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Poker night used to be a male only primitive ritual conjuring up images of middle aged men smoking stinky cigars, drinking beer, and eating cold cuts while playing poker around a fold out table in someone's dimly lit basement. Think Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple. Poker night was the way men bonded before the day of the "metrosexual." It was underground and not really discussed. Wives tolerated the poker night, but no one wanted it in her home because of the smell and the clean up. Land based casinos didn't have many poker tables for years because there wasn't that much interest in the game. Then along came the internet and changed poker forever. Internet poker rooms made poker the game for everyone. No longer could women be psyched out of games against men. All they had to do was change their screen name to something male or something androgynous and they could play with the best of them. If someone wanted to learn the game and not lose their shirt online poker rooms gave them the opportunity to play for free and practice till their heart was content and their game was perfected. The World Series of Poker, the largest off-line tournament held annually in Las Vegas has had numerous winners who learned to play on the internet. Furthermore the size of the tournament has grown exponentially due to the popularity of internet gambling. Land-based casinos are expanding their poker rooms and female professional poker players are being interviewed on Martha. Poker as we know it today has to be grateful to internet gambling. It would be foolish for the land-based casinos to lobby for the anti-internet gambling legislation currently in congress. They have too much to lose. Internet poker brought up the popularity of the game and is needed to sustain the games popularity. New players are attracted to learning online and that is how the game is able to grow for all businesses involved, be they online or off. Yet, for the most part land-based casinos are silent on the matter of anti-internet gambling legislation. Fortunately, one lobbying organization has a clue what the ban could do to the entire industry. The Poker Players Alliance is doing their best to bring light to their cause of keeping online poker legal. The Poker Players Alliance knows that regulation is the smart choice. According to Mike Howland of Des Moines, a member of the Poker Players Alliance, "Internet gambling has exploded in size and it looks like it may double again in the next two or three years unless restraints are placed on it." Howland adds, "The concept of prohibiting something that the government already claims to be illegal just seems nonsensical considering that tens of millions of players in America already play the game. I'm 36 years old. I'm a retired lawyer. I decided to give up my practice to become a stay-at-home father. While I'm staying at home, sometimes I like to pass the time by playing poker." Howland isn't a gambling addict. While he may not have won enough to become a professional player he hasn't lost his home either. He breaks even more often than not, and that's ok because he's playing for entertainment value. "If you go to a casino, the lowest stakes you are going to see are $3, $6 stakes and upwards of, you know, $10, $20, you can even find in some of the bigger casinos $50, $100, $200-blind games," Howland says. "When you play on the Internet, you can throw $20 on the site and play penny to penny. It allows recreational players to play at absolutely low levels." Howland believes that the United States should regulate online gambling. "If we allow Internet gambling to be housed within the United States, all of a sudden they're subject to United States law. Now we can enforce the companies to do more about underage gambling. We can enforce the companies to do more about people that have problem gambling," Howland says. "We can also do more to protect the people (who) play on those sites." The Poker Player Alliance website has a lot of interesting and entertaining information regarding H.R. 4411, the anti-internet legislation which has just passed the House of Representatives and is now waiting to be voted on in the Senate. If H.R. 4411 passes the Senate before their early end of year break then it will become law and depositing into an internet casino, poker room, or sports book may be rendered virtually impossible. I say may become law because currently the law doesn't include options like Neteller, instead it simply bans direct deposits from US financial institutions to online gambling establishments. However, the possibility of the law being adding an amendment including third party depositing could easily be added after the fact. I mentioned that the Poker Player Alliance website had entertaining information about the bill in Congress because that is where I got the link to Jon Stewart from the Daily Show lampooning the poker prohibition bill. I live out of the US, so we only get the Daily Show Weekly International Update, which isn't enough Daily Show at all. Plus it's on at a weird hour so I'm always missing it. Thank goodness for YouTube and The Poker Player Alliance for linking to it. My favorite quote from the clip was Jon Stewart talking about land-based casinos, "…have you ever been to a casino? You could play naked if you want. You could masturbate at the roulette table, just keep giving them money." There's a reason to make internet gambling legal and regulate it in the US if I ever heard one. This way people can stay naked and do their thing at home, preferably with the door closed and the blinds drawn. Internet gambling has made land-based gambling the popular places they are today. The two have a positive symbiotic relationship and it would be foolish of the US government to kill online gambling. Related Links: Posted on: September 5, 2006
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