Feds Freeze Poker Champ's Winnings (Online Crackdown)

Source: ABC News

On the Sunday before Memorial Day, David made the big time.

Winning $10,000 in an online poker tournament made him eligible for the upcoming World Series of Poker, the game's premier event, where hundreds of players -- amateur and professional -- descend on Las Vegas from around the world to play for a multimillion-dollar pot.

To register, he simply had to cash a check cut by a company that processed payments for the poker Web site Pokerstars.com and use the $10,000 to buy into the series.

When he went to cash the check from Account Services Wednesday, it bounced, he said.

What David, a 41-year-old from Virginia who spoke on the condition that ABC News use only his first name, initially thought was a glitch turned out to be part of an unprecedented government crackdown on online poker that affected some 27,000 people.



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7808131&page=1

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As long as casinos are legal IMHO it's none of the Fed's business except perhaps for a tax form on winnings in excess of $$$$ if the gambling is online instead of a casino.

of bush's shit, originally pushed by that no good fucking do-gooder bill frist

trouble getting my winnings from pokerstars but this is not good news.

use your US Bank Account to transfer money to and from Poker Stars. My only choice left is to open an account offshore. Thank you, to a corrupt congress.

... you find out otherwise.

With the huge amount of fraud that has been going on in our mortgage lending and banking system for the last 4 years, you'd think our law enforcement would have something useful to do.

But apparently not.

I play on Bodog at times, no problem yet with winnings.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227024.800-poker-skills-could-sway-gaming-laws.html">http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227024.800-poker-skills-could-sway-gaming-laws.html
The study analyzes results from actual players, rather than models the game as pure math, but it does prove skill not luck is at work. This may technically disqualify poker being designated as a game of chance under many laws. I find the mathematical reasoning easy to follow, but as the article indicates it may be more difficult to convince lawyers and judges. Due to the nature of poker it really makes no sense to model as pure math anyway.