Been a long time

Damn, I look at the dates and I cannot even believe how long it has been. Life unfortunately sometimes gets in the way. I am really sorry to anyone that has visited the site about my lack of updating information. I am a little embarrassed. I still have some reservations on putting casinos that allow US players on them. My site obviously does not promote online casinos to the United States. If I could somehow show which casinos do not and which ones do it would make it so much easier for everyone. But, that is what I am very leary of.

I was very bitter at this whole Safe Port law situation. I could not believe what I saw happen. The hypocrisy of some of the leaders of the free world make me sick, and there is nothing you can do about it. Well, you can vote I guess. I have never voted in my life. I voted this year.

Note - I just started typing away and when I stopped I saw I made a small novel.

My final random thoughts about the US allegedly banning online gambling. This may get long. I just want to purge this all and get it out of my system. I meant to write all this long ago.

I watched more C-Span the night that it got passed then I ever have before, and I could not believe it. I am very bad with names and I don't really feel like looking it up right now, but the "gentleman from New York" was in charge of this Port Security bill. The house asked this guy to add some legislation on making the buses and trains and subway systems safe too. He comes back with the bill and Internet Gambling added. He says that this bill is about Port Security, and that protecting trains and subways have nothing to do with ports, so it didn't get added. I am still trying to figure out how gambling is.

2. The Senate never voted on this. Most of them never saw it. It was added around 4:00PM that Friday, and it was not available to view until 11:30 that night. I have come to the realization that more then likely the Senate would have passed this bill if they saw it. That doesn't change the fact that they still didn't get to see it. A similar bill passed the House in May pretty convincingly, but that is not the point.

3. I do know who this guy is. Frist from Tennessee, the Senate majority leader, and the future Republican candidate allegedly. He is a sneaky kind of guy. He attempted to sneak this bill on to 3 other bills before succeeding with the Port Security Act. He was so against online gambling and how it ruins families and lives, but did take contributions from Harrah's. One of Frists former aides/turned lobbyist was hired by the NFL to lobby for this bill to pass. Total bill to the NFL - $750K.

4. Oh the NFL. I hate you bastards. You love gambling. Gambling has made your sport what it is today. Since Fantasy football became so mainstream, look how much bigger you have gotten. Congratulations, way to protect your 200 Million dollar a year baby, which is how much the NFL makes from Fantasy Football. Only cost you 750K too. A wise investment. Carved out of the internet gambling bill is Fantasy Football, now and forever perfectly legal.

If someone out there tells me how Fantasy Football is not exactly like gambling when you play for money, let me know. Don't get me wrong, I believe there is skill to Fantasy Football, I have won many leagues and am 7-2 in both of my leagues right now. I am not knocking it and I am not dissing it. You have no control over who gets hurt, who drops a pass, how guys play, wind, and the like. You have to make wild guesses, or go by decisions based by statistics, or on hunches. That sounds like many games that I can not play online anymore. When you play for money and the winner gets all of it....damn I can't think of what they call that.....oh yeah it is called gambling.

5. All it takes is someone to pay enough money to someone else, and you could have gotten a nice carve out of this bill. It sure worked for the Horse Racing industry and the state lotteries, which both got carved out of the bill. Funny on how just about the two games that have the worst payouts and worst percentages of winning, these are the things that people can "legally" play.

6. The whole garbage about casinos money laundering for terrorists and other lies, I hate that crap too. What really sucks is that here was an industry that was very legitimate, and professional, and trustworthy. There may be a few bad apples, but a majority of the casinos that I have dealt with paid me when I won, and fast too. They kept their end of the bargain. It was smooth and hassle free.

Now, a bunch of these large, trustworthy, big corporation online casinos, who were the most trustworthy, have closed their doors to US players. I remember the ads when I was younger, family sleeping in a box on the street. "The internet casino stole our money!". I thought that way for a long time. I was very hesitant to deposit money for the first time, and this was a big reason I even made CasinoDave. I wanted to point out the best ones so no one got screwed.

The potential for people getting screwed will multiply significantly if there is some actual teeth with this bill. The casual player may not ever play again online, but gamblers will jump through hoops to gamble. And some people will realize that there are a bunch of US players wanting an easy way to play, are willing to take the risk of creating a casino, take a bunch of deposits, and split.

This bill is going to have false teeth though. It sure felt like a move that was to get some votes during election time. In short, the bill says to not allow any kind of payments to or from online casinos by US banks or credit card companies. It also said something about blocking 3rd party places. Well, in a nutshell they have been doing this for a while now. They stopped paypal and many major credit card companies in the US from doing this years ago.

It was a damn good thing that the banking industry had some lobbyist fighting for this too. You can see their imprint on the bill. The problem is that the payments that they want to stop or monitor are just account to account transfers, like mortgage payments and many other legitimate things. They cannot monitor it now, it is not like a credit card transaction. I have heard costs for the banking industry to implement this system would be multiple billions of dollars. So in the bill is a line that states that if it is not technically feasible or economically responsible that they did not have to do it. There is also a line about not having to check paper checks, because that would take to much manpower and money as well. Banks don't want to play babysitter, and they especially do not want to pay for it too. They will more then likely block an "e-check" right to your bank account directly to or from a casino, and I am pretty sure they can stop a wire transfer. But the only way they stop an offshore, third party, paypal like company is if that company agrees to comply.

Interesting, many companies outside US jurisdiction stopped allowing US customers way too early. Many of these sites were publicly traded, multi million or greater dollar companies. The bill was voted on a Friday night. That Monday, the gambling industry on the London Stock Exchange lost $7 Billion dollars in a few short hours, about half of their worth. This was before the bill was even signed. A lot more sites followed suit with closing doors to US players the day it was signed. This was before anybody knew how it was going to be policed or implemented or anything. This was a huge win for this bill, and they are probably happy with the results so far.

In the bill it doesn't say a lot about how things are going to be done. It says a committee will decide within 270 days from passing how it will stop internet gambling. I think we are at about day 30 or so right now.

From what I have seen, nothing has changed so far except that some casinos have acted on their own. And of course anytime this was brought up in the news, online gambling is illegal was mentioned. There is nothing in this bill that says that it is illegal for a player to play. It is not intended at the player. No mention of an update to the Wire Act, which would have made it illegal to play.

What I hate the most is the road this is leading down. This kind of law that tells people what they can't do to protect them, yet more and more casinos are built all the time in new places around the country. If I want I can go to any gas station or party store and buy scratch-off's, play the daily 3 or 4 digit, the lotto, bet on horses or dogs or other races, drive to a casino, etc. And these things are all completely legal. What is so different?

Also in the bill was wording that ISP's and/or website hosts will help block gambling websites by deleting links when they are specifically told about them. This section was vague, but "deleting links" is what is said. No one knows exactly how they are supposed to do it, same 270 days to figure it out. As of today, I have not seen or heard of any links being deleted because someone told them to delete them.

This is a road that I do not want to go on. There are some rumblings that there are talks about having a similar bill against adult websites. Similar campaign, probably same exact paper work only with online gambling scratched out and online porn in its place. And after that, what is next?

I know there are people out there with gambling problems, and having casinos so readily available via the internet can be very dangerous for some. But they will gamble on something else until they get help, not if online gambling is not available. This law saves no one, helps no one but politicians.