WASHINGTON--America's online poker enthusiasts descended on Capitol Hill this week with two messages for Congress: Poker's good for the brain, and stop jeopardizing our games already.
The multiday lobbying visit by members of the Poker Players Alliance, which counts more than 800,000 professional and amateur players on its rolls, arrived about a year after politicians enacted a restrictive anti-Internet gambling law.
The players' goal for the fly-in: to boost support for a couple of bills, which so far enjoy backing from only a handful of politicians, that would roll back a sweeping ban in favor of more tailored regulations. One proposal would expressly carve out poker from any ban on online gambling, placing it in a category with "games of skill" like backgammon, mahjong and bridge.
American poker players want Congress to scale back an online gambling ban that's 'inconveniencing' their games.
(Credit: Anne Broache/CNET News.com)"Certainly I think the growth of the game has been hurt," Howard Lederer, a two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, said of the current law's impact at a public forum organized by the PPA here Wednesday. He's known as the "Poker Professor" for his commentary and analysis in card-playing circles and is one of the founders of the online card room Full Tilt Poker.
That's unfortunate, Lederer argued, because "yes, it can be used as a vice, but for most of us it's a wonderful form of entertainment that actually massages your mind, gets you thinking."
Supporters of the federal online gambling ban say the law is necessary to clarify that forms of offline gambling already considered unlawful by state and federal laws are also prohibited in the online context. They argue gambling has a host of negative consequences--including addiction, bankruptcy, divorce and crime--that are only aggravated by the relative anonymity the Internet supplies.
The law requires banks and payment processors to take certain steps to block transactions stemming from "unlawful" forms of gambling--that is, those that violate any federal, state or local laws. (Bets on horse racing, lotteries, fantasy sports and games that don't involve exchanges of anything of "value" are exempt.)
Because Congress has historically left it up to each state to decide how much or how little gambling to legalize, it's not always clear where online gaming for money--and poker in particular--fits in from state to state. So, with the risk of hefty fines and criminal penalties if they don't do their part, payment processors seem to be playing it safe, opting to stop accepting transactions from online poker and bridge sites even when it's not clear laws are being broken, critics of the ban said Wednesday.
"Poker players who are in states where there is clearly no prohibition on poker (like New Hampshire, Lederer's home state) are being inconvenienced," Lederer said. "And that inconvenience is going to get much worse."
Part of the controversy boils down to whether poker is considered a game dominated by "chance" or one of "skill." The distinction is significant because many states focus their gambling restrictions on games dominated by chance, not skill.
Professional poker players are adamant that their game requires skill and have cited some academics who seem to agree. Legally speaking, however, interpretations still seem to be up in the air. For example, a pending case in a Pennsylvania county court is dealing with the question of whether for-profit poker tournaments (in this case, in the offline world) are considered unlawful there. (Editors' note: We mischaracterized the status of this case in an earlier version of this story--key questions are still pending.)
The U.S. Department of Treasury, which is still in the early stages of drafting the rules that will flesh out the law, made no attempt to define more clearly what is considered "unlawful" gambling in proposed regulations issued earlier this month. But it acknowledged that "overblocking" by banks may occur and is soliciting comments on how to handle that.
Online poker: An educational tool?
Meanwhile, poker players are looking for a savior in two proposed bills that have yet to go anywhere in Congress this year.
One alternative the PPA supports is Rep. Barney Frank's (D-Mass.) Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act, which would substitute strict regulations, including criminal background checks and financial disclosures imposed on companies that seek to offer legal Internet gambling, for a blanket ban.
A narrower proposal it backs, sponsored by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), addresses only companies that offer "games of skill" over the Internet--a category that includes "bridge, mahjong, backgammon and poker" in the bill's text. Those firms would have to ensure that minors are prevented from playing for money, that compulsive players are flagged and referred for help, that game operators aren't "vulnerable" to criminal or terrorist money laundering, and that appropriate taxes are collected.
A regulated online poker regime would be far preferable because it's easier to detect cheating and addictive behaviors that way, professional poker player Vanessa Russo said at Wednesday's event. "The fact that all the (sites) are logged means you can program software to detect problem gamblers much more efficiently than you ever could in a live way," she said.
Frank and Wexler aides both said their bosses are hoping to move their bills to votes but are attempting to get more of their colleagues to sign on as supporters first.
"I don't know if something is going to happen this year, but I think within this two-year cycle, I think change could occur," Wexler spokesman Josh Rogin told CNET News.com.
Poker enthusiasts are also attempting to ingratiate themselves with politicians wary of the game by playing up its perceived positive effects on everything from family life to cognitive development.
Professor Charles Nesson
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.org)"I think poker has tremendous educational utility for kids, I think it's a great family game," said Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson, who is currently leading a project aimed at legitimizing and teaching poker and the value of strategic poker thinking.
Nesson recently started up a group called the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, which now has satellite groups at a handful of other prestigious universities, with the goal of creating "an open online curriculum centered on poker that will draw the brightest minds together, both from within and outside of the conventional university setting, to promote open education and Internet democracy."
The Internet gambling ban has also prompted a sort of "political awakening" among poker players, said PPA president John Pappas. The group plans to launch a voter registration drive next year with the hopes of signing up "single issue voters" who would be willing to vote against reelecting members of Congress who reject attempts to turn back the antigambling law. The group is also encouraging members to post video testimonials about the "influence of online poker on our lives" on YouTube.
Separately, a group called the Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association, is
Perhaps more likely to get politicians moving on the issue sooner than later, however, is the threat of trade sanctions by foreign nations. The United States is reportedly facing the possibility of an up to $100 billion fine from the European Union after the World Trade Organization sided for a second time with the tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbados, ruling that the U.S. antigambling law violates its international treaty obligations.
In a poker contest of man vs. machine, the results are in. Humans-2. Polaris-1. (And one draw.)
On Tuesday night, Phil Laak and Ali Esmali, two professional poker players, faced off against a computer program called Polaris, which was developed over 26 years at the University of Alberta. The contest, held at the American Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) conference in Vancouver, Canada, was one of the first scientific poker contests involving real players.
In the end, Polaris beat Laak and Esmali in the first match of 500 hands; tied the second match; then lost the last two rounds. Laak and Esmali walked away with almost $20,000 each, including a $5,000 honorarium for playing in the scientific game.
"It was very challenging and a far more sophisticated bot than what they put out before," Esmali, 30, said in an interview. "Previous versions were much more exploitable and you could adjust your strategy and beat it. (Polaris) used a much more varied strategy."
Esmali, a resident of Los Angeles, said that the play wasn't about the money for him or Laak, but rather about helping advance the field of AI. "It's the implication in society that this technology can be applied to like collaborative problems. That's what's so exciting is being at the beginning of this adventure."
For Jonathan Schaeffer, professor in the department of computing science at the University of Alberta and who's been working on Polaris since 1991, the game was also a win for his team.
"This is the first time any computer program has won a match against a strong human player, and from our point of view, that's a huge milestone for us and AI," said Schaeffer. "But we have a long way to go to beat the best in the world."
The consolation prize for Schaeffer's 12-person team was that Polaris won the Second World Computer Poker Championship, in which as many as 18 computer programs played each other over weeks. The results were announced Wednesday at the AAAI conference.
The University of Alberta team chose to work on an AI program for poker, rather than chess, because it's a game of imperfect information, just like life, Schaeffer said. That means that a player can't know what cards his or her opponents are holding, making the game one of luck and skill.
The man vs. machine poker contest was designed to eliminate the luck factor by dealing the same cards in each hand, but in reverse. So in one hand, Laak might get lucky with two aces, but in the other room Esmali would be unlucky as the computer was dealt two aces. To finalize a winner, officials added the two human scores and two computer scores separately, and the highest number won.
Even though the University of Alberta team lost, they can take heart that it was no easy task for Laak and Esmali.
Esmali said that the game wasn't like professional poker online, when he can typically watch TV or eat some food while playing. "This required really intense focus to play at the level to beat this bot."
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