Hacker Cinema
Bet Raise Fold: The Story of Online Poker
2013 · Film · documentary · 100 min
Directed by Ryan Firpo
BET RAISE FOLD: The Story of Online Poker is a feature documentary that follows a new generation of Internet poker professionals during the meteoric rise and sudden crash of the multibillion dollar online poker industry of the 2000s.
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It's mentioned in the article that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) this was tacked onto a must-pass safe port bill hours before adjournment for 2006 elections. It doesn't go into much detail. From wikipedia:
"... the SAFE Port Act (H.R. 4954) as passed by the House on May 4 and the United States Senate on September 14, bore no traces of the Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act that was included in the SAFE Port Act signed into law by George W. Bush on October 13, 2006. The UIGEA was added in Conference Report 109-711 (submitted at 9:29pm on September 29, 2006), which was passed by the House of Representatives by a vote of 409-2 and by the Senate by unanimous consent on September 30, 2006. Due to H.RES.1064, the reading of this conference report was waived."
The legislative branch is broken.
I was a professional poker player at the time this bill was passed, and it caused a lot of pain for a lot of people. Players' funds were frozen (and a lot of professional gamblers kept essentially their entire net worth online at the time). If you want to learn more about that story, there's an excellent documentary called "Bet, Raise, Fold (2013)". Many of my friends from that world who were also into sports and sports betting have now moved over to professional fantasy sports betting.
It kills me that it makes exceptions for the brands of gambling in bed with the Republican party (NFL, horse racing), and was passed without an actual vote. A friend of mine who works for the casino lobby told me that it would have been included, but because American casinos were late to the game (by 2006 the industry was dominated by two companies: one started by an Israeli group and the other by some big-name professional poker players from the USA) they wanted those companies to get squeezed out of the American markets first, so that they could come mop the industry up themselves (which hasn't worked very well, beyond some state-specific cases).
My opinion on policy is that prohibition is the wrong approach, but that maybe there should be some type of regulation to protect people with gambling problems from ruining their lives. There absolutely needs to be regulation about making it clear how much of your bet is being raked (the bookmaker's vig). Many online casinos intentionally obfuscate these numbers and are able to run absolutely insane margins based on the fact that many people don't understand what they're paying to play.
On the other hand, I don't hear people clamoring for regulation of Day Trading, which is exactly the same.