Federal "protection" of American poker players turning into confiscation

The DOJ shut down the American operations of three major online poker sites: PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Ultimate Bet. Though the Department announced that it intended to reimburse American players that had money deposited at the sites, the government stands to make over $100 million by discouraging anyone from actually making a claim; even those who do make claims will see much of the money eaten up by attorneys. [Buzzfeed via Tabarrok]

In other news, state governments sold $260,000 of Powerball tickets a minute in last week's lottery, keeping a much larger chunk for themselves than any honest online gambling site charges.

2 Comments

Damon Ioannou | December 4, 2012 10:25 AM | Reply

Can't believe how backward the western world is becoming. Democracy, land of the free, freedom of speech...it's all bollocks.
You can't play poker online, even though you are in control of how much you want to play and know how much you could possibly win...yet they allow lotteries where you just have to accept that the payouts are what they say.
In the UK, they don't allow Private Poker Clubs as they believe in protecting the public, worried about collusion, worried about money laundering...
Public? these are Private members clubs, where more often than not, everyone knows each other.
Collusion? Gambling Commission only allow Poker in Casinos to protect the public from collusion as it is set in a controlled environment. Most tournaments in UK are self dealt...no dealer supplied.
They allow for people at home to gamble on Roulette live on TV and I could go on and on/
We are preaching democracy and freedom of speech but our speech falls on deaf ears...which basically means we are going back the way...might be time to head to the Eastern world...place of opportunity

Ron Miller | December 6, 2012 1:05 PM | Reply

Our government has decided - with some logic, by the way - that lotteries create less social problems (and less tax revenues, I'm sure) than on-line gambling. Laws were set accordingly. Those people placing those bets knew this right?

The hypocrisy is there - the same could be said for a zillion laws - but I don't shed any tears for these gamblers. Assuming of the risk (or something like that).

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