The legislation is finally here and it appears that President Bush is ready to sign it.
It makes me wish the President has a line item veto. A new law to curb online gaming was backdoor attached to a defense bill. This happens all the time. A president should not have to sign a bill wholesale, but he should have the right to veto part of it. Not that the President would necessarily veto this part of the bill.
Anyways, for those of you not aware, the bill calls for banks to stop transactions between US customers and offshore gaming companies. It imposes fines on banks and jail time for gaming companies.
Full Tilt Poker believes that poker is a game of skill not gaming and has pledged to run business as usual.
The Poker Players Alliance is trying to convince lawmakers that Poker is a game of skill as well.
All I can tell you is stop investing in online poker. According to Full Tilt, it will take banks 270 days to comply with these laws.
What does that mean to us? Not sure yet, but I'm probably not going to keep a lot of money in my online account. I was just at the Neteller site, where I do some of my money transactions. They do not know how they will be affected by this law. Technically they allow you to move money to their company in order to make international purchases. They just stated that they are going to be monitoring progress of this law.
It's an unfortunate law. The Libertarian in me says that the government should stay out of this. The conservative in me says, that unless this is a way for terrorist to transfer money, no ban should exist. The Christian in me tells me to just stop credit card transaction. I say, let us play poker.
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