When a businessman was defending his backroom poker game in court,
Poker, they argued, is primarily a game of skill and therefore isn't covered by the federal law. On Tuesday, Federal District Court Judge Jack Weinstein agreed.
The reason why this is a good thing for people who want online poker to be permissible for U.S. citizens is because
...legal experts say it also undercuts one of three federal laws used in the past to shut down online poker in the U.S. The Justice Department concluded earlier this year that another of the laws should not apply to online poker.
In other words, of three legal arguments for why online poker should be illegal in the USA, two of them have been greatly weakened. After all,
forms of gambling typically covered by federal law involve betting against casinos running the games, which manipulate the odds of winning. A poker player, by contrast, bets solely against other players, not the house.
In my opinion:
When the house is only taking a rake, a game should be treated differently (legally) than gambling against the house like in roulette, blackjack, or craps. How is poker (pvp) any different than day traders taking each other's money with brokers and government regulators taking rakes?
You can take a general anti-gambling stance if you want (with some good reason), but if we are going to block activities with U.S. law we should make sure we are blocking it for the right ones.
Mmm man if online poker gets legalized again I'm gonna hop right in that and take advantage of all that buzz. It's just too much of a damn hassle to try to play online when all you want is to have a little fun and make/lose some pocket money on the side.
The funny thing is, poker has to be accepted as a skill game for it to be legal in USA, while in France we militate for it to stay under the luck games, as the gains of those kind of games are not taxed here =) It's legal in France tho for 2 or 3 years, with the government taking a take (a part of the rake at the table).
EPT
