Poker Sites
It used to be easy to find a free poker site in the US. They were everywhere. Everyone loves the game of Texas poker, and everyone loves having the option to burn off a little bit of steam over a friendly hand or two. Yes there were some people with gambling addictions who got hooked by these poker sites. They would take advantage of the free games online for a little while, but soon it would not be enough for them. It was only a matter of time before they would move to higher and higher stakes poker. The government thought that it was too risky to have online gambling, and that is subverted local control over gambling laws. They closed the poker sites down. For moralistic Puritans, this was a victory, but for those of us who love the game of poker, it is a serious defeat. I think they should bring the poker sites back.
Don't get me wrong, there are still some Internet poker sites available for Americans. The problem is, they are vastly inferior to what was around before. The only sites that are legal within the US, you see, are the free online poker sites. These ones pay almost nothing and rely on a constant barrage of advertisements to fund the games. None of the serious poker players go to them, so you can't play poker online as a way to get good anymore. This means that Americans are losing ground in a game we have traditionally dominated. Sooner or later, none of the best poker players will be from this country. They will all come from countries where online poker is legal.
For those people who don't care too much about the law, it is still possible to find an online poker site that will let you play even if you live in America. Those kinds of sites, however, are getting rarer and rarer. The US government does everything it can to police the Internet, so even people operating web pages in other countries sometimes fall under American jurisdiction. The result is th
at a lot of innocent people get in trouble for just trying to run a business. Meanwhile, the players who used to frequent the poker sites are driven away to casinos. Casinos usually have a higher buy in with better players, meaning that people with gambling problems are even more likely to lose their savings. All in all, I wish they would bring back online poker.
