I wrote my introductory post a few days ago, detailing how I became a professional gambler and included a few stories and explanations on certain subtopics of poker/gambling to commenters.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@daut44/introduction-and-ama-ask-me-anything-about-being-a-professional-poker-and-daily-fantasy-sports-player-cross-post-from-poker
I wanted to tell you guys a small piece of the story of how unconstitutional legislation and the US Department of Justice forced me to move to Canada to continue playing poker for a living.
UIGEA
The SAFE Port Act was a statute enacted by Congress covering port security that passed on September 30th, 2006. It should have been only that, but instead, in the 23rd hour before the Act passed, The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was added to it.
“(The UIGEA) prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law.
Apparently no one on the Senate-House committee saw the final language of the bill before it was passed, but who would vote against a maritime and cargo security measure in a post 9/11 world?
The Economist: “(The UIGEA was) hastily tacked onto the end of an unrelated legislation”
Poker sites operating in the US had to make a choice: “Should I stay or should I go?"
PartyPoker, at the time the largest online poker site, decided to play it safe and leave: its publicly traded stock dropped over 50% in a day. Pokerstars, Full Tilt, and UltimateBet chose to stay in the US market because poker is a game of skill and they believed it would be excluded from the UIGEA. Staying initially paid off, as Pokerstars and Full Tilt (FTP) grew to be the two largest poker sites in the world by a wide margin.
Black Friday
On April 15, 2011, since referred to as Black Friday, over 4 years after the UIGEA passed, the US Department of Justice seized the internet addresses of Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and UltimateBet, replacing them with a takedown notice:
Poker is without a doubt a game of skill. Over the long run, the better players make money. Yet online poker sites were attacked while impossible to beat (winners exist, but nobody expects to win money) games of chance like the lottery are left alone because they are heavily taxed, and **the government does not wish to bite the hand that feeds it. **
At the time I had roughly $85,000 on Pokerstars, $102,000 on Full Tilt Poker, and $4,000 frozen on AbsolutePoker. Now 5+ years removed from Black Friday, I have received roughly 2/3 of it back and will never see the other $65,000. But the story of Full Tilt’s insolvency and theft from its players is for another day.
Aftermath
Professional online poker players from the US were forced to make a choice after Black Friday. There were essentially 3 options:
- Find a different career
- Start playing mainly in casinos rather than online, because the remaining online sites had little traffic compared to the major sites
- Move away from the US to continue their careers
Most people chose #3. Many poker players didn't finish college so other career choices are limited and many don't have access to close worthwhile casinos. Moving to another country to continue playing online was somehow the best option of the three for the majority of online pros. Although I have a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science, and live 45 minutes from a major poker casino, and despite having a girlfriend who lived in California and was unable to move, it was clear that renting an apartment in Vancouver was the best choice for me. My earning potential in poker was still higher than other jobs and I despise the casino atmosphere and I would likely fall into depression having to play in them every day.
What happened to online poker afterwards was predictable. Most of the professional players in the US moved away to continue playing, but none of the recreational players that played for fun did. The best players remaining and the subpar players quitting meant that games online were instantly harder, which forced people to work harder, and the difficulty of being a professional poker player increased at a rapid rate.
By the end of 2014, I was making more money in a different sector of professional gambling, namely Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS), so I switched over full time and play much less poker now. And while I've done extremely well in these past 20 months, DFS is now facing similar legislation against it from lawmakers who are in the pockets of the wealthy campaign contributors. Every time new legislation is proposed, when we follow the money, we find the political corruption.
"Anarchy is not an absence of order; it is an absence of orders."
This series of unconstitutional events and attacks on personal freedoms of US citizens altered countless lives. I wish I could count on one hand or less how many poker players I know who either committed suicide or died after a spiraling depression due to the events that transpired. The centralization vs decentralization argument hits so close to home for all poker players, and we believe strongly in Blockchain technology and hope that it can change the world.