Online poker ban sends pros elsewhere

The warnings sounded as early as May.

"It's not often that the federal government shuts down the only means of income for hundreds of thousands of hardworking Americans," Matt Villano reported for Time magazine on May 10.

"Naturally, then, on April 15, when the FBI pulled the plug on PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, the four largest offshore online-poker sites serving U.S. players, full-time online pro Isaac Haxton started thinking about moving overseas. Among the initial batch of candidates: Melbourne, Malta and Madrid -- all places that allow gambling online."

"Ultimately, it doesn't really matter where I end up," said the 25-year-old Haxton, who lives in Las Vegas -- or did, three months ago. "So long as I can get myself to a country with good Internet connections, a country that allows me to earn a living again, I'm there."

Life changed drastically for professional online poker players in the wake of what many have come to call Black Friday. "One day, it was business as usual for regular players: 10 to 15 tables at a time, roughly 500 hands per hour, tens of thousands of dollars (or more) in play," Villano reported. "The next day, nothing, not even a single virtual chip."

Before the shutdown, the Poker Players Alliance, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that advocates for the right to play poker online, boasted that as many as 10 million Americans played the computerized game. By May, John Pappas, the group's executive director, estimated that number at no more than 2 million.

Time reported that poker pro Vanessa Peng, a 28-year-old Las Vegas resident, planned to leave for good. "I thought this was a country of freedoms. I know better now."

As these professionals pack up and leave, they're taking with them not only a game on which Las Vegas could make millions, but the taxes they pay and the profits they spend on upscale restaurants, entertainment and other services wherever they land. They are preparing to move to Canada, Costa Rica or Mexico -- if they haven't left already -- which are among the many countries where Internet gambling is either legal or allowed to continue under laissez-faire governments, Vegas Inc. reports.

The major tournaments hosted here and the town's 24-hour lifestyle made Las Vegas a favored base for many of these largely recession-immune professionals. And Nevada's long experience in gaming regulation would position the state to fare well in any environment of legalized online gambling.

Yet this entire industry is being forced offshore. Why? To "protect" American adults from the dangers of playing poker in the privacy of their own homes?

Congress, having done all the harm it could arrange at present, is now on vacation. Once they return to Washington, Nevada's delegation could find worse ways to spend their time than to push for legalized and sensibly regulated Internet poker.

As with other commonly accepted vices, it's going to happen, anyway. Why not give players the legal protection absent from an illegal game -- and capture a piece of the action, while we're at it?