‘Pokergeddon’ as it happens

Today’s Department of Justice/FBI surprise attack on PokerStars, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker is a story that’s moving so fast that there’s scarcely time to mull or comment upon it. Almost nobody saw this coming, although Nathan Vardi of Forbes was prescient. PokerStars’ Nevada lobbyist-in-chief, Richard Perkins, was a veritable virtuoso of spin doctoring. Queried by the Las Vegas Review-Journal he basically said, “See? This proves the need for an over federal solution!” Unfortunately, for the moment, the “federal solution” to online poker is a pair of handcuffs.

Perkins’ allies, such as Steve Wynn, however, may find themselves high and dry — or at least facing tough questions about how much due diligence they performed before hopping into bed with Internet casinos. Caesars Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman may look damn foolish, or at least politically tone deaf, for his insistence that federal-level legalization was just around the corner. But he was very smart to partner with a firm — 888.com — which has erected a ‘Chinese wall’ between its online-betting operation and U.S. customers.

Besides, Caesars Interactive Entertainment CEO Mitch Garber has had a scrape or two with the feds himself, so he presumably knows the value of circumspection. Bottom line: Caesars was careful. Wynn Resorts, etc., weren’t. (It looks like Scientific Games‘ new, online, joint venture is a bust right out the gate.) Also ruing the day are a Las Vegas man, as well as a Utah banker, both of whom were placed under arrest for their alleged roles as intermediaries in a grander scheme.

(Update: As of this moment, Full Tilt is still operating full-blast in the U.S., according to a reliable source.)

Payback’s a bitch. At the center of the sting is renegade entrepreneur Daniel Tzvetkoff, whom the G-Men flipped after a high-profile arrest in Las Vegas (proving definitively that what happens here does not stay here). Ironically, Tzvetkoff was nailed while staying at Wynncore, supposedly ratted out by his former online clients. From an undisclosed location, Tzvetkoff traced the roundabout course of payments to various online casinos, enabling the G-Men to strike. A couple of his confederates may soon be singing like canaries, too.

Back here in Nevada, Assm. William “Will Legislate for Junkets” Horne (D), a recent beneficiary of PokerStars’ considerable largesse, insists that it’s all systems go for his Internet poker bill. As Jon Ralston tartly noted, “When in hole, stop digging” (especially since the junketeering of Horne and fellow solons might now be subject to legal scrutiny). In a further irony, Horne put the Perkins-penned bill into the hopper on the exact same day (March 10) that is date-stamped on the now-famous federal indictment. If not dead, the Perkins-Horne bill is essentially redundant since it has been amending to make any Nevada online-betting setup contingent upon legalization at the federal level.

And what is the likelihood of Congress and the White House legalizing Internet gambling without federal regulation? Somewhere in the thousands of a percentile, I’d say. Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV), who has been one of the more sagacious voices in the debate, lost no time saying that “today’s federal action is a reminder of the complexity of the issue.”

Translation: Told ya so!

Speaking of which … I always thought The New Yorker had lost its marbles, jumped the shark, basically forfeited credibility when it ran a glowing ode to the financial genius of Lenny Dykstra, a former baseball player not generally renowned for his acumen away from the diamond. Turns out that Dykstra may soon have a date with the Big House. (And I don’t mean the one that John Boehner runs.) The supposedly astute Dykstra is alleged to have torn a sink and granite tiling out of his house so as to shield the furnishings from bankruptcy proceedings. “Nails” never fails, huh?