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 he Guardian Poker Column |
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| Victoria
Coren |
| Friday Oct 6th, 2006
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How to play poker
(How to play has been running from issue 16) |
Well, so much for the "land of the free". America has just banned
internet poker. Or, at least, they have made it a felony to play internet poker
and collect any money from it. Which is a bit like saying, "We're not banning
cricket, just bats and balls."
It came so quickly and so cunningly
(sneaked into an unrelated port security bill with an anti-terrorist flavour,
against which Congress couldn't possibly vote), that it's hard to comprehend
what an enormous thing has actually happened.
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It is huge not just in poker terms. It is, of
course, a serious infringement of civil liberties, backed by a religious right
in America who see gambling as sinful, akin to banning alcohol or premarital
sex. But they wouldn't ban alcohol, as this might be too damaging for domestic
industry. Make no mistake: American business is well protected under this
"ethical" overnight act. Those senators who have talked about how gamblers must
be protected from "ruining their lives" don't explain why they are not closing
casinos across the States and slapping a ban on American horse-racing bets.
Foreign internet poker sites are the enemy. Betting in the US, it seems, is not
sinful. Fattening the pockets of American casino owners does not ruin lives.
That's just goddamned patriotic.
We know that poker is not pure
gambling anyway. The new act cleverly refers to "games subject to chance". But
chance is a sliding scale, not an absolute. There is chance involved in
roulette and chance involved in football, with poker falling somewhere in
between. The whole point of this game is to override luck with skill. I
couldn't write a column on it otherwise. There isn't any advice to be given on
tossing a coin. With poker, the challenge is to maximise your return on the
best hands and minimise your losses on the worst hands, to make sure you profit
overall. There is skill in working out where you are, calcul- ating how much it
is correct to invest, reading your fellow players, working out the odds of
improving, sizing the pot correctly for your chances, getting out when you're
in danger. It is roughly equivalent to trading on the stock market - a game
that these American senators are delighted to play.
Civil rights and
civil wrongs aside, this is horrible for the millions of online poker players
in America, who have a couple of weeks to get their money out of the sites, and
then it's all over. No longer can they win fairytale tickets to the world
championship. No longer can they play innocent $10 sit-and-gos while enjoying
their lunchtime sandwiches. And God knows what it will mean for those who play
online for a living. Professionally and recreationally, in one rushed sweep
before the midterm elections, a way of life has been destroyed.
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