« I'm A Bumper The Pikes | Main | Vegas Bound »
 | |
| Latest poker news |
November 12, 2006
You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Poker
I just found out, via Technorati, that the PPA has both a blog and a MySpace page. They are very visible and really seem to take their job seriously. I don't know a whole lot about lobbying, but from what little I can see I think they do a good job of raising public awareness.
I was thinking about it though, and I can't think of any other industry where the only notable lobbying agency appeals to the customers for funding. Why do poker players have to fight for their rights, rather than the people who profit from it the most? Why don't the online casinos all have a giant RIAA-like association with which to buy the legislation they need? They could certainly have afforded it. Many of them are run by publicly traded companies but the people in charge seem all too happy to let our legislators run their profits into the ground. I just don't get it.
Given the state of our current kleptocracy I have to think that a little grease on the right wheel could have gotten this all taken care of years ago. It probably still could. I am very glad to see the Democrats take over but I'm under no illusion that many of our laws are not still for sale. It's just a different group of them up on the block now, and I think this particular one is open to the highest bidder no matter who is in power. It's just too irrelevant to either party's platform. Nobody cares enough to not sell it.
Party Poker spent the last few years making billions in profit and I bet for less than 1% of it they could have prevented this from happening in the first place. The fact that they didn't shows I was right to advocate shorting them. They went public because the people in charge wanted to cash out, and if the owners of a company that has a profit margin of eighty-some percent and revenue in the low billions want to sell, I don’t want to buy. They were yet another company that stood to gain nothing from going public and had a lot to lose, and they lost it.
I don't understand why someone didn't snap them up immediately and run them privately. When they announced that they were going to quit taking U.S. customers their stock took a nosedive. If I were a non-American person or corporation with a few billion to spare I would have bought up their shares and repealed that notice within days. Now buying them and reopening to Americans wouldn't make much sense, they've already lost all of the action (which was always the only good thing about their site) and won't regain it, but there was a two week window where it would have been brilliant. Now it would probably be best just starting a new site and spending those billions in advertising instead.
I guess the reason that so many mistakes were made goes back to something Richard once told me, "You don't have to be that bright to make a fortune in the gambling industry." With the exception of PokerStars, and maybe Full Tilt, every online card room is/was run so poorly that they would have long since collapsed in any other industry. Most of these sites got what they deserved, it just sucks that we the players have to suffer the consequences too.
Posted by themaroon at November 12, 2006 12:56 PM
Comments
You over estimate the competence and efficiency of other industries.
Posted by: Gravity at November 12, 2006 9:17 PM