Canadian Fun and then Debating Jom Leach…Even More Fun!

I just got back from Montreal and Ottawa yesterday.  I arrived in Montreal late Friday evening to do a seminar there for UB.com’s Cross Canada Tour.  Basically people could purchase a ticket or deposit money online to get a ticket to the event and they got an all day poker seminar in return of the quality of the WSOP Academies.  It was a pretty good deal.  Phil did the event in Toronto the week before but I lead the event Saturday and Sunday.  Basically I did 3 hours in the morning on No Limit Texas Hold’em preflop theory with some tournament theory and bluffing theory thrown in.  Then after lunch, Poker H0, Shawn Rice and Krazy Kanuck walked participants through actual sessions they had played and recorded of cash games and sit and gos.  It was pretty cool.  Each day ended with a Q &A.

About 150 people showed up in Montreal and over 200 in Ottawa.  Everyone seemed pretty happy with the content and I enjoyed Canada.  We ate some kickass Sushi in Montreal and some yummy Indian in Ottawa.  I also managed to work out in both places though I have had to keep that light because of this muscle injury which I just totally aggravated today and can now hardly walk.  I am an idiot for even running on it today.   Should have rested it more.  Of course that is how I injured it in the first place.

Anyway, this morning I had the please of appearing on a radio show on NPR with Jim Leach.  For those of you who don’t know, Jim Leach authored the UIGEA, The Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act.  The good news is he was promptly voted out of Congress.  The bad news is the UIGEA passed before that and now we have to live with this seriously bad piece of government policy.

I really enjoyed being able to debate with him because it went something like this ( I am paraphrasing and exaggerating a little):

Leach: There are a lot of people addicted to gambling and internet gambling just makes it worse. Internet gambling makes it so easy to gamble and then everyone just gambles there homes away.

Duke: Both the UK Gambling Prevalence Study and Professor Howard Shaffer of Harvard have both shown prevalence rates for problem gambling of .4 to .7% of the gambling population.  And the UK study showed no increase in that rate with the introduction of internet gambling.

Leach: Well, but, internet gambling is a hot bed of money laundering.  Criminals are laundering money through these sites.

Duke: The representative of the Justice Department at the Conyers hearing testified that there was no evidence of money laundering other than laundering of the gambling money itself in any case they had prosecuted so far.

Leach: But money COULD be laundered on these sites.

Duke: Money could be laundered in any place where money changes hands.  Are you going to ban the stock market?

Leach: Well I know a guy who’s family really got messed up by internet gambling.  This kid got bankrupt and tried to rob a bank because of it.

Duke: I hardly think internet gambling is the problem if you have a kid who tried to rob a bank to take care of $3k in debt.  I came out of college with more than $3K in debt and didn’t try to rob a bank.  But even so I hope we aren’t legislating on annecdote and conjecture but science and fact. Because I also know people who have been bankrupted by shopping.  We aren’t banning that.

Basically it went like that.  leach would say I know I guy and I think this might happen and logically gamblig on the internet is bad don’t you think and I would respond with facts and science and references to our Constitution and laws and what they say about it.  All in all I think it went quite well