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Deposits At Online Poker Sites To Become Illegal?


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http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/07/10/D8IPA8RO4.htmlCongress is voting TOMORROW on a bill that would ban electronic transfers or credit card deposits at online poker sites. if the bill is approved everyone will have to nurse their bankroll because it will be next to impossible to redeposit (perhaps you will be able to send a certified check to pstars).now, reading this, you may be tempted to reply "the sky is falling". I might have that response as well.But the more I think about the more I think that there are a lot of reasons that it will be in the govt's interest to push this sort of legislation through:1) obviously they lose tax revenue through off-shore gambling because almost no one--me included--declares what they win. if this money was instead spent in any fashion in the U.S. the government would collect their share. 2) the argument has been made that online gambling stimulates the U.S. economy through the circulation of money. the more i think about it, the more i think this is untrue. i don't think gambling stimulates new expenditure: most people are probably gambling with disposable income that they would spend in the U.S. if they were not gambling, and a lot of this disposable income is now either A) on deposit at a poker site or B) in the pockets of these offshore companies in the form of the huge rake revenue. In both cases this takes capital out of the U.S. economy and can only be seen to have a negative effect. 3) the govt does not care about the moral dimension of gambling (click the mouse and lose your house) but it the obvious moral downside to gambling makes it very easy for them to "market" this legislation: we are not restricting your freedom, Americans, we are protecting you from something that is bad. 4) it seems to me that the only reasonable view for the govt to take is as follows: if it is made illegal to gamble online people will either use the money they have been gambling with in brick and mortar casinos (better in terms of tax revenue, more effective in stimulating the economy) or spend it on other u.s. consumer goods (good for stimulating the economy). So there is a powerful incentive to restrict online gambling. granted i just thought of this, read this article, and sat down to write. I am not an economist just a rational educated person. but somehow it feels to me that the writing is on the wall.
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this is lifted from the above article:The horse racing industry also supports the bill because of the exemption it would get. Horse racing states would not be prohibited from any activity allowed under the Internet Horseracing Act. That law written in the 1970s set up rules for interstate betting on racing. It was updated a few years ago to clarify that betting on horse racing over the Internet is allowed.'cause we all know there's more skill to picking a winning horse than playing 5/10 Hold 'Em (sw)

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this bill might also stop the growth of poker, since new players wont be able to deposit and bad players cant redeposit. What happens if you do redeposit and don't get caught or if you do get caught.

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this bill might also stop the growth of poker, since new players wont be able to deposit and bad players cant redeposit. What happens if you do redeposit and don't get caught or if you do get caught.
It seems that it will be legal to deposit by other means but it will be a big nuisance if you can't use NETELLER or a credit card. And if the govt makes it illegal NETELLER and the card companies will simply refuse to do the transaction. I probably never would have started playing online if i couldn't have deposited with a credit card. if someone told me to send a certified check to an offshore company i would have said **** no.
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Again, even if it passes tomorrow it still is not a bill/law. It has to pass other votes and move on up to the senate. That vote, if it even gets there, will be quite a ways a way.

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I probably never would have started playing online if i couldn't have deposited with a credit card. if someone told me to send a certified check to an offshore company i would have said **** no.
QFT
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NETELLER Quick FactsUser base of more than 2.5 million customersMore than 3,400 online merchants accept payments through NETELLER systemOver $7.3 billion in transactions processed in 2005Corporate headquarters- Douglas, Isle of ManRegional offices in:- Calgary, Canada- London, England- Hong Kong, China- San Jose, Costa RicaAs Neteller isn't an American company and doesn't supply funds to only poker sites, so I'm not sure that the ban would have any effect on the use of neteller.

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NETELLER Quick FactsUser base of more than 2.5 million customersMore than 3,400 online merchants accept payments through NETELLER systemOver $7.3 billion in transactions processed in 2005Corporate headquarters- Douglas, Isle of ManRegional offices in:- Calgary, Canada- London, England- Hong Kong, China- San Jose, Costa RicaAs Neteller isn't an American company and doesn't supply funds to only poker sites, so I'm not sure that the ban would have any effect on the use of neteller.
This is just a joke to make a voting base happy. If this was the case, these sites would have had no chance long ago when offshore sports books were opened. Plus, there is no way to track, nor to stop people from spending money overseas.
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this is lifted from the above article:The horse racing industry also supports the bill because of the exemption it would get. Horse racing states would not be prohibited from any activity allowed under the Internet Horseracing Act. That law written in the 1970s set up rules for interstate betting on racing. It was updated a few years ago to clarify that betting on horse racing over the Internet is allowed.'cause we all know there's more skill to picking a winning horse than playing 5/10 Hold 'Em (sw)
skill has nothing to do with it (and yes I saw the sw), this has everything to do with the government not getting a cut from online poker sites the way they do from horse racingyou can thank the Republicans for this
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Almost verbatim phone call I had with my buddy who is poli sci grad student:Me: WTF is Congress going to do to online gambling?Him: Oh, they don't care, honestly, they really don't care that x amount of Americans are gambling online. But all regulation has to begin with a populist issue. So, they've been at their wits end for years on how to make an inroad into regulating the net...and conveniently here's the online gambling issue.Me: Can you give me the non-NPR version?Him: They'll regulate it, but it's a proxy so they can actually make an inroad into regulating commerce online. Me: Can you give me the non-poli-fuc.k-sci version?Him: They'll ban it.Then he went on to tell me about how you already can't use Neteller in MD and continued to talk over my head.

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