| The point of the article is very valid and concerning, but there are alot of factual problems with how this article represents the facts in its main case study. > For years the Department of Justice had maintained that online gambling was illegal. In a spectacular about turn just before Christmas last year, it said that the law (the Wire Act) only applied to sports betting. They finally recognised the obvious- it takes some skill to win at poker and blackjack. So when it took action against Bodog, it wasn’t for its main activity of online gambling but the relatively smaller one of sports betting. From someone who has the unique combination of having been a professional poker player for long periods, as well as having worked at Bodog as a software developer I can tell you two things that are very wrong about this paragraph. 1. There isn't any skill in playing blackjack online. The only skill component of playing live is in counting cards, and that doesn't translate online because you are getting a "new deck" with every hand. 2. Sports betting is far and away the most profitable part of their business. In fact, their poker room is nothing but a nuisance to them because it allows professional poker players to swoop in and extract money from the sports betters before Bodog is able to extract it. This is demonstrated by the recent changes to their poker software that make the site very very unattractive to play poker on for any thinking player (ie anonymizing the tables), not to mention their previous rules about limiting the number of tables played at a time. And then the main point of taking action against the site for the minor crime of sports betting, which is "legal" in Canada. I'm not so sure about that, I know when I worked there that it was common knowledge that the founder of the company hadn't stepped foot in Canada since Bodog had launched. Also, what does it matter if sports betting is the main part of its business or not? If it's illegal to service US customers with an activity that the US government finds illegal, they are obviously going to take action. Of course I believe online sports betting shouldn't be outlawed, but the US government has always been much more clear about this being illegal when compared to its sometimes wishy-washy stance on poker. |