambling" By all means though, continue beating the drum and giving your money away to people for no reason at all. If you think Vegas or any casino is "fair" you clearly don't know what gambling is.

Re:Fed up

[TFAFalcon]

'Fair'? The casino can claim that a machine malfunctioned after you win a jackpot, and you call that fair?

Re:Fed up

[Grishnakh]

And how exactly do you expect one country's government to oversee and regulate an activity going on in another country? You don't. So if you want some "impartial oversight" in your gambling, then do it in a country where you believe the government to be doing its job there. If you're going to a gambling website located in Zimbabwe or Nigeria, and lose, then you got what you deserve.

Besides, even with all that vaunted "oversight", the odds are overwhelming that you're going to lose if you travel in person to Las Vegas. Gambling is just a way to separate fools from their money, and for other people (who know what they're getting into) to have a little entertainment with a tiny, tiny possibility of making a lot of money in the process.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

If some private certifying organization were to replace the government in that role then sure. However a lot of states use a "Gaming Commission" as a way to enforce gambling laws because its a part of tax revenue. They also serve the purpose of making gambling fair (within set tolerances). Whats wrong with using government to make sure that casinos are fair if your state does a lot of gambling and gets tax revenue from it? Its not nannyism, its paying your government for a service you want them to provide and bringing in more money to the state from gambling tourists. Las Vegas and Nevada did quite well for a long time doing this.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

But some people want to do that, and want to make sure the places they gamble have some impartial oversight.

Why? You still did not explain that part. If you regulate gambling, (not to be "fair" for it never is, the "house" always wins in all the "regulated" casinos - so you can quit that bullshit line) then you must regulate all games of skill or chance. After all one can bet on any event, and so, in your government-nanny-to-the-rescue (with bonus side revenue opportunities) model, we should have the somber FBI men check out playgrounds and inspect playing cards in every family dwelling for marks, lest evils of unfair gambling be the downfall of the civilization as we know it!

Re:Fed up

[vldragon]

These sites arn't hosted in the US so the US wouldn't be able to regulate them anyway. The DOJ is pissed because they are accespting money from US citizens. Normall this money is blocked but the've used some "unique" ways to route arounnd those blocks. They may have broken US law but seeing as how there not in the US I don't see how it matter or that the DOJ has a leg to stand on. If they want to go after someone they will have to go after the poeple gambling... Though hopefully they see the problems with that and won't do it.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

I just got through saying I don't gamble, so I agree that "I should just not gamble". I have a better understanding of odds than most people and it simply isn't worth it. That being said, my dad makes a lot of money playing REAL poker. Ive seen him come home with thousands of dollars at a time every saturday when I was a kid. Texas hold'em at the table is lucrative if you can read people well and also have an understanding of probability. He used to run a poker table and made a lot of money that way as well. At one point he went into business with a corrupt piece of shit that was doing some illegal gambling on the side and the Montana Gaming Commission busted them with handguns and handcuffed him and my father. The reason I know my dad wasnt involved is because hes a very honest man. It wasn't a misdemeanor or a felony, but they penalized him by not allowing a him to have a license to run a table for 5 years.

Re:Fed up

[gknoy]

It's entirely possible to imagine a fair gambling establishment, or of playing with a group of players where no one was cheating. The fact that many WOULD cheat doesn't mean that it's impossible not to.

Many gambling games (slots, etc) are stacked in the house's favor, yes. Poker, though, is a game of skill (with some random factors) between players, where the house takes a cut of the pot. A fair gambling establishment would ensure that no player was cheating the other players, and that the dealer was not favoring anyone. It would be like having professional Magic the Gathering leagues that play for big money: fairness is both possible and desired, but some people will always want to try to cheat. Good establishments will try to minimize that.

Re:Fed up

[dcollins]

You say that as though people were rational actors.

Re:Fed up

[pclminion]

So don't play? It's not rocket science.

That would be the answer, except that some people become psychologically addicted to playing these games and in a very real sense can't just "walk away." You can stand around saying they're stupid for getting themselves into that situation in the first place, but they are in that situation regardless, and now are being preyed upon. Maybe for you it's okay to prey upon people if they made a stupid decision and are now addicted to gambling, but to me that seems uncivilized. Let them throw their money away if they wish, but how about we try to make sure that the rules they think they are playing by are actually the rules they are playing by.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

The key words here being "tax revenue". The governments do not give a flying fuck about "fairness" of gambling. Commercial gambling being "fair" is one of the most ridiculous concepts I ever heard of and its only useful fools like you who believe such nonsense. The government's only concerns are financial: that is to prevent any activity that does not feed their coffers.

Gambling is a particularly painful thorn because it involves a large number of very small cash transactions without receipts and thus it allows for casino operators to avoid onerous taxation. Governments also see gambling in general as a form of taxation on the arithmetically challenged and so see any private operators as direct competition for easy money.

Those are the true reason why governments of all stripe attack any gambling enterprises as viciously as major drug cartels.

Idiots like you are just useful tools in this campaign of ever expanding governmental reach and sating its ever growing hunger for money and resources.

And as to asking for "services" to regulate gambling, it is the same dynamics as "asking" for all these "think of the children" and "terrorists under every bed" gleefully psychotic campaigns of terror by the government: the only people who are really asking for such things are the members of government-centered elites, their sycophantic hanger-ons and their associated parasitic police-military-prison complex corporations who stand to profit from this.

Re:Fed up

[MonkWB]

The argument is that this is not "money for the purpose of gambling." These are poker sights, the argument is that this is "money for a game of skill."

Re:Fed up

[DigiShaman]

Gambling by definition is unfair. The house will always come out ahead. Period. PERIOD! At that point, you're only splitting hairs with regulation as to what is and isn't fair. I go so far as to say that being "regulated" = buying off the Feds (basically a bigger mafia above them) enough to keep them from looking their way as they continue to game the system.

My advice, only gamble if your in it for the good times. If you earn any money, run away ASAP. If you don't, consider the loss a cost of consuming entertainment. But above all, it's best to accept the premise that you will get financially fucked no matter where you gamble at. Be it in Vegas or online.

Re:Fed up

[Anonymous Coward]

we could get reza lockwood to go sit on them, since she weighs about 800 hundred pounds. then they would be unable to regulate tilt poker dot net because she would be squishing them

Re:Fed up

[straponego]

The banks lied to us, gambled our money, put it in shell companies overseas. None of the bankers will ever be prosecuted. Oh, and Wachovia laundered $378 billion in drug money-- had to pay a $50 million fine for that. That's all. So it seems that the crimes these gambling sites are being prosecuted for were just not big enough to be acceptable.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

A fair gambling establishment would ensure that no player was cheating the other players, and that the dealer was not favoring anyone.

Except it is completely impossible once Internet is involved. Online gambling (which is what we are discussing here) is by its nature prone to all sorts of collusion between players via alternate communication channels, insecurities in their computers that could allow other players to see their hand, etc and so on.

So unless you demand that all poker games are conducted in a particular physical location, attended in person after a thorough all-cavity search and full x-rays of all the participants, no "fairness" is even remotely assured.

In fact "fairness" cannot be expected in any practically feasible casino, lest the intrusive provisions would drive 99% of their clientele away.

You simply forgot that vast majority of people gamble casually and for entertainment. If assurances of "fairness" take away all their fun, they will find some other pasttime.

Re:Fed up

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure that you understand just how difficult it is to get away with cheating when it comes to online poker

Sure, there could be grand conspiracies where sites stacked their decks, or players colluded to steal your money. But all of those behaviors become pretty transparent when you're data mining. And most professional poker players are obsessive data miners.

Re:Fed up

[h4rr4r]

Poker is different. At a fair game the house only gets a fixed cut no matter who wins. You are paying the house to hold the game and the players are competing against each other not the house.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

Yeah. That sucks, but these dudes did commit fraud in the US. PS My brother didn't "know a guy" he IS the guy that found out about the cheating.

Re:Fed up

[AA23ds]

Using independent contractors/processors does not mean 'they' (PS/FTP/Cereus) created shell companies or lied to banks. I'm sure it was implied, & I'm sure they knew the processors were taking a risk but that's beside the point.

Re:Fed up

[Anonymous Coward]

Gambling is banned in my state. I wish the fucking Powerball and so on were banned too. It IS bullshit that they ban gambling and then allow the state to keep doing it.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

In the US its accomplished by gaming commissions at the state level. So in the case gambling is legal in your state, its better to just gamble in the state. If someone wants to be an idiot and gamble online, thats their problem. There is no real US federal gambling oversight, thought they do have laws about it.

Re:Fed up

[bill_mcgonigle]

Particularly obnoxious here is the stench of utter corruption and duplicity when it comes to US government and gambling: you see gambling is eeeevil ..... unless its the US or State governments who run the casinos, or their anointed cronies, in which case its just an innocent, family past-time ...

Which is the point entirely. Those gaming entities that do pay their protection money to the government were facing stiff competition from the online sites. So the government did what it promised, it smashed up the competition.

Oh, wait, no, it's not a protection racket, it's regulation. Riiiight.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

Aren't some of the people who run the sites in the US? If thats the case there is jurisdiction over these people for their crimes. Its not that I think internet gambling should be illegal, its that fraud is not the best way to handle your online business. They did in fact commit fraud.

Re:Fed up

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of this actually reads like, "We made it illegal for Americans to play online poker. The online poker places reported American transactions as sales of golf balls and such, so that American banks wouldn't reject the transactions, and Americans could continue to play if they wanted. That's fraud."

Gotta love the DOJ. Bunch of worthless turds. Hey guys, way to "protect" me... am I going to get my pokerstars balance back now that you've seized their domain?

Re:Fed up

[Grishnakh]

For many people, it's easier to get on your computer and gamble rather than drive to the nearest Indian Reservation. For people who don't live in such states, it's much easier to get on your computer rather than drive to the nearest state with legal gambling.

If they want to do it, they should have the right to. It's not the government's job to watch over everyone and make sure they're doing smart, healthy things. The government's trying to do that with this stupid War on Drugs, and previously with Prohibition, and where did it get them? Crime and bloodshed on immense scales.

Re:Fed up

[frank_adrian314159]

Texas hold'em at the table is lucrative if you can read people well and also have an understanding of probability

Yeah, but you still have collusion there, too. Why do you think that the OL poker folk aren't on the lookout for this sort of thing, as well? There are algorithmic ways of detecting potentially fraudulent plays. There are process checkers to see if you have an IM client open and scrapers to see what you're typing. I used to know a guy who worked for a vendor who sold to the OL poker sites and did checking for just these sorts of things. The last thing an OL poker site wants is to be known as a site where you're being cheated.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

Its not nannyism. Its funding the government for a service you want them to provide.

Re:Fed up

[TheSeventh]

And the house will not always come out ahead. People find ways to tilt the odds in their favor all the time (some of them are actually legal, where cheating isn't involved). When this happens, the house will make changes and adjustments, but that still doesn't mean the there aren't ways to change the odds in your favor.

Counting cards in blackjack isn't illegal, it isn't cheating either. When someone figured out how to predict where a roulette ball was going to land using an infrared laser measuring device, that wasn't illegal or cheating either.

But these activities aren't allowed by the casinos. It's their building and their operation, so you have to play by their rules.

Don't be so naive as to think Casinos are infallible or perfect money making operations. People are always looking for an edge, and will find them where possible.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

Sure thing. Roads and Road maintenance are a service provided by government that is useful and few would argue is unnecessary. Apparently Idiots that like roads want the government to nanny us because if they really wanted to they could saw down trees, blow holes through mountains, or off road it in their expensive Humvee's loaded with explosives and chainsaws. I could fucking list them all day. The point is that if a people want the government to provide a service to them, they have a right to fund it. You have a right to disagree and try to convince people otherwise, but just because you don't like something doesn't mean it fucking matters at all. If people want to gamble (and I am not one of these people) and they want government regulation bad enough, they will get it regardless of what you think.

Re:Fed up

[Anonymous Coward]

Only complete idiots and morons like you have to resort to insulting somebody when they obviously lack the intelligence and ability to argue with somebody civilly.

Why not just keep it simple and say, "I disagree with you so that means you're a fool and an idiot"?

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

Texas Hold 'Em is perfectly winnable with skill. Sure, the rake takes away some money from the table, but think of it as "renting" your chair and paying for the gambling license and operating costs. If you walked into a casino where the dealers were doing tricks with decks so that a house player was winning all your money, then the game is no longer fair. Sports regulates the use of performance enhancing drugs, why should it be different with poker? Maybe it doesn't have to be the government that regulates it, but it has to be impartial for fairness. I don't gamble either way so it doesn't matter to me.

Re:Fed up

[SuricouRaven]

Noted. Should I ever plan to defraud a poker site, I will make sure to run my pokerbot software on a seperate, isolated computer.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

I agree with you. Moral or nanny laws are never good for the people. My main point is that if gambling is legal, it should be fair. I.e. the odds must fit the game. If a casino had a trick dealer that would make sure all the players money went to a house player at a Texas Hold'Em table, that is not fair and shouldn't be allowed. Its the same thing as misrepresenting a product and is anti-consumer. Maybe private industry could regulate itself, but I don't see that happen a whole lot.

Re:Fed up

[SuricouRaven]

The house always wins *on average*. There is a chance of you winning in any individual bet or game. That's why people play. The house is involved in enough bets that those it wins will almost certainly be enough to pay for those it loses, and then profit on top of that.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

And who exactly "wants" this service? Not a vast majority of people actually doing the gambling as they all shy away from the "regulated" casinos, clearly.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

So where is this "fairness" you speak of? What is "fair"? 1% "on average" of money changing hands? 2%? 67% 90%? [pull-the-number-out-of-my-ass]%?

What should the nanny government deem "fair" and enforce it, with violence as need be? Do tell.

Re:Fed up

[BlueStrat]

The government's trying to do that with this stupid War on Drugs, and previously with Prohibition, and where did it get them? Crime and bloodshed on immense scales.

It's working precisely as planned. What, you didn't think politicians were trying to actually *decrease" drug/alcohol use or gambling, did you?

The politicians see crime & bloodshed as great opportunities to increase the size and scope of government and it's control over people's lives, and thus increase their own power. That, and the kickbacks/campaign contributions generated are vital to the maintenance and continuing expansion of their wealth & power. They *need* people to become drug addicts and compulsive gamblers.

Most politicians are completely amoral. If politicians thought they'd get away with it, they'd happily hand out heroin and syringes in elementary schools and fund school field trips to casinos with our taxes. Ignorant, destitute, and desperate gamblers and drug addicts are easy to manipulate and control. "Vote for me/my legislation/my policies! I'll let you get you your fix and make those other *evil* people that disagree with me pay for it!"

Strat

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Talk about dishonest "comparisons". Roads are public infrastructure, ostensibly one of the core reasons for which governments exist.

Gambling is a wholly superfluous entertainment activity well outside any conceivably sane scope of governmental reach.

You apparently believe that if government has a mandate to provide and care for basic public infrastructure, so it automatically also has the authority to intrude into every aspect of every activity by its citizens. Far wiser people, having foreseen such nonsense, attempted to embed limits in this quaint US document called "the Constitution" to prevent exactly this sort of idiotic "natural extension" of "authority" from roads to driveways to garages to living rooms to bedrooms and eventually to outhouses, lest unruly "subjects" (long since past "citizens") try to hide there from "oversight" and "regulation".

Re:Fed up

[mikes007]

A fair gambling establishment would ensure that no player was cheating the other players, and that the dealer was not favoring anyone.

Except it is completely impossible once Internet is involved. Online gambling (which is what we are discussing here) is by its nature prone to all sorts of collusion between players via alternate communication channels, insecurities in their computers that could allow other players to see their hand, etc and so on.

So unless you demand that all poker games are conducted in a particular physical location, attended in person after a thorough all-cavity search and full x-rays of all the participants, no "fairness" is even remotely assured.

In fact "fairness" cannot be expected in any practically feasible casino, lest the intrusive provisions would drive 99% of their clientele away.

You simply forgot that vast majority of people gamble casually and for entertainment. If assurances of "fairness" take away all their fun, they will find some other pasttime.

It is NOT completely impossible to ensure a fair game once Internet is involved. In fact there are certain tools available to online gambling providers which would be impossible/impractical in a live setting. Poker sites keep a record of the history (including hole cards) of every hand dealt at their tables. If there is any suspicion of collusion among any group of players, they can go through EVERY SINGLE HAND which those players have played against each other and look for unusual patterns of play. Many sites frequently confiscate the funds of players who have been discovered to have cheated and reimburse the victims of the cheating by splitting those funds among people who have lost money to the cheaters. Something like this would be impossible to achieve in a B & M casino. Clearly, it is impossible to eliminate 100% of cheating, either in a live or online setting. But the incidence of cheating can be, and often is, reduced substantially by the game security departments of the leading online poker rooms. And such cheating as does occur can often be detected in the future and appropriate measures taken.

Re:Fed up

[alexo]

Only complete idiots and morons like you have to resort to insulting somebody when they obviously lack the intelligence and ability to argue with somebody civilly.

Oh, the irony!

Re:Fed up

[thestudio_bob]

...and its NOT fucking illegal for me to play (I'm in Canada). Seriously, USA...go fuck yourself.

I'm sorry. I don't believe you. A real Canadian would have said "USA... go fuck yourself, Eh."

Re:Fed up

[alexo]

Mod parent up!

"These rooms ARE regulated...just not by the almighty US Government."

Example: http://www.winallpoker.com/2011/03/31/full-tilt-poker-stars-new-partnerships/

Re:Fed up

[StikyPad]

Nah, a Canadian would have said "If it's not too much trouble, would you mind having intercourse with yourself, eh?"

Re:Fed up

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

Or just call them on the telly....

No amount of protection or technology is going to stop people from colluding in online poker. None.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

... they can go through EVERY SINGLE HAND which those players have played against each other and look for unusual patterns of play ...

Translation: they can engage in wild statistical guesswork and level unprovable accusations since random chance can produce exact same patterns, given enough repetitions (there are millions of games played every day at these sites). Following which these "fair" operators will ban players on the basis of their gut-feelings, which would remove any last vestiges of any "fairness" from the operation, should it exist there in the first place.

Many sites frequently confiscate the funds of players who have been discovered to have cheated and reimburse the victims of the cheating by splitting those funds among people who have lost money to the cheaters.

See above. What you meant to say was that they distribute funds from "people randomly accused of cheating based on utterly unprovable and inconclusive evidence" to those who whine the loudest. Fairness.

Clearly, it is impossible to eliminate 100% of cheating, either in a live or online setting.

Which also is why it is impossible to assure "fairness". QED.

But the incidence of cheating can be, and often is, reduced substantially by the game security departments of the leading online poker rooms. And such cheating as does occur can often be detected in the future and appropriate measures taken.

Unless you are speaking of people caught with transmitters in their shoes, all else is mere guesswork and reliance on absolute "authority" of the "security personnel" of the said casino. A fortuitous game pattern, no matter how unlikely, proof of cheating does not make! In fact most casinos, in their endless quest for "fairness" (this always cracks me up), often find "excessive" winnings invalid to the utter surprise of befuddled "cheaters" being man-handled out the door.

Re:Fed up

[geekoid]

Much in life is fair.

Gambling regulation is about the gambler getting the odds he is told.

A casino is fair. The tell you the odds, they tell you the payout. With that information the consumer can then make an informed decision. That is fair.

Re:Fed up

[Frosty Piss]

The key, then, is to license on-line poker to the same standards of oversight as the major gambling houses in Nevada, New Jersey, and the Indian casinos... Make it a rule for the servers to be state-side, and have the backend code audited. And of course, tax, tax, tax...

It's not rocket science...

Re:Fed up

[geekoid]

Yes it IS fair. It's not equal, but its FAIR.

They say you have a 1 in 6 chance in rolling a seven, and the tell you what they will pay. THATS FUCKING FAIR.

and the house doesn't ALWAYS WINS. it consistently wins a small amount, and some quarters they can LOOSE MONEY.

Learn the FUCK about what you talk about.

God, then you take regulating a large business to ensure they are doing what they advertise and boiling it doesn to a nanny state and home gambling?

God you're an idiot.

Re:Fed up

[Sulphur]

So don't play? It's not rocket science.

All in with not playing.

Re:Fed up

[AkkarAnadyr]

These online sites had no regulation.

Unlike these money launderers, who do.

We just don't enforce it on them, even though it involves hundreds of billions.

Re:Fed up

[geekoid]

Fair: Their payout and odds are what they advertise.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Oh, the double irony! Note that he became an AC so that he could use his real account to down mod the post he was replying to, for that extra "oomph" of "civility" and "courage of convictions" .

Which is why it is my long standing policy to ignore derogatory ACs altogether, for they are usually just jerks abusing the moderation system.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Fair: Their payout and odds are what they advertise.

Which they cannot guarantee in an online environment (which is also why online casino only advertise the "rake" but not the odds). What if two players at your virtual poker table are talking via Skype? Texting each other? The odds and payouts are now way out of kilter and there is nothing (nothing sane anyhow) the online operator can do about it.

Re:Fed up

[Grishnakh]

But the whole problem here is that you can't have government regulation that extends beyond its borders. Gambling sites, like any internet site, can set themselves up in any country they want to, whether it's the USA or Sealand, and are then subject to the laws of that country (if any). There's absolutely nothing the US government can do (legally) about sites that operate outside its borders, except try to seize funds that go through the USA. The only other thing they can do is restrict US Citizens from accessing these sites, but that's tantamount to censorship. There's do difference between being restricted from going to a Nigerian gambling website, and a Nigerian activist blog, and goes against the First Amendment.

Your statement about making gambling fair makes sense pre-1995, but that's it. We're in a new world now where you can go outside your country's borders while simply sitting at your computer. Any restriction of that activity is nothing more than censorship, so you have to decide whether you're OK with censorship or not. Do you want to live in a country with freedom, or do you want to live in a country like Burma?

The only thing the US government should be able to do against offshore activities it doesn't like is to perhaps make it illegal to send money to particular sites or businesses in foreign countries. However, this is pretty hard to police, as those businesses can always set up extra shell companies to move the money around, and would require constant monitoring to update the list of forbidden payees, and would require the government to get tough with Visa/MC/Paypal and restrict them from sending money there, or else be brought up on criminal charges with possible jail time. Since the government NEVER holds corporations accountable for criminal behavior, this isn't going to happen.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Fair
1. treating all equally
2. reasonable/morally right

-- mcmillan dictionary

Go explain how "1 in 6 chance of winning" satisfies any of these.

... and boiling it doesn to a nanny state ...

You might however want to try for less spittle and vain-popping rage so that it does not prevent you from typing actual sentences.

Re:Fed up

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I live in Las Vegas, we have the Nevada Gaming Commission to keep the casinos fair.

Fair is, "Here's the odds" and if the game is rigged that those odds don't match up with the bets being presented, the game is shut down.

Re:Fed up

[mikes007]

... they can go through EVERY SINGLE HAND which those players have played against each other and look for unusual patterns of play ...

Translation: they can engage in wild statistical guesswork and level unprovable accusations since random chance can produce exact same patterns, given enough repetitions (there are millions of games played every day at these sites). Following which these "fair" operators will ban players on the basis of their gut-feelings, which would remove any last vestiges of any "fairness" from the operation, should it exist there in the first place.

Yes, random chance can produce the exact same patterns which are detected. It could be random chance that a player has folded pocket kings to a preflop raise 5 times out of 2000 times in which he was dealt pocket kings. And each of those 5 times has been against the raise of 1 specific opponent. And each time, that opponent had pocket aces. And these 2 players in question have just happened to both be seated at the same table for ~80% of each of their total hands played. And they both happen to be from the same state. And there have been several interaccount transfers of funds between the two accounts, while they have not transferred funds to any other accounts. It could be just random chance. But there is I would estimate a 99.9%+ chance that the two players are colluding and should be stopped. Obviously this is an extreme and contrived example. Most colluders are slightly more clever than to display such obvious hallmarks of collusion. And there is the very slight possibility that such a player is innocent of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, there are patterns of play and "red flags" which can be used by competent personnel to determine instances in which it is virtually certain that cheating is going on.

Many sites frequently confiscate the funds of players who have been discovered to have cheated and reimburse the victims of the cheating by splitting those funds among people who have lost money to the cheaters.

See above. What you meant to say was that they distribute funds from "people randomly accused of cheating based on utterly unprovable and inconclusive evidence" to those who whine the loudest. Fairness.

Any site doing such would be quickly shunned by savvy poker players. Why would a site randomly redistribute money? There would be no gain for them. It would be conceivable that a site would randomly confiscate money without redistributing it; it is clear what their incentive would be in that case. And indeed there have been several sites which have stolen a lot of money from unsuspecting players. But the majority of sites do not engage in such behavior; rather they confiscate and redistribute funds of players who are determined after an exhaustive analysis to be cheating in some way. And far from the money being redistributed to those who whine the loudest; there are countless examples of people receiving a reimbursement without even knowing that cheating was going on at their tables. Contrariwise, twoplustwo is filled with posts of players who allege collusion and cheating with very scanty evidence, and their allegations are investigated and quickly dismissed by the staff of the appropriate poker sites.

Clearly, it is impossible to eliminate 100% of cheating, either in a live or online setting.

Which also is why it is impossible to assure "fairness". QED.

Well, I suppose you are looking for 100% absolute "fairness" and anything else is unacceptable. In which case, the US Justice system, election procedures, legislative bodies, regulatory agencies and newspapers are not "fair" either and should be abolished.

But the incidence of cheating can be, and often is, reduced substantially by the game security departments of the lead

Re:Fed up

[SecurityGuy]

Not interesting, not right, basically nonsense.

Here's the deal. Many players record every hand they play, leading to a giant database that can be statistically analysed to determine if the deck is stacked. Some people believe it is mostly due to biases we're all known to have. The statistically unlikely losses stick in our memory, so we think "we always lose", when we don't. People will be convinced they lose more with AA vs KK than they should. I had about 700,000 hands in a database and looked at things like that. I found that I got AA about as often as I should. I found I won and lost with it about as often as I should. In short, I didn't find any evidence at all of the site cheating, and them doing so would be stupid for exactly that reason. It's relatively easy to prove. All you need is a statistician. The people who claim online poker is rigged never have a database to point at. They never have analysis. They have bogus claims. I'm sorry to burst anybody's conspiracy bubble, but all evidence points to it actually being a fair game.

Odds are your brother was simply a bad player. Don't take it personally, most poker players are bad. Most who think they're good are bad. Poker really is a game of skill. There's a lot of well known and well studied strategy that rests on game theory, statistics, combinatorics, etc. Drop an inexperienced player into a setting with people who know this and they will generally lose, not because anyone's cheating, but because they'll be recognized as really bad players and the really good players will play in such a way as to exploit their errors.

I friend of mine goes to casinos a lot and thought he was a good poker player. I watched him play online and he was bad in almost every way you can be bad. He played too many hands, min bet, never more, and was a calling station (someone who calls bets way, way more than they should). Predictably, he lost.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

Odds are your brother was simply a bad player. Don't take it personally, most poker players are bad. Most who think they're good are bad. Poker really is a game of skill. There's a lot of well known and well studied strategy that rests on game theory, statistics, combinatorics, etc. Drop an inexperienced player into a setting with people who know this and they will generally lose, not because anyone's cheating, but because they'll be recognized as really bad players and the really good players will play in such a way as to exploit their errors.

Its not true. He won quite a few tournaments at the time, and he attributes it to the fact that the players were randomized. I realize there is a difference between tourney play and regular play. I actually come from a family of poker players. My dad won quite a few tournaments in Montana and one big one in Reno, but he needed the money for our family so he never tried to invest it (if you call it that) in entrance fees for more prestigious tournaments like the World Series to develop professionally as a player. He sort of toned it down over the last decade or so and now just plays weekends, but he wins about 60 percent of the time and wins more than loses. He used to bring home several thousand dollars at a time since he prefers no-limit poker. My brother basically learned from him. I never was into it very much since it always seemed to require more time to get good than I was willing to put into it, but I do know a thing or two about mathematics and statistics considering Im a graduate math student. Your analysis may be correct, but for which website? Also, cooperating does not change the odds of getting particular cards, but it lets two or more people know what cards YOU don't have, and that basically becomes a game theory problem rather than simply statistics and probablity. My brother did Poker Stars and (I think it was called) Bodog. My brother isn't an idiot either mind you, hes a pharm D student, and he said that it was well known on these websites, at that time, people would cooperate to win the pot.

Re:Fed up

[tsotha]

There are already third-party organizations that certify online gambling sites. No reason for the government to get involved.

This doesn't have much to do with gambling at all. Like money laundering laws what this is really about is taxes. The US government wants to make sure it can track every dollar you make and spend. What's to keep people from moving money around outside the sight of the all-seeing eye? Can't have that.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

It could be random chance that a player has folded pocket kings to a preflop raise 5 times out of 2000 times in which he was dealt pocket kings. And each of those 5 times has been against the raise of 1 specific opponent.

Yes it could. That's probability for you. In fact it is more likely for this to be random chance than two players being that idiotically obvious, since the average cheater will be using easily available software to combat any such statistical traces anyhow. So you are bound to catch mostly victims of random chance and grandmas who thrill themselves with their "walk on the wild side" cheating over the phone in their $0.01 games. They will not have the software. And there is the very slight possibility that such a player is innocent of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, there are patterns of play and "red flags" which can be used by competent personnel to determine instances in which it is virtually certain that cheating is going on.

As I said, gut feelings and "respect my authoritah!"

Your "competent personnel" has a snowflake-in-hell chance of actually catching cheaters with their fancy software and nearly 100% chance of beating up on random hapless bystanders and giggling grandmas.

Any site doing such would be quickly shunned by savvy poker players. Why would a site randomly redistribute money? There would be no gain for them.

Two words: Security Theater. Which is exactly what you have been proposing so far. Losing 10% of players in the effort to mislead the remaining 90% that the site is "secure" and "fair". Standard stuff.

Well, I suppose you are looking for 100% absolute "fairness" and anything else is unacceptable. In which case, the US Justice system, election procedures, legislative bodies, regulatory agencies and newspapers are not "fair" either and should be abolished.

"Fairness" in real life and "fairness" in games of chance are completely unrelated things.

But since you are on the topic, the US "justice" system and "fairness" do not even intersect. In fact the US does not even have a justice system, misleading name notwithstanding, it has "legal" and "law enforcement" systems. Justice plays no role whatsoever in them.

I happen to think there is a difference, and quite a major difference at that, between a game or casino or table in which cheating is occurring in 50% of hands and one in which cheating occurs in 0.1% of hands.

In which case you better play only in high-security casinos where all the participants have been thoroughly searched before play. That is the only place where you can conceivably achieve that low level of cheating (assuming one of the players is not in cahoots with the staff).

And, as someone who derives his income from playing online poker,

I assume you are not a US citizen or resident then or else you've just asked for the US "justice" department to have a "word" with you ... something about online gambling being utterly illegal in the US, severe criminal penalties and other some such trifles.

Oh and IRS is right behind in line.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

There are already third-party organizations that certify online gambling sites. No reason for the government to get involved.

This doesn't have much to do with gambling at all. Like money laundering laws what this is really about is taxes. The US government wants to make sure it can track every dollar you make and spend. What's to keep people from moving money around outside the sight of the all-seeing eye? Can't have that.

If you reread my post, I never said "Government oversight" at all. I said impartial oversight. This included private organizations. The point is to make it fair some way, and that is actually the responsibility of the gamblers. Even though I think gambling is among the worst ways to spend your time, I still think you should be able to do it without being unfairly taken advantage of. Just like it should be illegal to sell you a car that looks OK and performs OK short term, but won't get you more than 100 miles before breaking down.

Re:Fed up

[Kalriath]

How do you know they had no regulation? The fact that they weren't subject to US regulation doesn't mean there was none. I mean, the Isle of Man and Ireland are hardly "wild west" countries with "dog eat dog" rule of law.

Re:Fed up

[BigSes]

I know nothing about these sites, but anecdotal evidence...I knew a guy who used to come into where I bartended on weeknights, and played daily on one of the sites mentioned in the charges. Very sharp, and on his way to a degree that everyone at /. hates (MBA, and why?) at a major ivy-league college. Won some and lost some, but came out a few bucks up most times, and he is not even someone with money to waste, he worked a part time job at a call center selling Solo-Flex. What he did on his own time, not chocked up at the end the bar is one thing, but it seemed legit enough. He won a tournament, etc, and they paid him out properly. I feel this might be a fight over tax revenue, not improper business practices. I've never played online poker, or any type of poker short of casual parts in games such as Red Dead Redemption, but he seemed to think it was honest enough. I don't think these people were suckered, but then again, this was 5 years ago.

Re:Fed up

[SecurityGuy]

You make a decent case that your dad is a good player, but that your brother learned from him doesn't make him a good player. It could simply be that he never picked up the skill. Believe me, there's a huge difference in knowing the mathematically correct play and having the discipline to do it. There is definitely a difference over tournament play vs cash games. I find that my style of play shifts over time, so I'm usually good at one, but not the other. Right now I'm playing well in tournaments and being a slight loser in cash. It's far more likely your brother is just a decent tournament player and a losing cash game. Phil Hellmuth is well known as a great tournament player, but not that great of a cash game player. Your brother's Pharm D is irrelevant, by the way. I know MDs who are bad. Being good requires some combination of intelligence, knowledge, and discipline.

My 700k hands were on Full Tilt. I played Bodog years ago and was able to win there, too. If you're sufficiently better than the average player, (better enough to cover rake) you win in the long run. I promise you I've never met a poker player who thinks they're worse than me. EVERYONE thinks they're good, it seems. My answer is always "show me your graph". If you win, you're good. If you don't, you're not. You are right that it takes a LOT of time to get good at it, and if you don't actually enjoy playing, doing so is a waste of your time.

Poker is always a game theory problem. Statistics only tells you the range of cards your opponent might hold. You still have to determine your response based on what you think their actions will be. I've played a lot of heads up NLHE, for example, and there how your opponent is going to play matters often more than the cards you hold.

I hold a graduate degree myself, by the way. I'm also a well read, fairly experienced, winning online player. I've never heard anything like it being well known that collusion was a problem. You'll see threads about it from time to time on the major web sites (2+2, etc) where someone will post suspect play and ask if it looks like collusion. There are more people posting nonsense theories lacking any mathematical rigor which usually come down to "I can't win, so it must be rigged!" or "I lost this hand where I was a 98% favorite to win, it must be rigged!" Just check out the "rigged megathread" on 2+2. I even had someone accuse me of colluding in a tournament and vow to report me. I wasn't, of course, and I never heard a word from the site, so I gather they agreed.

I won't say it never happens. I do actually believe it does. I just also believe it's a minor problem at best, that sites do look out for it and that it's pretty easy to catch.

Re:Fed up

[mikes007]

OK, IgnoramusMaximus, I think I had better stop commenting here, because this discussion is going nowhere. I can't even understand what you are trying to say.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I can't even understand what you are trying to say.

My point is very simple: governments are entities desperate to continuously expand their power and as a side effect their size, which then requires ever more voracious financing.

Therefore sane societies restrict severely the scope of governmental power and set firm limits on what the governments can ever "regulate" or "oversee". Gambling, for example, is firmly outside of these limits.

Governments however, due to their desperate desire for ever more power, will use any tricks possible to breach these limits.

And one such standard trick is to get idiots in the populace to create manufactured "outrages" over some ridiculous nonsense or another, like for example lack of "fairness" in casinos, which then can be used by power-crazed governmental bureaucrats as a "justification" for yet another expansion of their power. You see, the populace "asked" for it.

This is how we ended up with this article on Slashdot and this is also how this discussion about government enforcing "fairness" in casinos started.

Rather straightforward, no?

Re:Fed up

[mikes007]

OK, Ignoramus, I think I agree with every point you made in your last comment.

What I take exception to are your previous comments indicating or stating that online gambling is inherently crooked and rife with fraud and cheating, and that there is nothing reasonable which can be done to reduce the incidence of cheating or provide a secure playing environment. I've been a winning online poker player for 5 years now, and I am reasonably certain that the sites at which I play provide a very secure and fair gambling service. If they were rigged or rife with collusion, it would seem that I was unwittingly chosen to benefit from such unfairness, for what purpose I know not.

Certainly, as in any unregulated market, there are some shady operators and scams. But by doing research and reading about the experiences of other users at the sites at which one plays, one can avoid the majority of these disreputable sites.

Also, this:

"I assume you are not a US citizen or resident then or else you've just asked for the US "justice" department to have a "word" with you ... something about online gambling being utterly illegal in the US, severe criminal penalties and other some such trifles."

Is kinda loltastic. Far from "online gambling being utterly illegal in the US", the laws on this subject are very convoluted and subject to multiple interpretations. And in any case, the applicable Federal laws criminalize financial institutions and gambling operators, rather than players. There is no "severe criminal penalty" at the Federal level for PLAYING online poker. The different states have their own laws, and I believe Washington State has made it illegal to play online poker.

Re:Fed up

[Antisyzygy]

People here hate MBA's because its one of the easiest degrees to get in graduate school but also these people end up making big bucks later in life more often than not producing nothing. Also, people hate managers. There are too many good for nothing ones that make a better paycheck than you and they end up getting credit off of your efforts. You end up with MBA's in charge of engineers that went to school the same amount of time with a much harder curriculum than they did. Even a undergrad engineer has a harder time than a MBA student. I know this because I too have a bright friend that went to school at a pretty prestigious school for an MBA. I saw how often he did not have homework and how easy the homework was. Compared to my math curriculum its a joke. No doubt ivy league MBA's are harder than most other MBA's but imagine what your friend could do for the world with a MS in engineering, medicine or science from the same school?

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

If they were rigged or rife with collusion, it would seem that I was unwittingly chosen to benefit from such unfairness, for what purpose I know not.

Its simply law of large numbers and probabilities combined with basic psychology.

You are very likely, due to the nature of such sites, which we already covered, both a beneficiary and a victim of things that go on there, but you simply do not perceive it being so due to your, by very nature of personal perception, very narrow sample of the data that comprises the whole of the process. Also one must take into account that the people truly victimized (i.e. to the point that they actually strongly object) comprise a minority on a typical site and as soon as they take action, they get kicked out and their voices muted as far as the site is concerned. And so unless you happen to have a personal relationship outside of the site, you'll never know.

This dynamics is very common. Lots of people get abused by large companies, like for example cellular carriers, and yet the number of customers lost is a tiny proportion of the customers kept by inertia, marketing gimmicks and so on. The level of "dissatisfaction" required to drop out of a social addiction, like incessant texting to friends or, say, playing online poker is quite high.

Certainly, as in any unregulated market, there are some shady operators and scams. But by doing research and reading about the experiences of other users at the sites at which one plays, one can avoid the majority of these disreputable sites.

As I tried to point out to you, there is no way to ensure even most basic "fairness" in most online games, simply due to the nature of communications and the technology involved. Even the best meaning casino operator is powerless to do so, and worse, his attempts at policing his casino would by definition lead to witch hunts (which is what you were proposing), making a mockery of the whole notion.

Its simply the dynamics of the thing.

So what you are really talking about here is perception of "shadiness", which can be a result of a successful campaign by a competitor or plain incompetence at public relations. Those who actually run shady operations are likely to appear the slickest and "safest" of all - its one of their top priorities, a prerequisite of the scam actually working.

Also, making money on poker is a rather curious thing.

That is, some people, due to combination of slightly better then average skill and copious amounts of plain dumb luck manage to get ahead in such environments. Unfortunately there is no way of telling how much the skill versus the dumb luck played a role.

A complete idiot, by pure chance, can win 1000s of poker games and then claim himself a poker genius. We will hear all about his great poker prowess, while a few millions of other idiots, following exactly the same procedure but not being so lucky we will never hear about. The idiot in question will then write inspirational books on the subject and become even richer selling his "The complete idiots guide to being a poker genius in 7 easy steps", gather cult-like following of religious zealots awed by his "genius" and things usually go down hill from there.

Such is the nature of large numbers and probabilities.

The same pattern is plainly visible in other places: stock market, Forex, various business ventures. In every case the people in question, always, without fail, smugly attribute all of their success to their "skill" and "foresight" and no one seems to ask basic questions about all the fortuitous chances stacked one upon another that made their "self made" success possible.

Frankly, since I am quite familiar with game theory, as far as my understanding of the mechanics of online poker goes, there is no such thing as a "winning strategy", only a "loss management" strategy, since most players will use the same card counting bots, bet calculators and pop-pseudo-psy

Re:Fed up

[mikes007]

Its simply law of large numbers and probabilities combined with basic psychology.

You are very likely, due to the nature of such sites, which we already covered, both a beneficiary and a victim of things that go on there, but you simply do not perceive it being so due to your, by very nature of personal perception, very narrow sample of the data that comprises the whole of the process.

OK, if I am both a beneficiary and a victim of these shenanigans, such that they roughly cancel each other out, then my results (over the long term) should not be much affected by them, right? Remember I am not claiming that absolutely 0 cheating occurs; merely that the amount of cheating and/or collusion is minute. I do have a narrow sample of data as a fraction of all data which is available. But I do have an amount of data on my play which I believe is statistically significant.

Also one must take into account that the people truly victimized (i.e. to the point that they actually strongly object) comprise a minority on a typical site and as soon as they take action, they get kicked out and their voices muted as far as the site is concerned. And so unless you happen to have a personal relationship outside of the site, you'll never know.

I know of no large, reputable site where people have their accounts confiscated for merely complaining. Certainly the support staff will become acquainted with the most vociferous and vocal conspiracy-theorists, and perhaps will not treat their concerns as seriously as they would a more rational customer; but it is not the policy of the large poker rooms to penalize players who make frivolous complaints to support. If you do have evidence of such actions being taken against yourself or other players, I recommend you start a thread in a popular poker forum so that the community can be informed of it.

This dynamics is very common. Lots of people get abused by large companies, like for example cellular carriers, and yet the number of customers lost is a tiny proportion of the customers kept by inertia, marketing gimmicks and so on. The level of "dissatisfaction" required to drop out of a social addiction, like incessant texting to friends or, say, playing online poker is quite high.

That abuse is possible is not evidence that abuse is happening.

As I tried to point out to you, there is no way to ensure even most basic "fairness" in most online games, simply due to the nature of communications and the technology involved. Even the best meaning casino operator is powerless to do so, and worse, his attempts at policing his casino would by definition lead to witch hunts (which is what you were proposing), making a mockery of the whole notion.

I have stated several means by which poker room operators can take action against collusion/fraud/cheating. I am not claiming that every single instance of cheating can be avoided; rather I'm claiming that the level of cheating can be substantially reduced by choosing wise policies and hiring competent game security personnel. The operators of these sites are by no means powerless in this matter. I do not think "fairness" is an all-or-nothing proposal. There can be different levels of fairness, and as I've pointed out before, a game where cheating occurs in 50% of hands is very different from a game where cheating occurs in 0.1% of hands.

So what you are really talking about here is perception of "shadiness", which can be a result of a successful campaign by a competitor or plain incompetence at public relations. Those who actually run shady operations are likely to appear the slickest and "safest" of all - its one of their top priorities, a prerequisite of the scam actually working.

Again, some scams can certainly happen due to slick marketing. But once the word spreads of their scams, other players will avoid the site in question. Good poker players

Re:Fed up

[GrahamTZ]

Full disclosure: I was a "professional" poker player in that for a period of 8 months my sole income was from online poker playing while I put myself through paramedic school.

You both make some interesting points.

My main thing to ask all to consider is that it is in a poker site's best interest to keep the games as fair as possible. The sites have no interest in which individual players win or lose, they make money from the rake (% of $ taken from each pot) regardless. More players playing = more money made.

Any perception that the site is doing something shady will result in fewer people playing and therefore the site will make less money. It's not even worth secretly pocketing 1/5/10% of players' table activity when that number will pale in comparison to the cumulative rake of all action.

One point about sites showing different hands to different players is not a possibility. Any random person can always railbird a table (view the action without actually sitting and playing.) This deception would be discovered immediately.

This possibility of anonymous statistics gathering also serves as a check in that it would be discovered if a poker site's random hand generator is not random.

As far as gov't getting involved, it seems silly to not regulate (to ensure "fairness"), legalize and tax it. Saying "it's illegal" will not stop people from playing, it will just give people shadier options.

Re:Fed up

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I started to reply to you but unfortunately I just run out of spare time to craft multi-page-mega-post replies. Maybe another time.

Hmm

[Antisyzygy]

I didn't realize online poker was illegal. However, the other things they were pulling is pretty bad.

Re:Hmm

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

As far as I can tell from TFA the "other things they were pulling" were workarounds to the fact that online gambling is illegal. ie, they lied to banks about the nature of their business, thus the charge of "fraud".

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Its only illegal for non-US gambling sites. Its a clear violation of WTO rules but being the only superpower/bully left, the US doesn't care.

Re:Hmm

[jonbryce]

Online poker and other forms of online gambling are illegal in the US. The money laundering and bank fraud offences relate to collecting the gambling stakes from punters wishing to play the games.

Re:Hmm

[Antisyzygy]

Laundering and fraud are also from disguising purchases as other things. I.e. 100 dollars to a "golf company" that actually goes into your gambling account.

Re:Hmm

[Antisyzygy]

Yeah. I just didn't realize online gambling was illegal. Coming from Montana, there is a casino attached to almost every gas station, and then a bunch of bigger self-contained restaurant casinos. You could perhaps understand my naivety since its literally everywhere where I am from.

Re:Hmm

[NetShadow]

Online poker where the server is run outside the United States, does *not* appear to be illegal in the US. At least the wire act used to prosecute people sending money to sports books and the like does not appear to apply to poker specifically, nor has anyone in the US been successfully prosecuted for online poker. What *is* illegal as of the recent UIGEA act is for banks to provide you the ability to send your money to / receive money from these online gaming sites. Regardless of the facts, many state and federal officials persist in calling online poker illegal, despite it not apparently breaking any laws.

Re:Hmm

[Antisyzygy]

So then really they are committing fraud and money laundering, not so much the fact that their business is illegal. Thanks.

Re:Hmm

[Fynnsky]

I'm too lazy to RTFA, but assuming they didn't use fake names, didn't the banks realize that "POKER STARS" was a gambling website? While you're at it, can I have an account for my "StuffedBaldEagles.com" and "CheapCrack.net" websites?

Re:Hmm

[MLease]

Well, that's why online gambling is illegal. The guys behind those casinos don't want the competition, and have paid their lackeys in Congress to keep them off the playing field.

-Mike

Re:Hmm

[Nick_13ro]

So then really they are committing fraud and money laundering, not so much the fact that their business is illegal. Thanks.

Umm, nope. It's more like the government one morning covering all the sidewalks with sharp spikes and then arresting anybody that avoids the spikes the only way left available- the road, for jaywalking or for blocking traffic.

Re:Hmm

[dnahelicase]

As far as I can tell from TFA the "other things they were pulling" were workarounds to the fact that online gambling is illegal. ie, they lied to banks about the nature of their business, thus the charge of "fraud".

Yeah, you don't want to lie to banks. Otherwise they'll lose money and we'll have to bail them out.

Domain seizures though? When is the US going to figure out that domain seizures are a) ineffective and b) pissing off the rest of the world to the point that they will want to take it out of US control to do that?

I mean, you can take US property, seize accounts in the US, etc - but the domain seizures shouldn't happen when the business isn't physically located in the US.

Weren't credit card processors already banned from dealing with them? How much do you want to pursue people that just want to play online poker?

Re:Hmm

[Antisyzygy]

Its still fraud. Lying about the true nature of a financial transaction is fraud.

Re:Hmm

[LordLimecat]

So, in your eyes, its perfectly OK to break several laws (fraud etc) so that you can break an entirely different law (outlawing online gambling), just because they disagree with said law?

I was under the impression that it was the duty of our Justice department to prosecute those who break laws, whether or not people agree with them-- that is, unless someone wants to pull the "but its like Rosa Parks" card, and insist that some gross violation of human rights is being performed here?

Re:Hmm

[ZombieBraintrust]

It may not be in your state. But it is probably illegal in New York where this is being prosecuted.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not illegal. It's the transfer of money to US-based sites is illegal, not playing itself.

Re:Hmm

[Nick_13ro]

Its still fraud. Lying about the true nature of a financial transaction is fraud.

And pray, are you a cretin or just a government employed psychopath ? If the government leaves you no option but to be a criminal or close up an otherwise non-harmful (and funny enough, legal) business why do you support the government ? Not to mention they're just prosecuting something as fraud where there's no injured party. Or are you one of those idiots that support the law no matter how wrong and unjust ? And don't give me an answer like "I'm just stating the facts". If you care to emphasize such insanity without condemning it, you are in fact supporting it like the state owned slave that you are.

Re:Hmm

[Antisyzygy]

There has to be laws against fraud, otherwise it would be rampant. Though this particular case may be bullshit, it doesn't matter. I state facts. If it were prohibition I would be a bootlegger. That answer it for you?

Re:Hmm

[Nick_13ro]

There has to be laws against fraud, otherwise it would be rampant. Though this particular case may be bullshit, it doesn't matter. I state facts. If it were prohibition I would be a bootlegger. That answer it for you?

I suppose. If you'd have replied saying this is anything else than bullshit I'd suggest that you be declared a public slave by law which you'd naturally have no choice but to support given your unquestioning obedience to the law. :)

Re:Hmm

[blair1q]

No.

Online gambling has been illegal for decades.

It's because long ago when bookies were the only game in town, and organized crime was in charge of all bookies, it was another way to fight organized crime.

Still is. Just because the organization has a tax ID doesn't make it an honest company. These guys proved it in spades.

Re:Hmm

[blair1q]

No, it's illegal.

The Wire Act, which is decades old, defines transmitting gambling information across state lines via wire (and by wire they mean any communications medium, even if it's radio or satellite or Aldis lamp) as a crime, and the borders of the nation are indeed state lines. Putting the servers offshore made it (nearly) impossible to prosecute the server operators, and it has always been a pain in the ass to detect the gambling information on the net and link it to the little fish who are playing, but the fact that it was unstoppable didn't make it legal.

In order to choke them, the feds changed the law to make it illegal to send them money (money and gambling information being different things, the Wire Act didn't make that illegal, and RICO and existing money-laundering laws apparently didn't apply). So the gambling sites, having operated with impunity, decided that the law just didn't apply to them if they could hide from it, and created these electronic bag-men, and a form of monetary bootlegging.

But they've been caught at it and indicted for it and insofar as they can be brought to trial they will pay for it.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Online gambling is legal in the U.S. But, and this is the critical part, it has to be 100% U.S. players only and cannot ever go outside of the U.S. or accept accounts from overseas. They have to run an entirely different company from the one that they run for the rest of the world(in most cases). The money, management, and personnel cannot touch each other. It also cannot accept players or funds from specific places in the U.S. that don't allow it, which is a small but hard to deal with minority. Given the nature of the Internet and online businesses, and that all of these operate outside of the U.S. to evade taxes, this all is essentially impossible to enforce as well as comply with the laws.

Some Vegas casinos do have online gambling, you'll note. Hustler just put up one today in response to this FBI sting.

Re:Hmm

[tsotha]

Nah. Online gambling isn't illegal. What's illegal is for banks to do business with online gambling companies. In theory as long as you had money at one of these establishments before the banking laws changed you can continue to play. Of course, you can't get your money back out if you win.

Re:Hmm

[Kalriath]

So, in your eyes, its perfectly OK to break several laws (fraud etc)

I'm not entirely convinced it's fraud - breach of contract by telling lies to the credit card processors, maybe.

so that you can break an entirely different law (outlawing online gambling)

Which is not illegal. They're foreign nationals committing acts that are completely legal on their home turf. However, the US government believes it's within its jurisdiction to prosecute them for the heinous crime of being in perfect compliance with their own laws.

Re:Hmm

[GasparGMSwordsman]

Online gambling is not a Federal crime (some States have laws prohibiting it). The 2006 UIGA only prohibits international money transfers. Further the same day as the seizure and arrests, Congress passed a law specifically setting the tax rate for online gambling in Washington, District of Columbia.

I can say this as someone who has read the law numerous times since its passage and followed this issue and the relevant case law for years.

You can read it for your self in 31 U.S.C. ÂÂ 5361â"5367:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/31/5361.html

This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck is this story listed under "Censorship"?? The internet domain seizure is but a small piece of a huge case the Feds are bringing, and it has nothing do with censorship at all.

Its all a part of charging these sites with bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling offenses.

As usual Slashdot gets the story completely wrong.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[cosm]

I would venture to say it is censorshipbecause these sites have to operate this way because if they explicitly stated they are gambling business, they would be turned away at the banks. Whilst the laws being broken are not directly related to gambling, they are being broken because Americans politicians want to censor the idea of gambling from the national conscience. Wasn't Capone brought in for tax evasion? They use whatever law is on the books, but the those subsidiary laws are broken as a symptom of a greater underlying law. IE Prohibition and all that jazz. If these gambling sites are rigged or are really just straight stealing money without offering real odds and certified RNGs, then I see your point, otherwise I see it as censorship.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Charliemopps]

Amendment V to the United States Constitution

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States

Explain to me how a Government body can seize your private property when you have not even been charged with a crime yet, much less convicted. In the case of these businesses, the seizure is likely costing them millions of dollars in revenue. Their guilt is obvious but if the government can shut down your entire business by simply filing an indictment, which is not even an accusation until a grand jury reviews it, that is without a doubt censorship.

What if the the justice department files an indictment against a major candidate for president for election fraud and shuts down his website in the middle of an election? What they can do to the unsavory, they can do to us all.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Lehk228]

because there isn't a "suppressing major campaign donor's competition" section?

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

has nothing do with censorship at all.

So what the fuck is "censorship" now? First we had dweebs declare that self-censorship isn't "censorship" despite the fact that it's named "censorship" because "boo hoo only governments can censor blah blah blah". Then the dweebs declared that corporations refusing to publish stuff due to moral objections isn't censorship despite the fact that the people they employ to make this decision are titled "censors" because "only governments blah blah blah".

So, dweeb, now the government is shutting down websites and it's not censorship because...?

Protip: just because you don't like what the people the government was shutting down were doing, doesn't make it "not censorship".

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, they haven't charged any of the executives of the various banks that cost society considerably more than these three companies ever could, even in their wildest dreams of corporate raping of the populace.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[rahvin112]

You think this is new? All the seizure laws were re-written during the war on drugs to allow blatant constitutional violations. We sold our rights away to incarcerate non violent users of consumable products, most plant based. This isn't new, and it's not going away, it took government 30 years to whittle away private property protections and they aren't going back.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[ZombieBraintrust]

You don't actually own domain names. You don't buy a domain names. You register them. The US government controls the registration or .com names. They can kick you off of a domain name the same way Slashdot can ban your account. Your rites are based of the contract you signed when you registered the domain.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

The government can seize a tinfoil hat if it has crack cocaine residue on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Seizure

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Uhm. Due process. They had warrants and reasonable cause to seize domains, equipment and conduct an investigation into the nature of these businesses.

If they had to ask nicely whether or not they were committing any crimes, do you honestly think the criminals will just willingly hand over incriminating evidence?

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It all revolves around "due process of law". That language comes from the Magna Carta. Literally all it means is that the King can do whatever he wants, as long as he does it orderly and consistently. It never implied any limitations on the power, only its execution. These days we read all sorts of substantive limitations in the due process clause (like not being tortured), but they're very minimal compared to the much more explicit rights granted, like requirements for just compensation or freedom of the press.

If the assets were frozen you can bet that there was a well-defined process followed. And that's all that's required at this stage. Civil forfeiture and other issues get more complicated, but we're only at stage 1.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Charliemopps]

Why was it necessary for them to replace the offending website with their own message? This is no different than if the government charged you with a crime, confiscated your house and then painted on the outside of your door "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO ENEMIES OF THE STATE"

If you don't think it's a threat, read it for yourself: http://absolutepoker.com/
That right there is a message from your federal government, to all of us.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[blair1q]

Dude. Indictment = charge.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

To alert users what's going on rather than just leave a blank nothing?

Sure it's a threat, but, last time I checked, it was the Government's job to enforce the law.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Lemme put it to you this way.

How is this any different than wrapping a house with that "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" yellow tape they wrap busted crack and methlabs with?

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

if the sites are actually online gamboling,
this is like saying you cant arrest someone for attempted murder when they are repeatedly stabbing someone
because the person isn't dead yet and they haven't had a trial..

i get your point, but I think the analogy is a bit misplaced

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is fairly reasonable. What if the crime involved immediate harm to someone else? What if the business was related to hiring assassins? Do you let the business continue to operate and people continue to be killed until charges are proven? Operations like that need to be shut down immediately. I agree with your point in that the government should be held liable for damages (for example lost revenue) should the charges be false, but there is definitely a need for allowing justice to intervene swiftly in cases where it is required.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not agree with the explanation, but there is one, and TFA gave you all the tools you'd need to understand it: in rem actions. In this instance, the DOJ is bringing suits against the property not the person. Is the domain name an instrumentality of criminal activity? Sure, online poker is illegal, and that's indeed what they do there. We use a preponderance of the evidence standard here in the US for such cases- and you'll note no constitutional prohibition against doing so, as well as the centuries-old common law basis. So it's more than a mere indictment- it's actually a case heard by a judge- and just like any other in rem action, any party with an interest in the property has standing to appear and argue for ownership. So your concern about some candidate or legitimate business is no more realistic than being concerned about the cops busting down a law-abiding citizen's door and arresting him or her. (That is, nothing really stops them except the repercussions and embarrassment of a judge yelling at them later.)
 
Imagine you've robbed a bank super-successfully. The government has no evidence against you and searches your house without a warrant and finds exactly the very bills stolen from that bank. They'll never criminally convict you, what with having no evidence except that which will be excluded because of the warrant issue. Are you still of the belief that they need to criminally convict you before they can take the stolen money back? Or should they go before a judge and argue that there's no way you have legitimate ownership of that money, giving you the opportunity to say "actually, I sold my Honus Wagner card for cash to some guy wearing a ski mask..."?

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

The sites are still running, Poker Stars moved their main site to a .eu domain. They will still continue to make their millions of dollars - just at a slightly lower rate as they now have lost 50% of their player base.

The same thing happened when the US passed the last law several years ago - Part Poker, the largest site by far at the time decided to drop US players and their stock value plummeted instantly.

Right now, the sites are having trouble dealing with the withdrawals.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Kalriath]

US government doesn't control .com names, Verisign does. It's a US company, subject to US laws, but it's still an important distinction. Which is to say, either Verisign or the domain registrars acted upon a seizure order without an actual judgement from a court, so don't forget that this game has more than one cheater.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see Slashcode that automatically mods down anybody who quotes an entire Constitutional amendment.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Charliemopps]

Because the police tape has a purpose that doesn't involve threatening and intimidating the public. To prevent people from contaminating a crime scene. In reality, they rarely even use the tape.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Charliemopps]

How does it help them enforce the law? A blank page would have been just as affective.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this any different than wrapping a house with that "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" yellow tape they wrap busted crack and methlabs with?

Because it says do not cross in stead of took part in XXX (even though it should be at least "is accused of").

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

mainly they can do this due to the fact the us constitution was designed to protect people, not corporations. once you incorporate, you pretty vmuch give up most rights under the constitution.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

No, it wouldn't have. First off, a blank page would confuse the hell out of people.

Second off, it's probably also a due process issue. It's a complete run down about WHY the domain was seized and gives anyone who's reading the seized domain all the information about what happened.

Stop it with your goddamned anti-Government crusade. Fulltilt, ultimatebet, and other such sites fucked up and broke the damned law.

Re:This Is Not About Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that's not at all true. See Citizens United where corporations get less restraint on their political speech than human beings.

Saving The World

[cosm]

Yes! Go Department of Justice! The world is now safe! Keep nannying us please! I can't control my gambling habit, so you doing it for me solves the problem! Oh, things like state-run-lotteries, white-collar gambling on stock market derivatives and other ill-formulated market bundles, that is all well and good. But those evil-online-poker sites, they are causing the downfall of the US! Just like the millions spent on the Barry Bonds trial! All the victims of gambling and steroid use in baseball now can see that justice be served! The file-shares, go get them too! Litigate Litigate Litigate! You are the bastion of liberty in the free-world, 'O DoJ, I salute your valiant efforts at keeping us all safe.

Fucking Assholes.

Re:Saving The World

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for posting that. It demonstrates perfectly why so many people regard this site, despite its often high-quality content, as a crowd of people acting like a party of 14-year holds who've managed to get someone to buy them bottles of vodka.

If your comment really illustrates how you view the world, then I feel sorry for anyone you live or work with.

Re:Saving The World

[imric]

My YOU have a high opinion of your own stuffed shirt, don't you?

Re:Saving The World

[gpuk]

How so? A lot of his points seem valid to me.

I particularly liked: "white-collar gambling on stock market derivatives" - the SEC has done a fucking piss poor job of regulating Wall Street over the last decade or so, laying the path for Madoff and friends to take some of the biggest gambles and pull off some of the largest frauds in corporate history. If that's government regulation at work, I'll take my chances with the self-regulation of the online poker world.

Re:Saving The World

[IgnoramusMaximus]

You forgot all of these banksters engaging in far worse fraud and gambling (with other people's money to boot) to the tune of trillions of dollars, not to mention actual money laundering for actual, card-carrying members of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels!

But going after DoJ officials' cocktail-party-circuit buddies would be "looking back instead to the future" or some such.

Those eeevil online gambling sites (who take all the money that rightfully belongs in the "official's" pockets and those of their Las Vegas cronies), now there is an outrage!

Re:Saving The World

[gpuk]

Those would be the friends of Madoff. Very nicely put though :)

Re:Saving The World

[Anonymous Coward]

Fleecing the government out of a few billion is not worth going after them? Especially during a time when the politicians are finding ways to cut anything from the millions to the trillions? Perhaps its not the most worthwhile cause, but it certainly sends the message that fleecing the government is bad.

Re:Saving The World

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont know who youare but I think I love you:}

Re:Saving The World

[Anonymous Coward]

You've said it all

This seems better...

[Anonymous Coward]

...than taking URL's based on some ass hat's accusation that someone associated with the site is posting copyrighted materials at that URL.... I'm just saying

What's going to be their new TLD?

[tacokill]

Wouldn't it be easy for them to get a new top level domain? Where is pokerstars.biz or pokerstars.info or pokerstars.cc? I didn't look very hard so they may have already done this.

I suppose it's obvious that these domain seizures are nothing more than a minor speedbump and and really only specific to TLD's managed in the US. Thankfully, there are countless TLDs that are not US based so choices are aplenty.

I wish they took bets on how quickly they will be back....

Re:What's going to be their new TLD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish they took bets on how quickly they will be back....

They probably would have, but, there was no place to post the bet... chicken/egg

Re:What's going to be their new TLD?

[bfree]

In the meantime you can just edit your hosts file: 77.87.179.116 www.pokerstars.com

Amazingly neither pokerstars.com nor their blog site have any news about this yet.

My ISPs dns servers are already dishing out the hijacked IPs for the other two domains (50.17.223.71) but I'm sure someone here can find the old IP addresses.

As for betting when they will be back, you want a regular bookie for that (not a poker site), perhaps betfair or Paddy Power. Notice I gave the links to their sites on their home nations TLD despite the fact that both currently redirect them to .com.

Re:What's going to be their new TLD?

[bfree]

And guess what, pokerstars also have their home ccTLD variant redirecting to .com right now, but I bet that redirect doesn't last too much longer as is! They also have .co.uk (redirecting to .com/uk/) and .com.au which more interestingly redirects to .net which apparently has NOT been claimed by the USDOJ. And then there is pokerstars.eu (used in the MX on their .net) and probably many more.

Full Tilt have .co.uk redirecting to .net which again seems untouched by the USDOJ. Absolute Poker also seem to own the .co.uk though it's not responding and their .com whois suggests either .ca or .ag would be their home ccTLDS and they own neither (someone else has .ca and .ag is NOT FOUND).

Re:What's going to be their new TLD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Full Hosts file workaround instructions:

http://pastebin.ca/2046988

Re:What's going to be their new TLD?

[sincewhen]

Yes, it's interesting that they seize domain names.
If they find and break up a physical gambling den, do they seize the phone numbers?

Re:What's going to be their new TLD?

[Kalriath]

pokerstars.net is actually a free-play poker site, no money involved. It's the variant commonly used in their advertising on television and tournament sponsorship in countries where advertising an online gambling site is illegal. Since it's likely illegal even to forward a .com.au to an online gambling site, they redirect it to their free play site in order to get past regulations - they assume most people will see the .net in the address and think to try .com as well, and lo! a for-pay gambling site.

Does anyone have a link to the indictment itself?

[AEton]

The Slashdot article links to a press release about the indictment (http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/April11/scheinbergetalindictmentpr.pdf), not the indictment itself.

In understanding legal issues, I am all about "reading the source code". Has anyone found a copy of the actual indictment itself that lists all the details about what these folks are being charged with?

Even better would be a link to the criminal complaint which I assume preceded the indictment. Those things are usually dozens of pages long, full of fascinating, juicy facts, and end up being filtered by the news media into reports that sometimes skip some of the cool details you can see yourself if you "read the source code" of the complaint. I'd be eager to see this, but so far none of the news sources reporting on the issue have disclosed it.

lobbying and online poker

[BigHungryJoe]

The online poker industry is young yet and has not had time to establish a strong lobby in Washington, DC. Once they do, it will become a respectable, job-creating industry run by innovators that make this economy strong... and these sorts of stories will disappear.

Re:lobbying and online poker

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably won't make any jobs here - much cheaper to pay 10 dudes in China to make your Poker application.

Re:lobbying and online poker

[Anonymous Coward]

Once they do [establish a strong lobby]...

...they will resume cleaning out little old ladies on a much larger scale, and malcontents like you will complain about the corporations that make up the online poker industry.

Re:lobbying and online poker

[brian_tanner]

Actually I know multiple PhD and Masters graduates who studied AI at Canadian and US Universities that have gone on to work for the top-tier online poker companies. Some of them work in Ireland, where Full Tilt's HQ is. Not China. It is run like any other business over there, not some shady racket. I also know for a fact that employees are not allowed to play on live servers.

I presume if they were not afraid of being arrested and hassled some of these companies would setup shop in North America. It would make it easier to attract talent.

Re:lobbying and online poker

[blair1q]

The online poker industry has been around for over 20 years.

That they have no clout despite making money faster than they can replace ink in a counterfeiting press is testament to the fact that they're fucking cunts.

GOATSE

[MikeB0Lton]

goatse troll warning...

great, now where will the poker players play?

[Nyder]

Now they are going to be without a place to play, and might actually do something constructive with their lives.

Wait? What? There's more online poker games for them to go play?

Great work again, Gov. I see my tax money is being used responsibly, mainly in this time of buget cuts.

Stupid twats.

Re:great, now where will the poker players play?

[Anonymous Coward]

www.pokerstars.net

They didn't get all their domain names

Re:great, now where will the poker players play?

[Kalriath]

They don't play for cash on pokerstars.net. That's free-play (and they can't repurpose it either, because it's used in advertising and sponsorship deals in a lot of countries where advertising for-pay online gambling is illegal).

The 2011 WSOP, live from Leninworth Penitentary!

[Anonymous Coward]

Daniel Negreanu just went all in with 2 cartons of Marlboros, a carton of Camels, 4 packs of 305's and his bitch, Mike Matusow.

Punching, not poking

[mangu]

I thought that a victimless crime was when you punch people in the dark, not when you poke them.

still open

[Anonymous Coward]

my "friend" is playing on poker stars right now...they are not closed yet.

Re:still open

[horza]

Presumably playing via the downloadable client, not a web based interface on their site. The client will still work as it undoubtedly uses a different DNS to connect to. It would be foolish for the client to use the same, and make it a single point of failure in a DDoS or DNS attack.

Phillip.

fulltiltpoker?

[siegfri3d]

fulltiltpoker.com works for me. However absolutepoker.com, pokerstars.com and ultimatebet.com are all 0wn3d by the FBI. Does it mean fulltiltpoker

Re:fulltiltpoker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pokerstars.net Pokerstars.com and AbsolutePoker.com are all still in tact here. however UltimateBet.com is seized.

Re:fulltiltpoker?

[siegfri3d]

Grr posted too quicky. Does it mean fulltiltpoker.com somehow got access to the DNS back? Any information on how they block them exactly? The last time when they blocked atdhe.net they took ownership of the email on the whois to change the DNS. It doesn't seem they change whois data. So they may have made a mistake with fulltiltpoker.com...

Re:fulltiltpoker?

[siegfri3d]

Nevermind i think it's only my DNS not being refreshed quickly enough. All 4 domains are blocked!! I'm really curious to know the full list of blocked domains.

Re:fulltiltpoker?

[Anonymous Coward]

fulltiltpoker.com is now offline, but fulltiltpoker.net is still functioning. I believe the .com address was a cash play environment and the .net address for tournaments and free play (play money). If this is the case then FullTilt was pretty smart to bifurcate the functionality/business lines this way.

Re:fulltiltpoker?

[stonedcat]

I wonder if the MafiaaFire Redirector addon will be updated for these sites or not.

And end to poker spam as we know it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or am I being too optimistic?

Washington D.C. Legalizes Gambling

[lothos]

http://www.gambling911.com/gambling-news/online-gambling-becomes-legalized-united-states-thanks-washington-dc-041211.html

"Washington, D.C., with its under 1 million population, has become the first jurisdiction in the United States to legalize online gambling.

The District of Columbia is looking to raise millions of dollars from a multi-billion dollar industry that, until now, has operated exclusively offshore from the United States. That apparently is about to change."

"Players are really loyal in this industry," Ifrah said. "You really have to ask yourself what is the incentive a player is going to have to leave a trusted site with global competition to play in a site that's untested and kind of unknown and doesn't offer you the same level of play."

Looks to me like they just want to get rid of the competition.

Re:Washington D.C. Legalizes Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

Except DC's Government and the Federal Government pretty much hate each other....

Re:Washington D.C. Legalizes Gambling

[blair1q]

Reasonable. Offshore sites act illegally, so fuck 'em. Bring the business home.

It is all about money... US not getting its share

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the lawyers could learn how to play poker and win, then give the money to the US treasury.

I happened to be on PokerStars when the news broke. I was able to continue to play, but then I signed off and I couldn't get back in. There are going to be millions of US poker players who are going to be highly pissed off. Especially, if they can't get their deposits back.

This is ridiculous

[gpuk]

This domain seizure trend is getting out of hand. If the FBI, ICE and DOJ keep this up, it's going to finish with the UN administering the root servers.

I'm a paying, European customer of Full Tilt Poker... I hope this domain seizure doesn't interfere with FTPs non-US operations. What jurisdiction do they have to decide whether or not I can exercise my legal right to engage in an online card game for money?

I noticed that the forums are still up: http://pokerforums.fulltiltpoker.com/

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

This domain seizure trend is getting out of hand. If the FBI, ICE and DOJ keep this up, it's going to finish with the UN administering the root servers.

That won't be any better - the problem isn't who controls the DNS, its centralized control itself that is the failure point. Where it needs to end up is some sort of distributed "web of trust" domain system which can't be easily censored. It will mean name resolution won't be 100% consistent for all users, but seizures and the games that ICANN and WIPO play where the people with the most expensive lawyers get to say who owns what domain means we aren't necessarily that consistent today either.

Re:This is ridiculous

[gpuk]

Bad form to reply to my own post I know but FYI www.fulltiltpoker.org is still up as are the .fr and .it sites (as one would hope)

Re:This is ridiculous

[DigiShaman]

it's going to finish with the UN administering the root servers.

That actually may be the whole point. The Feds may be trying to engineer the handover of the TLDs to the UN. They're just trying to piss everyone off enough for the UN to take the initiative rather than the US be so blatant about it. If I had to guess, China's pulling the strings for this to happen. I wonder what kind of back-room deals are being made now they own so much of our debt.

Re:This is ridiculous

[gpuk]

Couldn't agree more. I didn't mean to imply that handing root control to the UN was a good thing :)

Re:This is ridiculous

[blair1q]

The game was up when ICANN took over for IANA. Making ICANN a department of the UN is like throwing another chicken bone on the compost heap.

B.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing to do with the law its 100% about siphoning money to the government. Take from the rich and give to the richer its a revers robin hood that's all that American government is about these days.

Barf

[FallinWithStyle]

“These defendants, knowing full well that their business with U.S. customers and U.S. banks was illegal, tried to stack the deck,” said Janice Fedarcyk, assistant director-in-charge at the FBI. “The defendants bet the house that they could continue their scheme, and they lost."

Did anyone else almost throw up when they read this?

Illegal Gambling! Duh!

[XiaoMing]

The statement on the site warns that taking part in an illegal gambling business is a federal crime. “It is also a federal crime to knowingly accept, in connection with the participation of another person in unlawful Internet gambling, credit, electronic fund transfers, or checks," the warning said.

Yeah! Don't these idiots know that this type of risky gambling behavior is only allowed for people's life savings and investments, and only to be done so by giant financial corporations who knowingly deceive the general public?!

According to the indictment, the offshore poker companies continued to operate in the U.S. despite...

And these guys are OFFSHORE and operating in our beloved US?!?! What kind of blatant hypocrisy is this. I miss the good old days of [right now] when home-grown companies like GE funnel the money they've earned to off-shore accounts and pay zero dollars in taxes on the money they made off of the American people with full support from the government. Who do these hypocritical poker bastards think they are!

You've gotta spend money to not make money

[jtownatpunk.net]

Instead of spending all this money to stamp out online poker, why won't they regulate and tax it? This demonizing makes absolutely no sense. Especially when our country's not exactly flush with cash. The way our government spends money to eliminate the possibility of making money continues to amaze me.

Re:You've gotta spend money to not make money

[Anonymous Coward]

You misunderstand, the US has a strong, local gambling industry, just think of all the horse and dog tracks around the nation. Each little locality has something that they allow (state lottery, track or sports betting, casinos, etc.). The individual states don't want to compete with offshore stuff that doesn't have to pay for massive complexes, pay as many employees, or pay US level of taxes much like Best Buy would rather not compete with Amazon.com.

What about customer's money now

[Anonymous Coward]

Real nice now shut them down so that all the people that have money on those sites really have no way to get it back now.... smart!

Online poker may not be illegal, sending money is

[NetShadow]

Online poker where the server is run outside the United States, may not be illegal in the US. At least the wire act used to prosecute people sending money to sports books and the like does not appear to apply to poker specifically, nor has anyone in the US been successfully prosecuted for online poker.

What *is* illegal as of the recent UIGEA act is for banks to provide you the ability to send your money to / receive money from these online gaming sites. Regardless of the facts, many state and federal officials persist in calling online poker illegal, despite it not apparently breaking any laws.

See this quote:

The indictment sets up a complicated global legal battle between the Department of Justice and the online poker entrepreneurs who have long argued that their operations in the U.S. do not violate U.S. law. Indeed, in recent days, one of the nation’s most prominent casino billionaires, Steve Wynn, announced a strategic relationship with PokerStars and said “in the United States of America the Justice Department has an opinion but several states have ruled and courts have agreed that poker is a game of skill, it’s not gambling. PokerStars rests their argument on that.”

Re:Does anyone have a link to the indictment itsel

[AEton]

OK, I did some digging in PACER, where it looks like the documents have probably been filed but are probably still sealed.

The relevant case is in the Southern District of New York (https://ecf.nysd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/ShowIndex.pl - anyone can sign up for a PACER account, they're free but you pay 8 cents per page, and if you charge less than $10 in a quarter it's free).

They're using an existing case, 1:10-cr-00336-LAK, which is all about the arrest and indictment of a gambling payment processor dude a year ago in April 2010.

See http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/arrests-follow-internet-high-flyers-release/story-e6frg6nf-1226039942478 for more on the dude.

So the timeline is:
1) Gambling dude is arrested in 2010 and charged with some gambling-related crimes. See his indictment at http://tech.mit.edu/~mherdeg/10-cr-00336-lak-1.pdf
2) Some time recently, he is (according to an Australian newspaper) secretly released from prison and prosecutors have not said whether he's still being charged
3) These 11 people are all being charged with 9 new crimes (documents not yet available, but apparently they'll be stored in this place / as part of this case number)

There have been a bunch of sealed documents added to the case recently; maybe they include the complaint and indictment that the press release talks about. You can see the history I got from PACER at http://tech.mit.edu/~mherdeg/10-cr-00336-entries.txt.

New law passed, coincidence?

[CrazyJim1]

DC 1rst place for online gambling! April 12th

This seems to be a many pronged approach. 1) The government loves to interfere with your life to give you the idea that you're being controlled, not them.
2) The government is going to make online gambling taxable, and wants no competition.
3) The government will seize all the cashouts for the next few months like they did in 2009 for extra money.

(The following is a joke, don't get upset), Obama must be tired of making spending cuts so he needs to take poker player's money :P

From what I can tell the law in 2009 said,"You can't deposit money", but I had my money on the site before 2009, I'm a winning poker player and as such I never have to deposit. I turned $1.20 into $1,300. If the US was smart, they'd let profitable poker players still play because we can bring in more money and buy more goods which helps the state's sales taxes.

Re:New law passed, coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between the Federal government and the DC government (well, mostly, it's a little bit complicated because the Federal government can basically overrule DC government at anytime.)

This is only temporary

[pwthoma]

All someone has to do to get around this is get the IP address for the website and add it to their hosts file.

All the provider (casino) needs to do to get around this and prevent it in the future is to register domains in other countries. I'm sure that's what they will do and then email all their customers. They can also build this into their clients if they don't use a web interface.

Not that hard....

Re:This is only temporary

[gpuk]

As far as I can tell this doesn't work for Full Tilt.

I might be wrong (only checked it quickly) but if you hit netcraft and feed it www.fulltiltpoker.com you get 91.211.98.20. Banging that in still gets you redirected to the FBI boilerplate. This is probably because Fulltilt have setup their default Vhost (for all requests that don't match any other Vhost) to redirect everything to www.fulltiltpoker.com (which in turn now seems to point to 50.17.223.71, inside an Amazon EC2 netblock).

Re:This is only temporary

[Anonymous Coward]

Hosts file workaround instructions:

http://pastebin.ca/2046988

USA SITES?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in Canada. Are these all US sites even? I gamble with an account in Great Britain (it makes me), what right does the USA have to seize domains? What a crock of shit.
    Exactly like someone else said, give them some fucking lobby in Washington to grease some loud mouths and this would never happen.

So basically I have to find a job?

[AA23ds]

Thank you DOJ for putting a bunch of tax payers out of work. For those saying online poker is illegal gambling, do a little bit of research.

Re:The 2011 WSOP, live from Leninworth Penitentary

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't mind going "all in" with Patrick Antonius on the pot. If you know what I mean.

-a respected Slashdot employee postings as anon

Civil Disobedience

[Anonymous Coward]

This issue is not at all about bank fraud. The U.S. government is too incompetent to regulate and tax online gambling, it is much easier to just ban it. For those of us not willing to tolerate an incompetent gate keeper we will keep marching on the path of civil disobedience. I quote Gandhi "...the moment we cease to support the government it dies a nature death".

In Canada...

[markian]

I'm in Canada, and only ultimatebet and absolutepoker are FBI'd. Fulltilt and pokerstars work fine. BTW, check out bwin.com! Pretty good site, but needs more north american players. Only problem is the blind dude who designed their poker room colours. Very pretty from a distance, painful to the eyes to actually PLAY! :-(

Re:In Canada...

[markian]

They're all down now. Bwin still works. This affects non-US players. I add my voice to those saying, keep your silly laws within your own borders and get off my poker servers.

the Synthetic CDO industry - online gambling

[decora]

considering that Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and the others perpetrated the entire Synthetic CDO mortgage pseudo ponzi scheme over TCP/IP networks, i have to wonder how long before the FBI gets around to seizing gs.com ?

there could find dozens, if not hundreds of financial experts to testify that Credit Default Swaps = gambling, and putting them in Synthetic CDOs = selling gambling in a bundle

people on medication for parkinson's disease

[decora]

there is a medicine for parkinsons' disease that has the side effect of causing brain chemistry changes that induce a pathological gambling addiction.

google it.

Re:people on medication for parkinson's disease

[JustOK]

i bet they'll find a cure soon.

Re:people on medication for parkinson's disease

[19thNervousBreakdown]

So if I sleep with a sex addict, I should go to jail for rape? Should websites with advertising be shut down for exploiting those with internet addictions? Is burying farmers under their own fields for catering to people addicted to eating going too far?

If it sounds ridiculous, that's because it is.

Re:people on medication for parkinson's disease

[theshowmecanuck]

Way to hyperbolize.

Re:people on medication for parkinson's disease

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Thanks? I guess you think you're calling me out on something, but I was intentionally comparing it to exaggerated, but similar hypothetical situations, and I thought it was obvious enough that I wouldn't be "tricking" anyone into agreeing with me.

But, upon reflection, I can totally see how you'd think I was trying to use ingeniously-disguised underhanded rhetoric when I suggested executing farmers for selling food, it was pretty subtle. My bad.

Re:people on medication for parkinson's disease

[theshowmecanuck]

On slashdot, what you posted can more often than not be a person's real beliefs.

And Wall street speculation isn't gambling?

[Anonymous Coward]

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

--Ambrose Bierce
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1251.html

Time for a new, decentralized DNS?

[hydrofix]

Obviously it does no good for the Internet that one government can dictate on the whole world, what it can and what not. In the face of this and the previous domain name seizures, what are the chances of building a new domain name system that can not be controlled?

Would it be possible to implement such system without upgrading the already-connected computers?

It is about a cynical and corrupt political system

[fnj]

Nobody HAS explained it to you because nobody CAN explain it to you. When your own government openly and brazenly flouts the constitution which is its full and sole authority, what recourse have you? I thought of condemning the voters for continually putting clowns into office, but how can it be their fault, if Tweedledum and Tweedledee are selected for them, and their only choice for every elected office is between two clowns?

Re:The 2011 WSOP, live from Leninworth Penitentary

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

and they lost and all going to jail xD

Letter do DOJ

[Anonymous Coward]

When i visit http://www.pokerstars.com/ I am greeted by a message indicating that illegal gambling is a federal crime. Unfortunately, in my country, I'm pretty sure this is legal. What gives the United States the authority to prevent me from going to a site when neither the site nor I am located in the United States? Also, why doesn't Pokerstars.com get the chance to a fair trial before their site is shut down causing them irepairable harm? The message on the site seems like a scare tactic, trying to scare me from going to a website for no reason.

The United States should not be running anything related to the world-wide Internet, and this and the recent seizing of other sites/domain names that while possibly illegal in the USA are perfectly legal in other jurisdictions are the perfect examples why.

The Hosts file lines: a quick workaround

[hydrofix]

If you want to workaroud this problem, add the following lines to your Hosts file.

Hosts file location:
Windows 95/98/Me C:\windows\hosts
Windows NT/2000/XP Pro C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows XP Home C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Linux/Unix/Mac: /etc/hosts

Under Linux/Unix/Mac you will need superuser privileges (su or sudo) to edit this file.

Add the following lines to the end of this file (do not touch the other lines) and save:

91.211.98.20 fulltiltpoker.com
91.211.98.20 www.fulltiltpoker.com
77.87.179.116 pokerstars.com
77.87.179.116 www.pokerstars.com
66.212.244.175 absolutepoker.com
66.212.244.175 www.absolutepoker.com

Hard-refresh the page (hit Ctrl+F5) in the browser, and the sites should load as normal.

You should remove the lines once the problem is fixed.

Re:The Hosts file lines: a quick workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

Or use http://mafiaafire.com/, a firefox plugin for "undoing" domain interference. I haven't actually checked but I assume the sites will be added like the others the USA scumbags are fucking with.

Two Plus Two forums going apeshit

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

People in the twoplustwo.com poker forums are going apeshit about this. Go there and see it yourself. Chances are none of them are getting their money back.

Re:Two Plus Two forums going apeshit

[Pinky's Brain]

Can't they just get someone with an European bank account to help them out?

Cash Out?

[Dunge]

What about our money?

Wow DoJ Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

If this was identity theft they would have wiretapped the servers for several months and then gone after the players(ala Shadowcrew). They don't want to discourage online poker. They want to create demand for the new Washington DC gambling haven!

WTF is wrong with our government?

Re:Online poker may not be illegal, sending money

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Only if online poker is illegal, processing transactions to them is illegal as well. If online poker is legal as you say, processing transactions there is legal as well. The most important part of this thing is the fraud & money laundering part, they will probably drop the illegal gambling part soon enough.

Vegas

[z-j-y]

The victim of this crime is Las Vegas.

Eventually all mafia realize that it's better to use government to do the violence.

If you want to throw away your money for thrill, go where only the government allows you to: Las Vegas or Wall Street.

Re:Vegas

[jonwil]

I don't think its the casinos that are against online gambling.

Of all the dollars spent on these poker sites, almost none of it would have gone to a B&M casino had the online site not existed. In fact, I suspect most of the large B&M casino operators (Wynn, Adelson, MGM etc) would rather see online gambling legalized and regulated so they could offer their own online casinos. and capture all the money they would otherwise get none of.

My guess is that the biggest opposition comes from states where gambling is banned (who hate online operations for getting around their bans) and from conservative Christian groups who think gambling of all kinds (poker included) is the tool of the devil.

Just Whose Money Is It?

[Nom du Keyboard]

Nice to know that in The Land of the Free, it's not really YOUR MONEY to do with as you wish. Instead it's your money to do with only what the government approves of, regardless of what may be legal anywhere else in the world.

For a country that has decided at the federal level NOT to enforce immigration laws and not permit the states to do so either, it is sure interesting that the greatest threat we obviously face these days is Internet Poker.

I do all my gambling at the ATM.

[Anonymous Coward]

I do all my gambling at the ATM.

When I work hard it pays out 100%.

  My kind of game.

Try it yourself sometime.... 'c',om...be there....be there....be there...

Re:I do all my gambling at the ATM.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't work half as hard as a rounder.

Regulation

[Anonymous Coward]

These online sites had no regulation. They could have just stacked the deck with a computer algorithm every time, or had house players cooperating with eachother at the table. My brother use to play these sites and he said many times there would be teams of players that all knew eachothers cards. It makes it a lot easier to find out what the other opponents have and bet accordingly with unfair advantage. They presumably split the winnings.

Respectfully, your brother is full of shit.

1) Some of the online poker sites *are* regulated. Countries such as Estonia, Belgium, France, Italy and others already provide or about to provide operating licenses. Google for details.

2) In order to get the license, the site has to follow strict rules, which include (but not limited to):
- Provide complete details on all players and all transactions (for tax purposes).
- Send every hand played to the regulatory body in near-real-time, or alternatively, save every hand played and provide them on demand. Statistical analysis will quickly find any discrepancy.
- Submit to security audits.
- Provide full access to the source code, source control, build environment...

3) While collusion can still happen, the sites work hard to combat to due to:
- The fear of losing their license.
- The fear of losing their players.
Contrary to what you believe, the more honest the site is, the more money it makes.

4) Therefore, the sites perform their own analysis to find colluders and other cheaters and boot them out. The sophistication and effectiveness of the tools is improving but it's an arms race.

5) Yes, I know what I'm talking about, but don't ask for sources -- there's a reason I'm posting AC.

Re:Online poker may not be illegal, sending money

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if online poker is illegal, processing transactions to them is illegal as well. If online poker is legal as you say, processing transactions there is legal as well.

No, not necessarily. Read the statute (you'll want to go back a section or two to read the definitions and findings). The UIGEA defines unlawful internet gambling thusly:

(10) Unlawful internet gambling.—
(A) In general.— The term “unlawful Internet gambling” means to place, receive, or otherwise knowingly transmit a bet or wager by any means which involves the use, at least in part, of the Internet where such bet or wager is unlawful under any applicable Federal or State law in the State or Tribal lands in which the bet or wager is initiated, received, or otherwise made.

There may well be laws which explicitly prohibit internet gambling, but the UIGEA isn't one of them.

The UIGEA prohibits sending or receiving checks, credit cards, and other financial instruments, but surprisingly, says nothing about accepting or sending cash.

Online poker: Not a Zero Sum game.

[Usagi_yo]

It's unfortunate and I have some sympathy with those that were able to beat the online game without cheating and who made their living and have now had their account balances confiscated. However lets face reality, that probably represents 3% or less of online poker players. Meaning that a good estimate is that 97% of online poker players simply lost. Losers complain, some I daresay, may even think they've been cheated, people who think they've been cheated most certainly complain. Looks like those complaints have been heard.

That started with "Swoopo"...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct sir, it's just gambling, not a real auction. For a while, "Swoopo" was the big site for that...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoopo

Oddly, it appears that Swoopo has gone bankrupt!?!

Re:Online poker may not be illegal, sending money

[EuclideanSilence]

The indictment sets up a complicated global legal battle between the Department of Justice and the online poker entrepreneurs who have long argued that their operations in the U.S. do not violate U.S. law. Indeed, in recent days, one of the nation’s most prominent casino billionaires, Steve Wynn, announced a strategic relationship with PokerStars and said “in the United States of America the Justice Department has an opinion but several states have ruled and courts have agreed that poker is a game of skill, it’s not gambling. PokerStars rests their argument on that.”

They must have seen Tombstone:

"Didn't you always say that gambling's an honest trade?"
"No. I said poker's an honest trade. Only suckers buck the tiger's odds all on the house."

PokerStars - still in business, apparently

[UttBuggly]

I am a fairly skilled poker player (have a positive bankroll) and play on PStars and Full Tilt, and have for years.

At least at this moment, MY accounts are still live and my money is still there. Didn't try to withdraw any, so that may be the litmus test.

But, I can still buy into a cash game or tourney, so I not sure what the DOJ has done that is having any actual effect on the sites doing business as usual.

Re:PokerStars - still in business, apparently

[geegel]

Well... so are the sites themselves, both the .com and the .net variants.

I smell a bit of FUD spreading.

Re:PokerStars - still in business, apparently

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unfortunate and I have some sympathy with those that were able to beat the online game without cheating and who made their living and have now had their account balances confiscated. http://abercrombie-it.com/ However lets face reality, that probably represents 3% or less of online poker players. Meaning that a good estimate is that 97% of online poker players simply lost. Losers complain, some I daresay, may even think they've been cheated,

Re:Does anyone have a link to the indictment itsel

[Anonymous Coward]

Please use the RECAP extension so to docs can transfer to archive.org and not everyone has to pay 8 cents per page.

Poker is not gambling damnit.

[Feltope]

I have supplemented my income for years playing poker and I know this for sure. It is not gambling, it is a game of skill.

DOJ

[wukka]

A great big capital F-U to the a-holes "representing" us in the flusterclucked US government. Land of the free, home of the brave...meanwhile people I know in Asia, Europe, Canada have been laughing at Americans since 2006, partly because we were denied the right to gamble online. I am sick of the US government and their silly schoolyard babysitting rules...oh it is ok to bet the farm on Wallstreet, heavily leveraged trades on things such as foreign exchange currencies, and Unkle Skam pushed bad mortgages...but I can not bet a few bucks online in a friendly cardgame, pick3 lottery, etc. buncha a-holes are at the puppet-master strings. cheers!

Re:Online poker may not be illegal, sending money

[blair1q]

There are cards involved, and your fortunes against an equally-skilled player are entirely down to them.

Just saying "but your skill makes a difference" is not enough. Your skill at blackjack makes a difference, too (with or without counting cards). Should blackjack not be called gambling? There are ways to make your luck better or worse at every table in the place by not having full command of the rules and the statistics. Same deal in poker.

Played perfectly, it's a game of chance. Played imperfectly, it's a game of here-take-all-my-money.

It's gambling.

Steve's going to need some king-hell lawyers to get around an argument so simple I can slam-dunk it on the Internet.

Gambling is legal, kinda

[witherstaff]

It's just called the markets. Commodities, stocks, foreign exchange, etc. If they could make penny stocks more interesting it could be as amusing as some other gambling. But the way things currently are it's like a regular casino, in the end the house always wins.

Governments like that kind of business

[billstewart]

Governments actually like that kind of business. First the sucker earns some money doing real work, and pays income tax on it. Then the sucker loses some of that money to the gambling house (which pays business taxes) and some more money to the other players (who may also be suckers or may be sharks.) The winners pay income tax on their net winnings, if any, and the suckers don't get to deduct gambling losses (except to offset any winnings), so the government gets to take more money off the top.

When I was a kid, gambling was illegal because it was immoral and stupid, unless it was bingo sponsored by a religious or civic charity such as a volunteer fire company, or involved horses with driven by jockeys riding behind them in carts, not (gasp!) actually sitting on top of the horse. Eventually the state I grew up in started a state lottery, so gambling was now illegal because it was competing with the state's efforts to scam the stupid and immoral. When I lived in New Jersey, the state lottery system was required to put up posters explaining where the lottery money went (X% to the ticket sellers, Y% to the winners, Z% to the lottery bureaucracy, etc.) About 30-35% went to the state prison system, and some of it went to the school system (but obviously not to teaching math.)

Jon Kyl of Arizona was a big gambling-law pusher

[billstewart]

Senator Kyl, a right-winger from Arizona, was one of the big pushers of Federal laws against online gambling. He didn't want it left to the states, and didn't want Americans to be able to gamble at non-US gambling houses. It's always nice to know how strongly Republicans believe in small government that stays out of people's personal lives and leaves decisions to the states when they don't need to be Federal.

Re:The 2011 WSOP, live from Leninworth Penitentary

[Volguus Zildrohar]

-a respected Slashdot employee postings as anon

While the typo certainly seems to support your employment claim, this is a little like being asked to believe the Tooth Fairy posts on Slashdot.

Re:Does anyone have a link to the indictment itsel

[Anonymous Coward]

One last follow-up -- someone has thoughtfully hosted the indictment at http://www.scribd.com/doc/53107543/Indictment-DOJ-vs-Scheinberg-Bitar-Tom-et-al

Fascinating stuff! Very information-dense -- perhaps as good as the civil complaint.

The Sucker Rule and Online Gambling

[billstewart]

The Sucker Rule says that when you sit down at the poker table, you should look around for the sucker. If you can't figure out who it is, then it's probably you. In online gambling, you can't see the other guys at the table, so by default it's always you. There's been a lot of research into cryptographic protocols for playing games like poker online while preventing cheating, but since poker is fundamentally about manipulating people, not about manipulating cards, the math can only go so far.

Some years ago New York State's Off-Track Betting system went broke. Imagine what it must take to lose money having a monopoly on horse-race betting in New York, where it's parimutuel betting so the winners only get paid from the loser's losses and the house always gets a cut.

Re:The Sucker Rule and Online Gambling

[mattack2]

Tell that to Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, etc.

(Yes, the people who play _against_ them are likely suckers!)

Re:The Sucker Rule and Online Gambling

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

When I'm at the table, I know that all the people next to the guy who just posted the big blind is a real human and not some bot who's out to bilk me for all I've got.

There needs to be a certain amount of oversight and regulation when money is changing hands.

Competition?

[Fnord666]

Maybe the government just doesn't like the competition. After all, look how many lotteries it runs...

Gambling is hardly "victimless"

[MoellerPlesset2]

I don't think gambling should be a crime (although regulated, for sure).

But you'd have to have stuck your head pretty deep into the sand if you think it's a "victimless" practice. Gambling addiction has destroyed millions of lives and families.
That's just indisputable. And online poker is no exception.
Yes, gamblers are ultimately responsible for their own behavior. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be shown sympathy.
This addiction is a well-documented and established psychological fact, so putting the entire burden of guilt on them is simply cynical and inhumane. So is exonerating the people who willingly aid and profit from that irresponsibility,
nor does it help the children and others who depend on the addict and are completely innocent.

It's one thing to feel that gambling should be legal (which I do). But another entirely to pretend like there's no reason behind its criminalization.
If you can't see that gambling addicts are, to at least _some_ extent, victims... Well I can only say that a society dictated along those principles isn't one I'd want to live in.

This is the Feds and Federal laws, not states

[billstewart]

This is a Federal prosecution of Federal laws against online gambling. The Feds can't force Minnesota not to make it illegal for Minnesotans to gamble with each other, but some Federal politicians, particularly Jon Kyl, Right-Wing Senator from Arizona, have been pushing for years to get the Feds to make online gambling illegal for all Americans, even if their states don't ban it, and he's been pretty successful at stopping attempts to undo the laws he got passed.

This isn't a "look the other way" issue, and while the Obama Administration initially promised not to prosecute medical marijuana under Federal law in states that ended their local laws against it, they've gone back on their promise and continue to raid dispensaries and occasionally patients.

Re:This is the Feds and Federal laws, not states

[sumdumass]

This is a Federal prosecution of Federal laws against online gambling. The Feds can't force Minnesota not to make it illegal for Minnesotans to gamble with each other, but some Federal politicians, particularly Jon Kyl, Right-Wing Senator from Arizona, have been pushing for years to get the Feds to make online gambling illegal for all Americans, even if their states don't ban it, and he's been pretty successful at stopping attempts to undo the laws he got passed.

First, I don't really care about John Kyl or any right wing anything. Second, the feds can regulate interstate commerce which means that they can make it illegal to gamble between the states but they cannot make it legal to gamble within the state. And when a state makes it illegal, they have to keep it that way because the feds cannot do anything about it.

Online gambling right now is illegal for all Americans whenever it crosses a state border because it is impossible to make it legal in one state and not another where the government of that state and the people within it declared it is illegal.

This isn't a "look the other way" issue, and while the Obama Administration initially promised not to prosecute medical marijuana under Federal law in states that ended their local laws against it, they've gone back on their promise and continue to raid dispensaries and occasionally patients.

I don't really care about Obama's change on his change mid stream. This is a look the other way thing because that is all the feds can do. They can only outlaw it altogether and ignore it- unless something is changed in the US constitution or all state legalize it. It's a technical matter that can't be solved on a federal level without changing a lot of things first.

Re:This is the Feds and Federal laws, not states

[connect4]

What in god's name are you talking about man??

Re:This is the Feds and Federal laws, not states

[sumdumass]

Read the thread and pay attention to what was said. It's not hard. You will know everything you need to know.

Re:Online poker may not be illegal, sending money

[fatwilbur]

Exactly, and, to show that it is a game of skill, you only need to show that some players are better than others (make more money). This is easy to do, there's many sites which track results and individual player ROI's. If it were a game of chance, over time everyone would have the same ROI.

Why use a US domain registar that can be seized?

[billstewart]

What I don't get is why the suspects in this case would register domain names using a US domain registrar, which makes it easy for the Feds to seize their domain names? Sure, the legal justification for seizing domain names is bogus, but they've been asserting it for long enough that I'd think anybody trying to sell online gambling to Americans would register a domain name in a jurisdiction the US government can't just seize, whether that means getting a name from a ccTLD where gambling is legal or at least using a non-US registrar which isn't necessarily going to hand over the name without a court order. The suckers are supposed to be the players, not the house.

Re:Online poker may not be illegal, sending money

[SecurityGuy]

Played perfectly, it's a game of chance. Played imperfectly, it's a game of here-take-all-my-money.

It's gambling.

Steve's going to need some king-hell lawyers to get around an argument so simple I can slam-dunk it on the Internet.

You did no such thing. You merely spouted nonsense about "played perfectly". The only way to play perfectly is to precisely know your opponents strategy. If your opponent is remotely good, their strategy is constantly adapting to what they think YOUR strategy is. The only way to KNOW your opponents strategy is to play them over a very long series (50,000 or so hands, I'd say) AND be sure they're not changing it. Just think about it. YOU just played 50,000 hands, studied their strategy, and are about to alter YOUR strategy in order to beat them. Why do you presume they're not doing the same? They are. Start again.

Any serious player will know poker is a game of skill in the long run. Period. Poker is very much one of those games you learn in minutes and master in decades, if ever.

Re:Online poker: Not a Zero Sum game.

[SecurityGuy]

Actually, estimates are that about 20-25% of online players are winning players. There are sites that track all online play at some of the major sites, so data like this isn't that hard to come by. Pokertableratings.com and sharkscope.com, for example.

If that sounds low, consider a lot of people play with money they don't care about (me) and that those numbers are monstrously larger than the percentage of undeniably legal, US run lotteries where far less than 1% of players are winners over time. Consider also that the 75% who lose have the opportunity to learn to play better and not lose. The 99+% of lottery players have no such opportunity.

NOT 100% Correct!

[Anonymous Coward]

The website is taken over but if you have accounts you can still play, as I am just now logging in.

not gonna happen

[circletimessquare]

that's like saying music pirates will get a lobby and become respectable. not going to happen because of the music industry's entrenched lobbyists, right?

same here: the part your missing is the entrenched players: the brick-and-mortar gambling industry, which sees the online world as a threat. their lobbyists are behind this move

Re:Online poker may not be illegal, sending money

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know (from actually playing at several of these sites---including PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker) there was no money taken from US players. You played for imaginary money. When you signed up you were given 10,000 in "chips" and it was like playing for points. If you went bust you could get more "chips' (no charge) There were tournaments (that costs nothing to enter) where there were prizes of cash or fully paid trips to big name tournaments. In that respect, maybe players were receiving money, but no one had to put up any money to enter. It was my impression that these sites in the US were sponsored by The big gaming houses in Los Vegas and Atlantic City. The same casinos and big name players that you see on ESPN and NBC's Late Night Poker. In all it was good fun and could help improve your skill for playing in the card rooms in Nevada or Jersey, or (as here in California) your local card room.
There were a couple of other sites that I looked at that were based in England that were full online casinos, but they said up front that no accounts would be opened for anyone in the US except play for imaginary "chips". I'm sure there were some people who traveled outside the US to open accounts. And it seems that it should be possible to appear not to play from the US via proxy. But it seem to me that this type of action would be a violation by the individual and not by the company that runs the site.
Don't forget; the DOJ has not always been right and has been used by people in high places to push certain moral, religious and/or political viewpoints.

Just tax it and regulate.

[Edsj]

PokerStars is in Isle of Man. They have strictly rules regarding online gambling including coding audit, datacenter servers locked and monitored (can't get in without warning) and the need to have legal reps in the Island for avalible all time. Of course, they also set a number of rules about how the code behind should work. They also heavly tax them. The real problem here is that Las Vegas is upset with online gambling and they are trying to find an excuse. For more info: http://www.gov.im/gambling/

That's a bankrupt business model.

[Anonymous Coward]

The major player in that space,swoopo, just went bankrupt.

Apparently it was hard to hold on to users.

Re:Online poker: Not a Zero Sum game.

[Usagi_yo]

20-25% of online players are winning? No. On any given night, 20-25% might have won. But notwithstanding cheating, the true # of winning players is in the low single digits percentage.

What I Really Don't Need

[Greyfox]

Is a bunch of morally bankrupt old white guys (And two or three prune-faced women who have probably never had their tickets punched in their lives) telling me how to live my life. This is the sort of thing the tea party should be on about, but I suspect they're too busy right now trying to gut social security and medicare.

GE TAX EVASION

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/ge-leader-in-tax-evasion-pays-virtually-no-tax-yet-got-bailed-out-in-crisis.html

Re:Does anyone have a link to the indictment itsel

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, all online at http://tech.mit.edu/~mherdeg/poker/.

The government is the victim.

[elucido]

And the government is the victimizer.

bartenders are liable

[decora]

for certain things. they have to tell someone when they've had enough.

Online poker is fully legal in the EU...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of bullshit in the /. comments as usual. First, online poker is not illegal. For starters, online poker is fully legal in the EU. Some countries, like France and Italy, even take a % on the rake (and tournament buy-in fees) the poker site operators are gaining (and these poker sites need a licence to operate there).

So saying that "online poker" is illegal is full bullshit.

Then there's the issue of "online poker in the U.S.": it's not illegal for U.S. residents (oh yes, btw, it has *nothing* to with citizenship and all to do with your country of residence) to play online poker for money. It's even officially legalized in Washington DC. What is illegal, in most U.S. states, is to allow money transfers between sites and U.S. residents.

That's what they're going after: sites like pokerstars.com and fulltilt.com that circumvent these restriction and hence allowed U.S. players to deposit/cash-out money.

Site like Party Poker, which did not allow U.S. residents anymore, are perfectly fine. Party is publicly traded and got a nice +20% jump when the .com of their competitors got seized.

Online poker in Europe + UK + Canada and a lot of other countries is not only fully legal but also doing very well.

What *may* happen in the U.S. is a model where operator have to comply with the state(s): the state(s) would get a part of the rake/tournament buy-in in exchange for a licence to operate in the U.S.

can you still play poker?

[Roberto Lyons]

Some poker sites are open to usa players http://sunshine-poker.com/Can-You-Play-Online-Poker-in-the-USA.html

You are right

[toby]

The hypocrisy here is thick enough to cut with a knife. Every minute of every day US corporations (from Microsoft to Monsanto to Chevron and thousands of others) and the US military break the law in over 100 countries, heedlessly and without accountability or redress. Yet the FBI has the astonishing chutzpah to make a statement like, "Foreign firms that choose to operate in the United States are not free to flout the laws they don’t like simply because they can’t bear to be parted from their profits".

The iconic example of US corporate intransigence might be Union Carbide/Dow's all-but-deliberate poisoning of Bhopal, India, where tons of toxic, unstable nerve poison, improperly and carelessly stored in an American pesticide plant, killed 8,500 horribly in one night, and permanently injured 100,000s. No proper reparations have been made and nobody has been held to account.

In the Amazon, Chevron has committed one of the largest environmental crimes in US history - and thousands of US companies are doing the same every day.

More recently, the behaviour of Blackwater has illustrated that indiscriminate murder of foreign citizens is now just an accepted part of American corporate practice. Countless Iraqi citizens killed and injured by Blackwater (and other mercenary firm) employees have not seen justice.

Another example from this morning's timeline.

Here's another: Indonesia is just one of many countries now being flooded by a tsunami of toxic electronic waste from the United States.

Funny thing about karma...

Re:Online poker: Not a Zero Sum game.

[SecurityGuy]

No, I do mean long term win rate, not on any given night. I'm one of them, and I don't cheat.

Re:Does anyone have a link to the indictment itsel

[imcdowell]

Did you use RECAP when you were retrieving the docs? If you're into looking up things on PACER and sharing things that should be free you should give it a whirl.

ping

[KingAlanI]

pinging any of the three says the pings are going to 50.17.223.71, with no response (I figure the Feds haven't set up that server to respond to ping)

What the seized-domain page looks like

[KingAlanI]

Here's what the seized-domain page looks like:
http://www.twitpic.com/4lmdsx

Taxing gambling stinks

[KingAlanI]

Taxing gambling stinks, especially on top of the fact that gambling is already a tax (for entertainment if not cynical, on the mathematically challenged if cynical).
P.S.
This is private gambling, but taxing winnings form government-run gambling sucks even more.

Re:Illegal Gambling! Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the "Double Irish" and is the preferred way to fuck the government out of billions in tax revenue by companies like Microsoft and Google.

The U.S. Government seriously needs to pull it's head from it's ass.

Re:Online poker may not be illegal, sending money

[freepath]

What *is* illegal as of the recent UIGEA act is for banks to provide you the ability to send your money to / receive money from these online gaming sites.

And, so where are the sibling indictments for the card companies and banks?

I notice that Full Tilt was taking deposits by Visa, MasterCard and AMEX. And, they were also allowing international withdrawals at global banks, like Citigroup, Bank of America, Barclays, etc. Then it would be simply a matter of pulling funds from a local U.S. branch to yield the results of the withdrawal to the linked international account.

Please, DHS, don't patronize us. Your buddies at the banks and credit card companies have been giving a blind eye to this supposedly illegal money transfer scheme when they themselves have been part and parcel to it all along, wholesale, the entire time. How does someone from the U.S. get money into a company like Full Tilt Poker to even play if the banks are not complicit?

Let's call this what it is, payback time for monied gambling interests that pull the puppet strings of our government. The Senate Majority Leader happens to harken from Nevada and also happens to have the ear of the President. (Mr. Change, aka Mr. Freedom, who renewed and escalated the Patriot Act and boldly empowered DHS with extra-judicial powers to seize private domain name property in violation of the Fifth Amendment.) There is no justice in a government that issues indictments/prosecutes/punishes based on a corrupt system of graft, nepotism and crony politics.

Welcome to the Banana Republic of America.

Re:Online poker: Not a Zero Sum game.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unfortunate and I have some sympathy with those that were able to beat the online game without cheating and who made their living and have now had their account balances confiscated. However lets face reality, that probably represents 3% or less of online poker players.

Patently not true. It's actually closer to 30% that are in the money long term. This is supported by a wide range of statistical analysis.

Everyone loses

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many ways this could play out, but the fundamentals won't change.
The big three may survive or fail.
Players may get their money back or lose it, but online Poker won't go away.
So anyone looking for a moral victory over the (perceived) evil forces of gambling will be disappointed.
There are no moral victories to be found here.
There is demand, and money to be made providing online poker so market-forces will prevail; the game will go on.
Capitalism 1 - Puritanism 0
The DoJ and FBI know this as well as anyone else, but regardless of the outcome it'll be good for someone's career.

I expect there will be a huge court case.
It'll cost US taxpayer more than the revenue the U.S. Govt could ever expect to recoup.
Hopefully Mr & Mrs USA, with no real interest in the outcome will say.
"Hey... why is the Govt spending my money trying 11 guys while I watch the businesses around me close and I still can't get healthcare. I don't really care if people want to play poker online; it makes no difference to me, but I could think of better ways to spend the money."

The whole "by the people, for the people" bit isn't really working in the US right now.
A handful of Government legal-types are simply enhancing their future career prospects by pursuing a case that will ultimately be of no benefit to the public at large.
You can hear the non-alcoholic champagne popping already.

PokerStars.net

[Anonymous Coward]

PokerStars.net is still online and seems to be operating as normal.
Did the DOJ just shut down the .com sites?

If you don't like the laws, then you should lobby Congress and change them. Don't just openly defy authority, that doesn't end well for anyone.

Re:Online poker may not be illegal, sending money

[blair1q]

Played imperfectly, it's a scam.

There, is that better?

Oh, and in the long run, you're both going to end up playing it perfectly. So at what point less than perfect isn't it gambling?