Bill Frist, the downfall of online poker

Very interesting, thanks for posting

While I don't disagree with the overall sentiment of the article (that Frist was a douchebag, land-base casinos having an interest in shutting down online poker, etc), some of it is misleading if not downright false, and potentially harmful to the poker cause.

To wit (highlighting is mine):

Talking strictly poker, which is what this article is about, the casinos turn a profit against 100% of players, not just the 92% losers. This article makes poker sound like a pit game where the winners profit against the casino, and the casino profits against the losers. Those 92% are losing to the other players, not to the casino (aside from tournament juice). When you're talking cash games, the winners effectively pay 100% of the rake, while the losers pay none. So in fact, the argument could pretty easily be twisted to say that that in cash games, casinos only profit from the winners.

A writeup like this can actually hurt the poker cause by suggesting poker is on the same level as craps, roulette, and other non-skill pit games. I'd like to leave a comment on the article saying as much, but really don't want to become a member to do so.

There is so much that is written about the online poker situation that is wrong that it does get discouraging. Even the boilerplate answers from my congressmen aren't entirely accurate. Too bad too, because the majority of that article was good, but the error was so HUGE and misleading it ruined it.

Brings to mind the problem of having people making laws that don't have a clue about the subject matter they are voting on and often rely on information from lobbyists with obvious vested interests.

The most ridiculous thing I've read so far is a far right website trying to show where the bible is against gambling when in fact, gambling is never mentioned. But the tortured explanation makes me wonder if these people actually read what they write.

I think they wanted to make it sound like "land based casinos vs online casinos" in order for the story to work, but along the way they started to mix up online poker with online casinos.

One thing that made me smile was the idea that all that money is going overseas, whereas in reality a very large part of Full Tilt's profits will have ended up with the American owners.