Today's Gambling Music

Gambling Blues

Policing the internet

It appears that the United States isn't the only country having a problem getting banks to control the internet for them.

Dutch banks don't like the idea much either.

Of course with what's going on with that Lori Drew prosecution it may be that they won't need the banks to do their policing for them, they can just put us all in jail for violation of the TOS from random websites.

Today's Gambling Music

Blues for Gamblers

Characteristics of a good game

Will in New Haven started a thread on rec.gambling.poker talking about what he calls a paradox of game conditions.

If two games are available the game with the better conditions will
attract the thinking players, making the game with inferior conditions
the better game.

The paradox arises when you think of structural characteristics of a game (such as rake structure, ante structure, or house amenities) as important.
The structure of a game actually has almost nothing to do with a games profitability. The characteristics of the players is pretty much all that matters. Structure only matters to the extent that "good" structure will attract a bunch of nits.
There really isn't a paradox if you think of game conditions in terms of the players rather than the game.

Today's Gambling Music

Kentucky Gambler, Merle Haggard

Regulation of the internet

It appears that the US Treasury finally realized that trying to control the internet with silly banking regulation is just more than their little pea-brains can deal with.

After receiving a flood of objections from financial institutions, the Treasury Department will not require them to figure out the difference between legal and illegal online gambling, a distinction Congress deliberately left vague and regulators refuse to clarify. The Bush administration's final regulations under the UIGEA, issued last week, require American credit card companies to invent new codes for certain transactions and require financial institutions to ask their clients to avoid illegal gambling.

Showdown at FullTilt

With lawsuits come depositions. Depositions mean a lot of questions. Lederer and Ferguson have shown a lack of interest in giving straightforward explanations about ownership of FullTilt in the past (they claim to own the software that's being leased to FullTilt). It will be interesting to see how they handle the deposition questions from Clonie's lawyer.