The ball landing on zero on the roulette wheel when you’ve bet your last
chip. That dead cert falling at the first, with all your wages in its
nosebag. Your pocket aces getting cracked while a pair of twos scoops the
pot. Roll up all that bad luck into one big ball of misery and you might get
just a tiny inkling of how the execs running online gambling businesses feel
today. In a shock move the US has passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling
Enforcement Act which aims to crack down on online gambling companies by
making it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to
online gambling sites. Some poker fans in the US are already talking about a
new era of prohibition similar to the 1930s, with the Poker Players Alliance
claiming the law will “push poker underground, essentially creating online
speakeasies”. In some ways the gambling industry shouldn’t be surprised –
online gambling has been barely tolerated by the US for a number of years,
with senate majority leader Bill Frist going so far as to describe it as a
“shadow industry”. Perhaps the gambling companies felt that sooner or later
the US would have to bow to the pressure of the markets. But today that
looks like a gamble they may have lost.