Online Poker Smart

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Any poker player will tell you that it is a poker skill to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.  This of course refers to your hole cards.  Congress probably should fold its interference with Internet gambling and certainly should allow Americans’ freedom to exercise their poker skills online.  What is next?  The government felt it necessary to turn gambling that is mostly considered as a sin, into social policy.  What is the next step?  There are certainly many more Americans that eat excessively than the small minority that perhaps gamble excessively?  Can we soon expect social policy against those who eat excessively and are addicted to smoking and drinking?  The Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative is an online gaming lobby group that promotes the freedom of individuals to gamble online with the proper safeguards to protect consumers and ensure the integrity of financial transactions.  Their latest efforts involve an advert campaign that they launched in support of Barney Frank’s legislation to overturn the bizarre Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006 that effectively banned Internet gambling by making it unlawful for financial institutions to process payments to online gambling operations.  These ads will appear in publications including The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and the Politico website.   The Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative calls for the ending of prohibition of online gaming.  As they rightly say – it did not work for alcohol and it doesn’t work for Internet gambling either.  Instead of a ban, Congress is encouraged to rather play a role in regulating the industry and through that collect billions in new revenues.  So, where does all of this put poker? 

The very first issue is that Congress made an unintelligent category mistake.  Poker is a game of skill.  It is not a mindless game of luck.

Howard Lederer

Howard Lederer and the Poker Players Alliance are determined to prove that online poker does not belong in the same category as online gambling.  Lederer decided to spend a year studying chess before matriculating at Columbia University.  Instead, he discovered poker. He started at Columbia but left, reasoning that he had found his vocation. He has won about $5 million in winnings.  Congress, Lederer thinks, should revisit the work of John von Neumann (1903-57), the Hungarian-born mathematician who was a defense intellectual specializing in the subject of relevance of game theory to strategic thinking.  According to him, the game of chess involves logic and the game of roulette involves the probability theory.  On the other hand, the fascinating game of poker involves logic, probability and something significant to military and diplomatic strategy called bluffing.  J

This is not the only relevant theories and information available that investigates this captivating topic.  The field of game theory was basically established by Von Neumann’s “Theory of Parlor Games” in 1928 and also Oskar Morgenstern’s, “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior” in 1944.  Chris Ferguson, one of our leading professional poker players, is the son of a mother who is a mathematician and a father who teaches game theory at UCLA.  No wild guesses needed to figure out what his opinion on the matter is!

When you play chess, Lederer says, there is symmetry of information:   Both players have all the information provided by the location of the pieces on the board, and both are equally ignorant of their opponent’s intentions. Think about it – a computer can be programmed to “play” a powerful game of chess, but not of poker, wherein your opponents’ cards are concealed.

Lederer is also confident that a brain scan of someone playing poker would reveal a lit-up frontal lobe but the lobe of someone watching television would show up cool blue. A poker player — unlike someone playing a game of chancel like roulette, a lottery or “video poker” (which is a gross misnomer since it is purely a game of chance governed by a machine) — is trying to apply skill, acquired by experience influenced by many intricate factors, to increase the probability of winning each hand.

But why would Lederer (who plays much more land based games than in the online world, be so passionate about his efforts to decriminalize online poker?  Well, firstly he does not appreciate the dictatorial government. Secondly, as a passionate poker player himself he wants as many people as possible to have access to the fabulous game of poker. Thirdly of course, the more the merrier – more poker players means larger ranks of competitors, more exposure to the masses through television and other media and ultimately the stakes .  Probably the most basic foundation of all poker skills is to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.  Congress probably should fold its interference with Internet gambling, allow their voters freedom to exercise their poker skills on line, and hold’em votes!