By Peter Sachs
Q: One of my friends said the government just made online poker illegal. How am I supposed to pay back my student loans now? -Anonymous
A: What you heard is only partially correct.
Rest easy for the moment, though, cuz all that has happened is the House, one half of Congress, passed a bill that bans online gambling if real money is involved.
But yes, there is a very real possibility that soon you may not be able to sit in front of your computer in your boxers for 16 hours straight waiting for that 8-of-clubs river card that would finally let you get all your money back from the player at the virtual table who says she is from Alberta.
And let's face it, what's the point of gambling online if you can't eventually cash out and get that sweet Vespa with the sea-green paint job you've had your eyes on? You know the one I'm talking about.
How ever the debate winds up in congress, you'll probably still be able to bet on horse races and play state lotteries online. But if the Senate passes the bill, doing away with most other types of online gambling--and the president signs it--then you'll have to find another way to finance that Vespa-like showering in the morning, getting dressed and, well, working.
What's so bad with gambling online, you might ask. One of the government's main concerns is that the computers at Web sites like partypoker.com are physically located in another country.
That means that the government can't tax all that money that is going back and forth. How much money are the feds missing out on?
The International Herald Tribune said online gambling sites will rake in $15 billion this year, and that number will grow to $24 billion yearly by the end of the decade.
Let's put that $15 billion in perspective for a moment. That's enough money to buy 1,500 mansions on the scale of Rob Lowe's planned $10-million fortress in Southern California. Or this: there's a Greek yacht that fits 36 people and that you can charter for $117,000 a day. With $15 billion in your wallet, you could pilot that yacht around the world for more than 350 YEARS!
Lawmakers have other reasons for pushing the ban on gambling, too. They worry that with computers in other countries, there is no way to verify how old the players are. A few studies have suggested that there are growing numbers of kids under 18 years old who are gambling online, which is already illegal but pretty hard to enforce the way things are now.
The politicians and many other groups say that gambling is bad for you, pointing to some cases in the news where college students have lost thousands of dollars and in one case tried to rob a bank to keep on playing.
"Religious leaders of all denominations and faiths are seeing gambling difficulties erode family values," said Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, the bill's author.
So which is it, then? Your family or that sea-green Vespa? Far be it for me to say, but I doubt your family has chrome mirrors, too.