Shuffle Up and Deal

The word "poker" itself has its roots in French, but it is truly an American phenomenon, with Europe and Asia catching on quickly. Just saying "poker" conjures up a variety of images in the mind of the listener, from the down-and-out degenerate gambler who is pissing away the family's milk money, to high-flying card sharks in Vegas or Monte Carlo who are living a life of luxury due to their acumen of reading people and cards. As with most pursuits, 99% of poker players (myself included) fall somewhere between these two extremes.

Doyle Brunson, known affectionatley as the "Godfather of Poker", made the astute observation that, "Poker is not a card game played with people; it is a people game played with cards." A few examples of successful "people persons" who played poker with fervor were:

• President Richard Nixon who, as a young naval officer, made thousands of dollars from his fellow sailors playing the game

 

• President Harry Truman, whose regular weekly White House poker game provided a backdrop for entertaining members of Congress to iron out tough political issues of the day 

 

• Bill Gates who, in his book The Road Ahead, claimed to have paid his way through Harvard in large part with his poker earnings 
   

 

The Information Age radically transformed many parts of global life, and poker was no exception. Interest in the game--the version known as Texas Hold Em in particular--exploded in the mid to late '90s and enjoyed steady growth into the 21st Century. But then the moral do-gooders in Washington D.C. decided that our uniquely American past time was not morally compatible with good ole fashioned American values--the same politicians whose values also include spilling the blood of young Americans for crude oil and slaughtering innocent civilians around the globe because they are proving to be a bit inconvenient for their cronies' corporate interests.

So in April 2011 the U.S. Department of Justice, in a Prohibition-like raid of a speakeasy, shut down the world's two most populous poker sites, Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars. Yet interestingly, other online "gambling sites" are still up and running, operating with the full blessing of the U.S. government. Case in point:

                 VS.                        

Compare the two above outfits. Poker Stars reigned supreme in the world of online poker from 2000 until their shutdown by U.S. Dept. of Justice action in April 2011. E*Trade is one of the standard online brokerage firms, boasting boasting assets of $47.4 billion and is publicly traded on the NASDAQ and is a component S&P 500. 

So what do consumers who willingly feed their money to either company do? In what activity do they engage? Quite simply, they both:

1. Use a credit card or debit card to fund an account
2. Download special software in order to access script-running programs
3. Make an educated assessment about the possible risk and the possible reward of the particular arena in which they choose to enter
4. Place money into said arena (equity in a company, a Texas Hold Em game, a mutual fund, an Omaha Hi-Lo tournament)
5. Use skill, luck, or a combinatio therof to make financial decisions based on the information in front of them (i.e. current market conditions, one's hole cards, current trends in certain sectors (agriculture, financial, aerospace), the change in the texture of the board in a Hold Em game)

 The point is simply this: online stock trading is fundamentally no different than online poker. They both involve making financial decisions based on incomplete information and while one's level of success is not entirely at the whim of the winds of fate--skill is the long-term determining factor in either arena--luck can make the difference between short term gains and losses. 

I encourage you to join the Poker Players Alliance. PPA is the premier voice of American poker players to Congress, the Executive branch and to state legislatures. If you believe in financial choice--and yes, if you believe in people's right to even lose money because they are fundamentally ill-prepared to compete in a marketplace--be it on Wall Street or 5th Street--then join PPA TODAY!