Online poker and gambling should be legalized

Poker has come a long way from the days of gamblers playing in saloons and riverboats. Poker today has turned into a multimillion-dollar industry, due primarily to the huge popularity of online play. Since the rapid growth in popularity for the game after the 2003 World Series of Poker, coined as the poker boom, the game has begun to draw the attention of some lawmakers in Washington who see online poker as illegal gambling within the U.S. Because the law does not specify what constitutes an unlawful Internet gambling site, it remains up for debate as to whether or not online poker sites are included under the law. The two largest online poker sites, PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com, are based overseas, well outside the U.S. government's jurisdiction. This means the government is unable to go after these sites themselves. Instead they decided to go after the funds of individual players as they come into the country through third-party financial institutions. This government strategy came to light last June when the funds of over 27,000 players, totaling more than $33 million, were frozen by federal prosecutors when the money came into the country through the companies that process payouts for overseas online poker sites. Though massive in scope, in the end this unprecedented attack on the online poker community amounted to nothing more than a scare tactic that in all likelihood did next to nothing to dissuade Americans from playing online poker. Both PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com reimbursed players who had their funds frozen, and in response to the attacks, both sites held tournaments to which the only entry requirement for players was to sign a petition supporting the legalization of online poker. "This law and these regulations are simply a fraud," said Howard Lederer, professional poker player and board member of the Poker Players Alliance, to the Los Angeles Times. "People who had a moral agenda wrote laws and regulations that were vague. And banks, which have the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads and no clarity, are probably going to block poker transactions." Banks enforcing the current law by screening transactions to see if they are from gambling sites, is a process both inefficient and time consuming. "Punting the enforcement obligation to the banking industry…is an unprecedented delegation of governmental responsibility with no prospect of practical success in exchange for the burden it imposes," Wayne Abernathy, executive vice president in charge of financial institutions policy and regulatory affairs for the American Bankers Association, said testifying before the House Committee on Financial Services. If regulated, Internet gambling could provide billions in tax revenue for the federal government. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consulting firm, estimated in 2007 that legalization of Internet gambling could provide as much as $43 billion if sports betting were included and $34 billion with out it. The fact that online poker was lumped into the same category as Internet gambling in the first place is an insult to the game, which is a game skill despite what some lawmakers may think, and to its players, who should not be seen as criminals by their own government just for playing a game they enjoy. If legalized and regulated on a federal level, the confusion over online poker's legality on the state level would vanish as well. State governments have been just as inconsistent as the federal government in clarifying the laws regarding online poker. "If you play poker online for money in the state of Washington, you're committing a class C felony," Joseph M. Kelly, a gambling-law expert at Buffalo State University, said to the Los Angeles Times. "That's the same as rape." Instead of dancing around the issue with unclear, inconsistent and hypocritical laws that have done nothing to stop players from playing poker online, the U.S. government should legalize online poker. Legalizing and regulating the game that millions of people across the country already enjoy every day would benefit all the parties involved in the current debate- the government would get tax revenue, banks would save the time and manpower they are losing scanning transaction after transaction for online gambling funds and poker players would be able to play without fear of repercussions from their government.