GOING ALL IN FOR ONLINE POKER

The only players left without a seat at the green velvet table are American companies like the big casinos, and they're frustrated by missing out on the fat stakes. Two years ago, MGM launched a poker site from the Isle of Man that catered only to non-U.S. players. It gave up after two months because customers didn't care to go through the arduous process to prove they didn't live in the United States. Steve Lipscomb of the World Poker Tour, who kick-started the poker craze with a TV show on the Travel Channel, is now trying to make that same everywhere-but-America strategy work with his new poker site. "It's the most inequitable circumstance you can imagine," he says. "Only companies that pay any attention to the regulatory authorities in the U.S. cannot participate in this business."

Everyone else plans to keep pursuing the tempting pot. The online casinos talk about expanding their service onto mobile phones and interactive television. Many experts also predict consolidation in the industry, as firms like PartyPoker, flush with IPO cash, look to gobble up rivals. Meanwhile, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl plans to reintroduce legislation this fall to explicitly ban online gambling--though versions of his bill have failed to make it through Congress for the last eight years. (His representative declined to give details of the bill, but confirmed it was forthcoming.)

For gamblers like Jason Kim, it hardly matters. Regardless of U.S. policy, there are 80,000 players on PartyPoker.com every night and, he notes with glee, "there are lots of bad players willing to lose their money to good players." As long as that's true--and as long as the primal and sometimes destructive passion for gambling beats strong in the human heart--it would be unwise to place a bet against online poker.

© 2005