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Comment by superplussed | Hacker News Reader

I made 90% of my winnings online, and treated live tournies and cash games as kind of a break from my real job. I was a heads up specialist (we used to be referred in a derogatory sense as "bum-hunters") who could enjoy basically variance-free winnings if you were table selecting well enough. So my winnings were comfortably in the 6 figures each year pre-tax, until Black Friday hit and it all came crashing down.

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If (like me) you don't know anything about the (online) poker scene, "Black Friday" here is likely a reference to United States v. Scheinberg [1], a federal criminal case against the founders of some major online poker sites.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg

out of interest, do the people of the usa generally agree that gambling like this should still be illegal (especially when most other countries allow it?).

i'm in the uk and gambling is allowed.

In Nevada, gambling has lawful for much longer than I've been alive. And, in most states, it's lawful within certain locations, so most states these days have casinos. I suspect the online gambling thing comes down to taxation rather than mores.

People are going to be all over the map on this one. I see large downsides and minimal upsides to online gambling.

I think it should be illegal in practice because people get into massive downward spirals. Now, that does not mean we need no ban ultra low stakes poker, just the kind of games that cause people to go broke. Aka, someone that loses 200$ a month on poker is not a big deal. Someone that's losing 20,000+$ / month is likely a different story.

I have similar issues with the App Store and feel Apple / Google should limit in app purchases per month.

It's trivial for gamblers to get round such a regulation and trivial for bookies to plausibly deny it

You can say the same thing about DRM, but even 98% effective is good enough to be very useful. It's the same reason you can't buy lotto tickets with a credit card even if credit cards let you get cash advances that's an extra step that really makes a meaningful difference in people's lives.

In practice, it's illegal because of Las Vegas lobbying against it. Particularly Sheldon Adelson, who has a ton of political influence

I'm in the USA, and I definitely think it should be discouraged. I think I'd prefer to see social constructs over laws, but the laws do seem to be more effective.

I live in Ohio, and I'm still unhappy with the fact that we voted to change our state constitution a few years back to allow casinos to be built.

First time that I hear heads-up and variance free in one sentence.

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