Shamus gets it

Shamus has posted an excellent analysis of my Less than Modest Proposal, responding with another Swift-titled post "Thoughts on various Subjects."

And I have to say, he gets it entirely. My concept for a poker boycott next weekend, which I still advocate, was never anything I anticipate actually working. I don't think poker players are capable of organizing themselves into anything cohesive enough to band together and do anything, much less give up our crack pipes, I mean keyboards, for a weekend to make a statement that has a high potential for being misunderstood.

I still advocate a boycott of online poker for next Friday - Saturday, and think that it might, might serve as a wakeup call for the sites who watch all these 2+2ers and P5ers run around like little mice in a maze looking for their stopgap ewallet cheese and decide that their business model can continue on ad infinitum because we junkies will continue to come back to the corner for our fix no matter how many times the fuzz sweeps through the proejcts.

How's that for mixing my metaphors? Well, they're my metaphors and I'll mix them if I want to.

From Shamus - Just some of the many reasons why Falstaff’s proposal will have little practical effect. Of course, Jonathan Swift never intended for his “Modest Proposal” to be actually realized, either. And like Swift, I think Falstaff is on the right track by trying to get the message to the sites that yes, they should step up and do whatever they can to fight this cause.

Bingo! The last thing I want to do is shut down online poker sites. But with a new ewallet or poker site closing their doors to US players pretty much every week (R.I.P. Mansion), we have to face the hard facts that the paradigm shift is upon us, and no matter how many times Allyn Jaffrey Shulman talks about the new ewallets and claims that "There is no way a $6 billion-a-year industry is just going to shut its doors. There is money to be made in the area of e-wallets and the new companies will learn from the mistakes made by their predecessors," the cold hard fact is that the US nanny government (as the Wolf pointed out) is going after people hard and heavy, and the sites cannot stand idly by and continue to do NOTHING SUBSTANTIVE while this goes on.

I know, I know, they're doing all they can. I'm sure that they've donated many weeks worth of revenue to the PPA. Oh really? They haven't? Well, I'm sure that on some of the major network broadcasts they've bought commercials speaking out to support the PPA. What's that? They haven't done that, either? Well, maybe they're just hanging out until the US market goes in the shitter and then they'll focus on Asia and other markets.

Yeah, that's bright. It's simple customer service - it's far easier to keep a customer than to get a new customer. The sites are letting several hundred thousand (or more) customers go by letting the US poker players go gently into that good night (a little Dylan Thomas for ya, Shamus) without ever paying attention to the millions in marketing dollars they'll have to spend to get our replacements. They could have spent those millions much more wisely and kept us in the first place.

So no, I don't expect my boycott to work. I don't expect the poker sites to suddenly swing down from whatever tree they've been slothing around in and take up the fight. I don't expect the rampant individualists in the poker community to for once band together to actually accomplish something.

So prove me wrong. I dare you. I'll still boycott, and I hope some of you will join me. And if the worst thing that happens is that a few people take a good hard look at the issue past the end of their own personal withdrawal problems, then my proposal, like the inimitable Mr. Swift's, will have served its purpose.

Tags: poker boycott, UIGEA, Neteller, online poker