Sleep easier at night America and terorrists beware – our ports are now much more safer than they’ve ever been. Did we step up security? Make new legislation about imports? Hire more drug sniffing dogs? Increase coast guard prescence? No, of course not… we did the most logical thing we could have done: We banned online poker.
That’s right, the new Safe Port Act included a back room rider that introduce legislation aimed at enforcing a ban of online gambling. The new law restricts banks and credit card companies from dealing with online poker sites, effectively locking players out of depositing or withdrawing money from their accounts.
The irony here is that while most online poker sites were actually legit, many players will end up losing all the money in their accounts because of this law – since the sites may have no way of returning their money.
So what does online poker have to do with port security? And why was this added as a back room rider? (this means that there was no debate or discussion about this part of the bill. Chances are many legislators didn’t even know it was tacked on.) Those are good questions, and I’ve written to both of my state’s representatives asking for answers. I haven’t receieved any replies so far, and It doesn’t look like I’m going to.
It’s worth noting that this new law won’t prevent die-hard gamblers from transfering money offshore then into their poker accounts, but it will prevent spur of the moment deposits from spontaneous first time gamblers. That in itself should be enough to send many seasoned gamblers running for the withdrawl button. Successful online poker players don’t like to play against other good players. They depend upon these new players and their sporatic deposits. In the ocean you don’t see sharks eating other sharks. In the online world however, that may be the only way to play.