Pointing to individual instances where regulation has not worked isn’t a cogent argument. The solution you describe – censure from the online community – is the status quo, and clearly it isn’t preventing all malfeasance either.
It’s not even clear to me what you mean by “regulation”. I don’t think I’d endorse government telling sites what games they can spread, how much to rake, setting deposit limits, etc. is desirable, but I do think there’s a need for laws penalizing cheating (by players but especially by sites), for courts that can enforce contracts, and for enforceable standards regarding how a site is run (to prevent undercapitalization like what happened with FTP). Notice that the publicly traded companies (Party, 888) have not had nearly the problems that companies with opaque ownership like FTP and UB/AP have had. I also think that laws can help to codify and make clear the social norms that you’re talking about, and that once those norms exist the online community plays an important role in upholding them. In other words, social enforcement plays an important role in the process, but it can’t do the job on its own.

If we think about other aspects of poker where regulation has solved a problem, we can see how it might work in this case. For example, poker winnings are taxable and the tax regulations have proven quite effective at getting young internet pros to fully report their winnings and pay their taxes. I am sure a federal law agains multi-accounting and ghosting, etc. would be just as effective.

I’ll remove the tongue from my cheek to clarity my original post. My original claim was that the game is regulated now. It is regulated, quite capably, by the many honest players in the game. I have very low expectations that federal regulation would improve on the current framework. Andrew has properly identified a unique problem of poker: young, immature superstars who get themselves into trouble without realizing the gravity of their actions. Some reaqders will turn to the government to solve this problem. However, I think the likes of Andrew Brokos (successful, young, yet mature players) can better solve this issue by putting pressure on the immature players to do the right thing. The online communty, via outlets such as 2+2 and Andrew’s blog, will do more to stop these activities than any federal law ever could.

Thanks, I didn’t miss it but I did intend to link it in the original post! I don’t think I agree about Tyler. Cates wasn’t just playing under an anonymous name, he was playing under the account of a high-profile sponsored pro. So he wasn’t a blank slate but someone Tyler could have inferred quite a bit of (inapplicable) information about, including the important fact that he was not Jungleman or a number of other players Tyler would choose not to play. Tyler claims he googled the name. Of course he could be lying, but setting himself up for an angle-shot is the price Cates pays for playing on someone else’s account. IMO he should return 100% of the losses- getting freerolled is also the price he pays.

I don’t see why it’s intrinsically a shady game that produces shady characters, though I think I agree with the rest of your comment.

At the very least having a mechanism for suing and/or prosecuting both operators and other players would be a deterrent to cheating.

Very well said. I think you’re spot on that codifying a set of expectations is an important step and would deter at least some of the scuzziness we see now. I really believe that a non-trivial amount of the multi-accounting, etc. that has happened in the past was a matter of people genuinely convincing themselves they were doing nothing wrong.

At first I was going to disagree that the ones making fortunes were all unscrupulous, and indeed I do think most of the most successful players have proven upstanding, but of course the ones who really got rich were the owners of the sites, and their track record is not so good…

As the other two posters imply, to think or say that history proves regulation doesn’t work is simply wrong. It may be difficult to do regulation properly – no question – but it is indisputable that NO regulation leads to corruption and anarchy. Virtually by definition.

For one recent example, might I suggest you look at the Canadian Banking Sector while the US was melting down in 2008 and 2009. Guess why Canadian Banks had barely a hiccup while in the US the house of cards was falling down left and right? …. yes, regulation and oversight.

What lack of regulation does is let a few intelligent and unscrupulous speculators make obscene fortunes, which is what has happened in poker.

Some regulation has worked and some hasn’t. To suggest that there are lessons of history that definitively say one way or another on the big tent that is “regulation,” is to be blunt, ideological.

> But I oppose regulation for the simple reason it has proven ineffective in so many other
> aspects of life. Although regulation may help the game grow, it won’t solve the problem of
> cheating or the problem Andrew has identified of immaturity.

Ineffective is not the correct word. Regulation just means having a set of rules, which _should_ be obeyed on all sites, backed by the authority of the government.

This should solve a lot of “grey” problems, like what kind of software you can have helping you while you play or to what extent you are allowed to use any HH data etc. etc.

Obviously this can’t _stop_ things like “let me see your cards while I play against you”, but the clarification brought about by universal rules can certainly stop the people who do that kind of thing trying to hide their behaviour in the greyness of all the other rules.

And much like building codes, or lots of other forms of regulation … it won’t be perfect, but I’d much rather have it than not.

Honestly, I am a fish. Check out some of the naive strategy questions I have posted on this blog over time. But I oppose regulation for the simple reason it has proven ineffective in so many other aspects of life. Although regulation may help the game grow, it won’t solve the problem of cheating or the problem Andrew has identified of immaturity.

I respect your opinion about regulation, but I suggest to you it runs counter to the facts of recorded history.

Precisely! Make the laws already and stop being surprised and outraged that these things are happening. We have agreed upon the person.

Self-policing doesn’t work. Haven’t we learned anything from wall street? When you do not impose outside regulation, the social fabric of a small community that is supposed to police itself gets distorted because the people in it do not have proper perspective and are naturally self-interested and not paragons of altruistic virtue.

You say most major online poker scandals have been identified by players… there should be no need, and would be no need, with proper regulations. The only people who don’t want regulation are the shady people making money from cheating the “fish”.. and sometimes themselves.

You cannot escape the reality that when you play a zero sum game with lax oversight and huge potential payoffs, the scum will rise to the top.

One curious thing though is that normal people actually took this Girah thing seriously. I mean, I read his first post on 2+2 proclaiming himself the Portugese Poker Prodigy, and my first thought was that it was fake – for laughs, to troll 2+2, whatever. Then I read the threads that followed, and though it was either a hoax or a scam. And THEN I realized people were taking it seriously? I mean can’t you read? The whole thing was ludicrous… it may be possible to have prodigies in poker, but not without any evidence. And there was ZERO evidence.

While I think its bad form, and just an overall douchey/shady move to MA against someone who actually wouldn’t play you on your normal account – since Smith had no knowledge of who Girah was – and Jungle/Smith played on a network that allows multiple usernames – he can’t automatically assume the person he’s playing isnt jungleman. Had he had previous history w/ Girah / knew who he was – then I completely agree that jungleman is 100% at fault here – but given he was effectively an unknown to smith – I don’t think he’s entitled to a refund.

Also in case you missed it – maybe SrslySrius’ best work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rV6pbfA1DM

Ganesh,
There are laws and cops at work here, just not any with formal titles. Social norms of behavior are laws and most folks, even poker players abide by them. The players themselves act as cops, as most major online and even live poker scandals have been identified not by authorities but by players themselves. If you look outside of poker, at any other industry, you will see government laws and cops are not able to stop misbehavior. In the U.S., Enron happened despite those activities already being illegal and under the watch of regulators. So did the mortgage scandals, and the investment banking scandals, and on and on and on.
I think Andrew’s point is that online poker has a unique problem in that so many of our best particpants are young and immature. These leads to many situations where participants lack the maturity or experience to understand the nuances of the ethical issues. Very smart, rational, focused poker players end up making dumb, illogical, and lazy excuses for their behavior, partly out of immaturity. Our desire to be taken seriously doesn’t hinge on whether or not we get regulation, it hinges on whether the majority will hold the minority accountable for their misdeeds.

Honestly, IMO this is how people behave in general (not just in poker) when there are no laws and no cops around to enforce them. This is yet another argument for strong regulation of poker in the U.S. People will continue to exceed speed limits when they know there are no cops around and other cars in the road are speeding too.

The threat of going to jail, will correct a lot of this.

I remember, way back, being blown away when i discovered that dog-is-head was so young, given the sophistication of some of his videos. But in the occasional post of his i encountered on my odd foray into NVG on 2+2 more recently – the million dollar bet incident, and a casual awareness of the portugese poker prodigy scandal, for example – i was really struck at how the idea of being a professional gambler and an online poker player seemed to be shaping his self image, and driving decisions and attitudes which seemed pretty weird to me.

I also think that there’s a lot of dodgy reasoning about ‘what we do’ being ok and ‘what they do’ being unethical. For example drawing the lines between good and bad in the realm of ghosting/sweating/team playing, for example, is not really obvious to me. On the other hand, double standards and ethical inconsistencies are pretty much a human universal.

Finally, there are plenty of really sound young players and, whilst i am not knowledgeable about either world in real depth, i think on balance i would have more faith in the standards of the online community than i would the pre-boom live playing community (if you can even begin to split poker into the two).