A - Z of Poker: Day 21

From London to Vegas in 26 Letters

Day 21: U is for ...

U is for UIGEA. An ugly acronym, which represents an especially heavy-handed piece of US legislation. UIGEA stands for Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 and refers to Title VIII of the SAFE Port Act 2006 that was tacked on at the end and thereby sneaked into law in the most ridiculous fashion. (ps: I just learned that SAFE is itself an acronym for "Security and Accountability For Every". That clever recursive acronym may be the best bit of the whole bill).

As we all know, this act caused tremendous ructions: the exit from the US of Party Poker, for example, and the subsequent collapse in its stockmarket value. Unjustified arrests of directors of legitimate gaming companies, and so on.

I personally find the whole concept of the bill to be ludicrous. The inconsistency of US rules just defies belief. I can't even summon up the energy to look into it properly to understand what the rules really say. I am 100% confident that, if I did, I would find it to be badly conceived and poorly executed.

I find it easier to just ignore it, which is of course what the great majority of "US" poker sites did. Pokerstars and Full Tilt, in particular, seem to have carried on regardless.

Mind you, I can imagine that the bill must genuinely inconvenience the average American poker player. I recently discovered what a pain it is to move money from Full Tilt into usable US$ form to make my buy in at the WSOP. I think this difficulty resulted partly from UIGEA in that Full Tilt could not buy me in directly.

The rest of the problems arose from the general stickiness of transactions involving moving money around when the institutions involved don't have any great incentive to help you. I lost more playing cash on Full Tilt whilst I figured out how to get the money out than it would have cost me simply to proceed immediately with the least elegant and most expensive transfer method. Doh!

Still, my issues presumably were nothing compared to those experienced by US players and I genuinely feel for them. Smart move by the US Government to force millions of law-abiding citizens to use offshore, inconvenient, expensive, possibly illegal and sometimes risky methods to move their own money ... not.

U is for Unlucky. Say no more really. "unlucky" or "ul" is what I always say when knocking out an opponent in a tournament. I say the same thing whether it's a complete cooler (his KK vs my AA), a bad beat (his AA vs my QJ), his bad play, my bad play, whatever it is. I consciously try never to say "sorry" even if the scenario is such that my play merits an apology !

I am not sorry, obviously, and I feel quite strongly about not wanting to rub it in.