Gary Wise’s new article on ESPN.com, Choosing Between Career and Home, about the recent decisions by Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars to forbid residents of Washington state from playing on their sites. Obviously this decision, made to comply with a long-standing Washington law making online poker a felony, makes it rather difficult for professional players to earn a living while living in that state. Apparently, some Washington lawmakers are less than sympathetic:
Washington state Sen. Margarita Prentice, an ex officio member of the Washington State Gambling Commission, was behind the 2006 law that made playing online poker a felony. The state House of Representatives passed the law 93-5. The state senate passed it unanimously.
Four years later, Prentice remains opposed.
“I just think some of these arguments are utter nonsense,” Prentice told ESPN.com. “You mean you’re going to move so you can play poker? Gee, lots of luck in your life. … I have nothing against card playing. That’s fine. If you want to do that, but I’m sure not going to worry about someone … you know. Let them go pump gas.”
The responses from our allies at the federal level, however, are heartening:
“Wow,” said U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and the federal government’s most vocal advocate for online poker legalization and regulation. “The intolerance of that is just appalling, but that’s the attitude that goes with the sense you have the right to dictate other people’s lives to them.”
“She denigrates both poker players and people who pump gas,” said former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, chairman of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), a lobbying group that’s now 1 million strong. “She is why people are angry, because of the arrogance of those in government who say they know what’s best for you.”
First off, how out of touch is this woman that she thinks that pumping gas is even a job one can have in Washington state? They have self-serve gas. She might as well have said, “Let them be a milk maid!” Perhaps she’s suggesting that the poker players move here to Oregon, where we can’t pump our own gas, but then she’s already said moving is utter nonsense.
Prentice “can’t see anyone who is having major suffering over this?” Tell that to Dan Martin and Matt Affleck… maybe she wants to see the property taxes they pay (WA has no personal income tax) on their homes. I’m sure the state appreciates that. Not to mention Phil Gordon, who has to be sending a nice chunk of change to Olympia every year. Affleck, Martin, and many others don’t have the opportunity to jump across the border every day to play, but according to Prentice they don’t suffer.
I guess they can make their living with the daily $60 tournaments at the Indian casino, paying a 25% rake can’t be much of an imposition.
In Washington playing online poker is not just a felony but it is the highest class of felony. Let me reiterate, in Washington online poker is on the same plane of legality as rape and murder!
Food for thought: an interesting parallel to poker may be competitive chess (buy in to a tournament and try to win… skill and what not, yadda yadda yadda). Paul Morphy (the Stu Ungar of his day) didn’t want to play professional chess because it was a “looked down upon” profession. Nowadays, if someone is a professional chess player people generally think of that person as incredibly intelligent and/or clever. While this may never be true of poker in terms of perception it is interesting to think of the games in comparison to competitive chess and how that game was perceived 150 years ago
The lawmakers in Washington (where I currently live) are so out of touch with people that it’s absurd. At least the representative from my district is opposed to this, but he’s in the minority. Some of the card rooms are in pretty seedy areas – I wonder how many people have been put in danger because they were forced to go to a casino to play the game they like.
So why don’t you Washington poker players put together a citizens’ initiative, get the signatures, and get it on the ballot? The state does have an initiative system.
Casino Jack 2010 tells great story about Washington (sympathetic)lawmakers.