Is the sky falling on our heads? What are the real implications of The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act?
The merits of the new anti-gaming legislation, its potency and ability to be enforced, and its affect on the industry are not what concern poker players. The fact of the matter is that poker players have lost tons of play from major sites like Party Poker, Paradise Poker, and InterPoker when the sites closed their virtual doors to American players. The closing of these three sites alone has displaced tens of millions of American poker players, creating confusion as to where they should reconvene their regular game.
While the pros are deftly shifting their funds from the closed-for-business giants, the newbies (read: the fish) are slipping through the net; and instead of moving their account from their old room to a new US-friendly room, they fall out of the food chain completely when they decide that the whole experience is just too difficult to pursue.
But this is not the greatest casualty of the new legislation. The greatest casualty will be the land-based tournaments not getting a healthy influx of new players from online qualifiers. Not least affected will be the 2007 WSOP. What should, by all accounts, have been the biggest poker tournament in the history of the world is now predicted to contain only half the players of the 2006 WSOP, marking the first decrease in the size of the WSOP starting field since internet poker, and indeed the Series itself, began.
Looking further into the future, the picture is rosier for poker fans. The big US-friendly sites, as well as the US-friendly sites that you have yet to hear of, will grow to replace the likes of Party Poker and company, but the question is: Who will they be and how long will it take?
In the meantime, the tens of millions of American poker players who have lost their favorite sites must go through the same test and trial period they went through when they first discovered their favorite poker site. They will need to relearn the interfaces, relearn the deposit techniques and, even more importantly, relearn their opponents’ styles and pitfalls. In short, more time will need to be invested by players who want to regain their status as winners.
What we know and what we don’t know
When word started to spread that Congress had passed online gambling legislation as part of the Port Security Act, internet poker players reacted in a wide variety of ways, ranging from panic to indifference. Even among so-called “experts” in the online gaming field, measured, restrained analyses of the Act’s impact could be found alongside predictions that make Chicken Little look discreet. So is the golden age of poker over? Why such varied responses to the new law?The reason for the lack of consistency in reactions is that we don’t yet know the whole story. In fact, the Act is merely the first chapter (or second or third, depending on how one looks at it) in the unfolding tale of legislating online poker in the US, and there are many volumes yet to come. The best we can do now is step back and take a snapshot of where we are at this moment, and focus on a few sections of the new law that are of most importance to online poker.
More about what we know and don't know and the future of poker... Next >>
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