Will internet poker be around in 3 years, 5 years, 10 years?

[Toro]

This was a topic of discussion last night at FW. One view expressed, not mine, was that the U.S. Government would put political pressure on the offshore governments who are allowing this, to change their laws to make it illegal. Rebuttal was that the countries were making too much money to succumb to any polical pressure from the U.S. The fellow making the argument then said that the U.S. would threaten to cancel foreign aid and this would do the trick. We were skepitical as to whether the amount of foreign aid lost would be enough incentive to give up the gambling revenue. So the discussion kind of ended up a stalemate.

[mosch]

I'm pretty sure that the US government doesn't give much foreign aid to the Kahnawake tribe.

[SunTzu68]

I'm not sure that this is a high enough priority to the US Government to risk foriegn relations by even threatening to cutting of aid. It sounds fairly far fetched to me.

[SamJack]

I think Jason is exactly right. Already, most banks and credit cards do not allow transactions to gaming sites directly. In fact, most banks/credit card don't allow indirect deposits to Neteller.

I sucks.

Sam

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Simple, they'll make it illegal for banks/credit cards/etc to make payments to offshore gambling sites

Big deal. They tried and failed in both '02 and '03. Both times after much saber-rattling, the Senate version of the bill never made it to the floor. Who wants to bet that in an election year, with Bush trying to push Mars & Moon missions, the war, that this won't take a back seat.

The longer it takes, the more people will be playing. The more people playing, the more opposition to such legislation.

I think there's more chance that the US will legalize it and try to regulate it. That's almost as bad. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[gunboat]

[ QUOTE ]
Most of these guys on party poker don't have a freaking clue how to play...there's no way the shark/fish ratio can stay this positive for more than 2 or 3 years tops. In summer of 2000, my podiatrist asked if I'd be willing to train him to daytrade, so he could give up all the HMO annoyances of the MD profession. I'll know poker has hit the top when I start getting requests from high end professionals to teach them to play cards. Quite enjoyable for as long as this lasts. Even if the sh*thead politicians don't ruin online poker, it can't possibly stay this good forever.

[/ QUOTE ]

The same thing could have been said about B&M poker anytime in the last, say 200 years. Yet there are still plenty of fish to fry for the B&M pros.

My guess is the internet poker will thrive until bots are developed to the point that even pros find them tough to beat. This will happen - witness the development of the chess playing computer. Even 10 years ago, the cheap PC version could beat about 80% of the players. The computer can now play at a level where only a handful of players in the whole world have a chance of beating it. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

The other thing that will kill internet poker is if hackers are able to control the outcome. This one may or may not happen. Security procedures are advancing at least as fast as hacking techniques.

[drewjustdrew]

I think the only way to stop it is for the government to start going after the user, not the sites. If they can go after Internet Service Providers to obtain user information, that would be the only way to stop it. This would take too many resources, especially since only a handful of people (figuratively) are opposed to the practice of online gaming.