Online Gambling in the Mainstream Media; or, Getting Frank with Leno

A late night for your humble scribbler. Was up following the first day of action over at PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker, in particular Event No. 2, that $10,300 buy-in “High Roller” event. (See full schedule here.) Sucker didn’t end until daybreak here on the east coast, actually, with CrabMaki (a U.K. player named Dave Shallow) taking the $605,655 prize for winning. Here’s the full recap of Event No. 2 over on the PokerStars blog.

Speaking of late nights and poker, you probably heard there were a couple of occasions last week when online poker made it onto late night television, popping up in the “mainstream” -- i.e., on major network shows -- as a subject of discussion.

One was that “Nightline” segment about online poker that after several delays finally aired on ABC. (I wrote a little something here in anticipation of that report a couple of weeks ago.) While there was a kind of “cautionary tale”-like atmosphere attached to the report that folks under the age of 21 are playing poker online, I thought the piece ended up being about as balanced as one could hope for, and even perhaps shed a positive light (overall) on online poker as not necessarily a hopelessly degenerate activity.

If you missed it, you can view the “Nightline” piece here.

That segment aired on Tuesday night. Coincidentally, Rep. Barney Frank was a guest on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on NBC that same evening, and they, too, talked some about online gambling.

It was amid a discussion of individual liberty that Frank chose to allude in a general way to the legislative fight currently underway involving his H.R. 2267, the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act. At the end of July, Frank’s bill was passed by his House Financial Services Committee, and now awaits consideration by the entire House and/or Senate.

Referring to his proposed bill, Frank noted how licensing and regulating online gambling in the U.S. would lead to “billions of dollars” in tax revenue, and the studio audience cheered in response. But rather than agree with Frank (and the crowd), Leno then raised an objection to online gambling -- a very familiar one, actually.

If you didn’t catch Frank on Leno’s show last week, here it is (the talk of online gambling starts right around the 3:50-mark):



Here is what Leno said by way of objecting to online gambling:

“To me, Vegas works because you have to go to the desert to get there. You have to make an effort. You go to the desert, you lose your money and you come home. You can’t go to the desert again unless you get more money. If you’re sitting at home and you’re up late at night and you got your little credit card, next thing you know... it’s like a mini bar. You’re not going to eat the potato chips unless they are in the mini-bar.”

We’ve heard this line before. So has Frank -- many times -- and he had a ready response. Frank pointed out to Leno that gambling is available in other places than Vegas. Frank also explained that his H.R. 2267 wouldn’t allow for the use of credit cards to gamble online.

The discussion then moved on to lotteries and other issues, but did circle back to Frank’s position that adults shouldn’t be treated like children as Leno’s whole “you have to go to the desert” argument implies -- as though when it comes to gambling we all need artificial restrictions in place to prevent us from constantly doing harm to ourselves. You know, sort of like putting the cookie jar up on the refrigerator where we can’t reach it easily and thus spoil our dinners.

Leno’s line about the mini-bars made me think back briefly to my summer in Las Vegas. I lived for nearly two months in a hotel room while there helping cover the WSOP for PokerNews.

There was a mini-bar in my room, of course, full of overpriced snack items and beverages for the taking. Somehow I managed to resist taking a single item from the mini-bar during my entire stay there, knowing I could purchase all of those things at a quarter of the price if I just figured out a way to leave the room.

Actually, it wasn’t that hard for me. As Muddy Waters once sang, I’m a man. Way past twenty-one. Truth be told, I have been able to decide for myself about such things for a long time now.

I guess Leno is in part going for the laugh there. It’s funny to think of adults as being childish, immature, etc. But I think he also genuinely objects to online gambling in the U.S. And the fact is, as Leno’s continued popularity shows, a lot of people in America tend to like Leno’s lines.

Why do they like Leno? I have no idea. Maybe it’s because, well, he’s just there. Like the mini-bar.

Tuning In (Poker in the Media)

Watched a lot of poker yesterday. On the teevee. On the intertubes. People playin’ poker. People gabbin’ about it. I must really be into poker or somethin’.

First came “This Week in Poker,” the online show hosted by the Entities over at Wicked Chops. I’ve ended up watching that one live the last couple of weeks, as it comes on at a convenient hour for me (7 p.m. here on the east coast). This week they interviewed Kimberly Lansing of the newly-revamped World Poker Tour and Phil Laak who chronicled in detail his harrowing ATV accident. I wrote a little something about TWIP a couple of weeks ago. You can view archived episodes here.

Then I switched off the computer and turned on the TV to see ESPN’s coverage of Day 2a of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event. Was looking forward to this, as I remembered a few different hands from that day’s play I thought might make it into the broadcast.

In fact, two of those hands I had remembered from Day 2a did make it into the show -- the Chris Moneymaker-Bryan Pellegrino hand in which both thought the other was in the tank, and a hand involving Annie Duke in which she made a straight flush. (I mentioned both in a post back in July.)

I remained pretty much out of shot during both hands, having hung out near the cameraman when they were happening. I did have fun last night, though, recognizing many colleagues wandering around the tables. And seeing one -- Garry Gates -- at the tables, too! I worked with Gates in both 2008 and 2009 at PokerNews, and last night ESPN showed Scotty Nguyen busting him out of the ME.

Next week there will be two more hours devoted to Day 2b of the 2010 WSOP Main Event. See the full schedule here.

When the ESPN show went off the air at 11 p.m., I considered staying up to watch still more poker, namely a scheduled segment about online poker on the ABC News program “Nightline.” Ended up packing it in before then, though, although it appears the segment was bumped until tonight.

There’s a brief article over on the ABC News site previewing the segment which I suppose gives us some indication of what its angle will be.

The first thing one notices when clicking on the link is that the article includes a brief clip of the robbery at EPT Berlin from back in March. No context is provided for the clip, nor is there any reference to it in the article. No idea why that is even there, other than to suggest in a vague way that poker is dangerous.

The second thing one notices is one of the more banal leads I can imagine someone coming up with for such an article: “What happens in Vegas often happens at the poker table, but many of the winners raking in huge jackpots aren't even old enough to enter a casino.” Phew.

Tough to get past that, but once you do, you see the “news” being reported in the article -- or central theme, anyway -- appears to be that young people (mostly men) are playing a lot of online poker. The article is thus letting its mostly non-poker playing audience know that “online poker games have allowed teenagers to become expert card players long before they turn 21.”

2009 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Cada is interviewed as an exemplary figure here, someone who honed his game prior to turning 21, then went and won the big one just prior to turning 22 last November.

While there is reference later in the article to the fact that online sites generally require players to be at least 18 years old, there appears to be a desire to point out that some teenagers get onto the sites and start playing before reaching 18. There is reference to a recent study conducted by the Institute for Research on Gambling Disorders that “estimated over 70% of Americans, ages 14 to 19, have gambled in the past year.” There’s another study, conducted by a group at the University of California-Berkeley, that is mentioned as well, in which it is reported “that 19.6% of young men gamble online regularly.”

The second half of the article then presents a 19-year-old college student named Blaine Brount who plays online poker, and who has won enough to think of poker as “a real job.”

Brount’s story appears on the surface to present poker in a positive way -- he’s serious about studying the game and improving, he’s winning, his mother approves, etc. It’s possible, though, to view Brount’s story less favorably, especially when presented in the context of studies highlighting young people gambling in large numbers.

It will be interesting to see how it all gets edited and presented in the “Nightline” piece. Not really going out on a limb here, but I have a feeling in the end it probably ain’t gonna add up to an unequivocal endorsement of online poker.

The fact is, while poker might seem like a perfectly “normal” or acceptable activity to those of us who regularly seek out shows like “This Week in Poker” or the WSOP on ESPN, for the “Nightline” crowd -- a more “mainstream” bunch -- there’s always going to be something sensationalistic, or even scandalous, about poker and/or gambling. Especially when young people are involved.

(EDIT [added 8/26/10): The segment did not air on Wednesday night, having been postponed yet again. Will add a note here if/when it does finally air.)

(EDIT [added 9/1/10]: The segment finally aired last night [8/31/10]. It didn’t add too much to the written piece, although I’ll say it did strike me as a fair enough look at the world of online poker -- if anything, even more balanced-seeming than was the article. You can view it here.)