#494 – London 2008 #1 – Call Me Mint Jelly

I have a lot of business to attend to in London these next few weeks – all the Full Tilt events I’ll be covering but my new business venture, see infra – so let’s get our cards on the table so to speak. I’ve thought about this long and hard, both from a personal, professional, and family standpoint on the one hand (or is that three hands?), and from a sticking-it-to-a-repressive-government-that’s-out-to-needless-wreck-online-poker on the other hand. I’ve been advised that I need to choose next my words carefully, because every nuance could have financial and legal consequences not immediately apparent. So here goes with my announcement:

The United States government can kiss my ass.

Wait, that’s not the announcement. That’s just the motivation, or the chief consequence.

Hell, forget all the pomp and circumcision/circumspection. Let’s try again. Take two:

I’m not coming home from London. The world is now my home. I’m gonna become an offshore/online payment processor!

I know this sounds radical, rash, almost impossible to process, but I’ve thought it over very carefully. Although I’ve settled almost none of the details, I’ve decided to seek my fortune in your service – “you” being Full Tilt Poker players. I think the current state of payment processing, from all the complaints I hear, is a mess and I intend to fix it up.

At first, I thought it was the fault of my soon-to-be competitors. What’s this shit of going out of business, I wondered. No wonder it’s taking me nine months to get my money out of NeTeller – they’re devoting all their resources to rolling over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. What kind of competitor is PayPal, paying off the U.S. government to get out of the gaming-transactions business the minute eBay takes them over? Seems like I should be able to operate smarter and on a more customer-friendly business than these layabouts.

After further examination, however, I saw that the problem wasn’t entirely a lack of ethic by the business operators. The heavy hand of the United States government left its indelible imprint on all these proceedings.

Now I’ve examine these legal issues with a little bit of knowledge. My background: I was an attorney in the United States for more than fifteen years. And if I simply pay the Illinois Supreme Court some $1,600 in back bar-admission dues, I could be one again. (Don’t want you to think they kicked me out for misconduct or a crime of moral turpitude. I just don’t pay bar-dues anymore because I haven’t practiced since 2000.)

In a nutshell, this is how the legal landscape looks. Federal law, since about 1960, has included a statute called “The Wire Act.” It was designed to keep people from using the means of interstate commerce – phone lines, the mail, highways – to book bets on sports. Of course, no one uses phone lines or the mail or the highways (if they ever did) to make sports bets. They now use the internet. And the Wire Act applies to internet sports-betting the way it did to Ma-and-Pa Cosa Nostra operations of the olden days.

Guess what? The Wire Act doesn’t apply to online poker. There was no such thing as interstate poker in 1960 so neither its express language nor its intent applies to online poker. (By the way, “interstate” is what the federal government needs to stick its nose into citizens’ business. If it’s not “interstate,” then it’s the business of the state governments or, perhaps, the citizens themselves.)

But the online payment processors have generally not made that distinction. Operating outside U.S. boundaries, they’ve processed payments for all kinds of transactions – gaming, non-gaming, sports, poker, whatever. So when the hammer has come down, it was easy to nab the payment processors for violating the Wire Act. One of the reasons for the UIGEA was to plug gaps in the Wire Act. It remains unclear whether that law applies to online poker – nice job, legislators; just goes to show that what you try to pass in the dead of night as a rider to some unrelated law might not be the way to “clear things up” – but it gives the feds another potential weapon.

So the first thing I’m going to do is not process transactions for sports-betting sites. I’m not condemning online sports betting – other than I wish I was better at it. I’m just saying it mucked up some otherwise fine payment processors and I’m not going to fall into that trap.

But I’m not naive in this regard. It’s not like Uncle Sam has said “online sports betting equals bad, online poker equals good.” I wish Uncle Sam would be so intelligible. I don’t harbor any doubt that the “revenuers” would cast their clumsy net over me, NeTeller, and the Gambino family in one fell swoop. Presumptively shut ‘em down and let the courts figure it out later – that’s their motto.

That’s why, starting when World Series of Poker-Europe ends, I am prepared to become a fugitive from justice.

It shouldn’t have to be this way. If the government simply make it clear that online poker was legal under reasonable standards, everybody (but tax cheats) would win. The government could establish means for overseeing fairness, certifying operators, and (most important from the government’s perspective) reporting results. Good operators, and I sincerely believe Full Tilt Poker fits this definition, would be rewarded for running honest games and would have both the motivation to stay ahead of potential cheaters and the backing of the government to impose requirements on players. (Now, with the law-of-the-jungle prevailing, any site that suddenly imposes burdens on players, like requiring fingerprint ID or taking steps to assure one account per player, honestly-challenged players can simply shift their business to another site, along unfortunately with a lot of honest players who don’t understand the burden and expense they have to take on are for their protection.)

But the government does not appear to be in the process of doing that, even though it could make billions in tax revenue. So I’m going to exploit this inefficiency in the market, from the safety of London. I haven’t fully explained any of this to anyone. Even Jo Anne and my kids don’t know about it. I hope they follow me here, though I’d understand their reluctance. If Jo Anne and I can’t completely work out a family move, I’ll make sure she and the kids are taken care of in the short term. In the long term, I’ll start saving my millions for a presidential pardon. It worked for Marc Rich, right?

So where does that leave us, Writer and Reader? For the next few weeks, it leaves us right where we’ve been since February 2007. I’m covering the Million Pound Challenge today (Monday, 15 September) and tomorrow, then the Million Dollar Cash Game Wednesday and Thursday. I’ll be playing in and writing about the World Series of Poker-Europe starting on Friday, and covering Full Tilt’s One-on-One with Patrik Antonius on Thursday, 25 September.

I’m hoping and expecting Full Tilt will help me in my new venture, since it and its players will be the primary beneficiaries. So I’m not going to cheat Uncle Tilty out of “three weeks notice” before getting what I hope will be a “severance package” that includes start-up money for PayLamb, my new service.

And after that? Maybe I’ll send occasional dispatches to let you know what’s going on at PayLamb, especially if there’s some gap before it becomes operational. But it wouldn’t do for me to continue writing the blog on a regular basis. I mean, I could be PLAYING in the Million Dollar Cash Game next year, if I think it’s worth the time.

But I am nothing if not a good employee. While in London these next few weeks, you will be hearing from me regularly – more than regularly. Some of my best writing last year was from the Million Dollar Cash Game, so I’ll be attacking the Million Pound Challenge, the Cash Game, and the Antonius Challenge with relish.

After that, I’ll exist primarily as a button on your Full Tilt “Cashier” screen. Other than that, you can call me mint jelly, cuz’ from now on, I’m on the lam(b).

In fact, after I buy the PayLamb domain name, I’m thinking of taking MintJelly@PayLamb.com as my e-mail address.

See you in the financial pages.

• No Related Post