Gyroscopic Investing

I am not a poker player (on or offline), but have followed this topic b/c I think the legal implications are interesting. 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_c ... r-fbi.html

Curious to hear opinions...

i played for a while starting out with play chips and free-roll tournaments where i eventually won a few real dollars, i never got beyond playing the nickel games (and i never spent a penny of my own money).
 i tend to side with the poker game company's on this one.. its a game of skill and people should be free to play it, i haven t been following the debate very closely lately, I stopped playing a year or two ago, but when i was playing the US laws had driven most of the servers /game providers off shore to other country's, and some sites even temporarily banned Americans from playing.  i don't like the idea of playing roulette or throwing dice online (or anywhere) is a suckers game and gambling is addictive, but I will lean libertarian on even that.... its not the governments job to prevent it.
money laundering is a different charge i will need to hear more about the case before i take a side on that..

on a pp/poker related topic i blame the time i spent playing poker for my being highly aware of my own risk tolerances, the managing of a poker bankroll (even only a few dollars) is a interesting challenge, and balancing the necessary risk to make it grow with not taking foolish risks that wipe it out, was a great learning experience to have before becoming an investor...

It appears as if these poker site sponsors have left the country.

That's normally not a sign of complete innocence.

I would imagine there is some kind of tax evasion/money laundering going on here apart from the legality of the games themselves.

i may be wrong on this, but i believe they have been out of the country for years to avoid anti gambling laws, only a couple states have just recently have opened or considered opening their doors to online gambling.
i think the money laundering is a new charge and it came long after online gambling left the country.

I would say let them do what they want, but when the $$$ gets large enough you can bet that some sovereign entity is going to want a piece of the action, one way or another.

Harry Browne used to talk about how the government was a lot like any other "protection racket" in that you paid money to them in exchange for "protection", even though in many cases the entity you were really paying to be protected from was the government itself. 

IMO online poker is yet another victimless crime.  It will happen whether it's legal or not, so we might as well make it a legal part of honest society, with all the rights and responsibilities (ahem, taxes) that go along with that.

Maybe their only crime is running a poker business, which I believe should be legal; maybe there's something darker going on too.  But in either case I don't blame them for doing what they can to protect themselves.

MediumTex wrote: I would say let them do what they want, but when the $$$ gets large enough you can bet that some sovereign entity is going to want a piece of the action, one way or another.

Harry Browne used to talk about how the government was a lot like any other "protection racket" in that you paid money to them in exchange for "protection", even though in many cases the entity you were really paying to be protected from was the government itself. 

In grad school I met a former budget director during the Reagan administration.  He was friends with one of the professor's.  I told him of my theory that the government (the Congress in this case) will at times float a policy idea that is harmful to some group in a deliberate attempt to bring in donations in order to defeat the very idea being floated.  He basically agreed that it does indeed happen that way.

This is yet another one of those completely pointless "vulgar displays of power" that governments decide they must engage in from time to time.  The terms "live and let live" and "victimless crime" earn you nothing but blank, slack-jawed stares from the statists that pursue policies like this.

I guess the government got tired of people doing awful things like folding their way to the final table or going all in on a deuce-seven off-suit.  Reason #438,397 that government needs to be made much, much smaller.

Harry Browne can elaborate further in the excellent "Why Government Doesn't Work".