Moving Forward....

History is good. It allows you to look back and study proven results derived from specific actions. It also gives you a road map of expectation for any given undertaking.

A lot of times, it's nothing more than a precursor to what's next without yielding any advantages as far as predictions because, well, what's coming hasn't really been done before.

Like online poker for example. Or cocaine trafficking in the 70's. Both of these things got out of the gates extremely fast giving their providers little or no time to really perfect the system. Just get the product out there. People were making so much money it was just a get to market fast, instead of first.

But then things settled in, competition became relevant, and better products and better practices came into place. Bottom lines were being paid more attention to because of that competition, and customers were getting less of a better deal. But this also made for a better product so customers where happy.

Of course, when a product or service produces revenues so profoundly and abruptly, Uncle Sam immediately sticks his finger in the pot and starts to stir. Legal or not, it's always about the dollar. This is never about morals. The war on drugs wasn't about saving lives. It's never about that. Morality is just a campaigning benefit for politicians. It's always about the money. It goes a lot deeper than just what's being made through the sale of such illegal things. It's about the amount of money being made illegally and thrown into the market unaccounted for, therefore unable to be taxed. Uncle Sam doesn't like nontaxable revenue. Especially when it's in the amounts of what blow and online poker produced. And that's just the beginning. Those revenues grow exponentially when you consider the amount of illegal side business' that are spurred by providers of such products and services. Trafficking meant flying the product in. Or transferring monies to sites. Which even though is supposed to be illegal, still happens.

So here we stand. On the precipice of if we will or will not be able to continue on the same path that we have been. Make no mistake, I truly believe the UIGEA will be overturned, re-written, whatever. It wasn't online poker that was made illegal. It was the transferring of funds for such purposes that was criminalized. But if this does go bad, and doesn't go through, Online poker will cease to exist in the US. Meaning the whole kit and kaboodle will be shut down here in the states.

Temporarily of course because countries around the world will go nutso, silly, red with anger, bat shit crazy, and there will be yet another fight. The income opportunity this presents for other countries housing the processors and gaming companies will almost certainly be looked upon as nothing more than sanctions by the US, and there will be law suit after law suit.

But that won't happen. It will pass. And I don't know that everyone is going to like it. But first let me make this clear. Over the next several posts what I write will be pure supposition on my part. It will draw from my experiences with online poker room operators, lawyers, poiliticians, and just general business accumen and instinct. Which isn't saying much... but none the less.

I've thought about this lately with the idea that the government is going to want to take as much as it can. And the sites will no doubt stipulate to whatever demands they request. There is also the market effects as well. It's not just about the concessions the sites and processors will have to make to the Feds in order to get the bill signed. As a matter of fact I doubt there will be very little back and forth, if any at all. But once it does pass, the Market is going to be shaped a whole lot differently.

For this reason I will write two separate posts on each category. I have some of it already done, but I need to do some homework as well.

I hope to get a good dialouge going through these posts. Speaking through fag chat with some of you on this matter has really opened up the realization of different possibilities. It's exciting for me to plot it out and then see how close those assumptions come to a reality.

Kinda like the stock market :)