An Interview With Greg Raymer - Pt. II

Yesterday we highlighted part one of my recent interview with 2004 World Series of Poker champion, Greg Raymer. Therein, Greg and I discussed multi-tabling at the World Series of Poker, as well as Greg's thoughts on being an "ambassador" for the game.

Greg is on the Board of Directors for the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), and has been a very vocal supporter of the legalization and regulation of online poker. Given Greg's quite notable presence in that realm, I can think of few voices that could potentially speak as honestly and loudly.

What follows is the conclusion of that interview.

Justin: There are three bills on the table right now that seek to legalize and regulate online poker, and there's a lot of support for all of them. But it almost seems like the folks that speak out against online poker are heard much more than those that are for it, despite the millions of people in this country that play cards. What can poker players and the organizations that are putting these bills forth do that we aren't doing already, in order to get our voices heard?

Greg: I'm glad you mentioned the PPA - I'm on the Board of Directors. We are doing a lot, and a lot of it isn't highly visible because we're lobbying in Washington, D.C. Almost by definition that kind of activity is not typically done way out in view of the public, if you have private meetings with people of congress or their staff members, you make donations to their political campaigns, things like that.

The more people that join the PPA, the more people that support us morally and financially, the more people that just send letters or make phone calls to their local senator or representative, the better. Wherever you live in the U.S. you have one representative and two senators that are supposed to serve you in Congress, and if they believe that most of their voters support online poker then they're going to support it, themselves. Most politicians want to get re-elected more than anything else... Let them know that if they vote against these bills you will vote for someone else in the next election. That's what's going to help the most.

J: You said one thing, though, that we're fighting to repeal these laws, particularly the UIGEA. I've read the bills and from what I can tell we're not fighting to repeal the UIGEA, we're really just adding to the Wire Act, to the UIGEA. Why aren't we out there trying to repeal the UIGEA, as opposed to adding more bills. Doesn't that just make things more confused?

Greg: Well, it does and it doesn't. Before the UIGEA was passed a little over a year ago the state of online poker was very much in limbo. If you wrote a letter and for whatever reason were communicating with the Department of Justice a year and a half ago, they would have told you online poker was illegal. I disagree with them. I think that their legal analysis was guided by politics, not by them correctly using their legal skills. They're taking the laws and they're interpreting them to achieve the result that their political bosses have told them to achieve, rather than looking at the existing laws and saying: "What is and is not illegal under these laws as written?"

Having said that, the UIGEA did not make online poker illegal. It says that you're prohibited from engaging in financial transactions with illegal online gambling sites. But as for what is and is not "illegal online gambling," this new law just pointed to existing law. So if I'm correct and the existing law before the UIGEA did not make online poker illegal, then the UIGEA also didn't make online poker illegal, nor did it make it illegal for banks to process financial transactions with online gambling sites.

The only thing, in my opinion, that was illegal for online gamblers, was online sports betting. The wire act of 1961 did apply to sports gambling, but it does not apply to any other form of gambling.

J: Basically, you're saying that we're adding new laws that outline all this and make it completely clear that the UIGEA doesn't pertain to poker.

Greg: It's like anything else in life. You have a goal you want to achieve. There might be multiple ways to achieve it, but which one is the best? Which one is the most likely to succeed? No one has decided the goal, the one that's most likely to succeed, is to just [try to] repeal the UIGEA and go back the way it was before.

To be honest, if we did repeal the UIGEA, I think the Department of Justice, at least under the current administration, would just say: "Well, things are back the way they were a year ago, when we still considered online poker illegal. The UIGEA just gave us an extra tool to go after illegal online poker, and illegal online gambling of other sorts. Now, we've lost one of our tools, but we can still prosecute them."

The funny thing is, they've never prosecuted anyone for online poker. When you look at every individual who's ever been arrested in the United States for online gambling, every one of them has been involved 100% with online sports betting... or that was a significant portion of their business.

So even when you look at the NETeller guys that were arrested, I would guarantee you, as much as possible, that if that case ever goes to trial, the only evidence that will be shown against those individuals will be involved with financial transactions that are part of online sports betting. They're only going to talk about customers who used NETeller to get money to an online sports book, because then they don't have to worry about this issue of whether the Wire Act applies to online poker, or online casinos in general.

J: Say we're back in 2004, and you're about to win the satellite that's going to lead to you winning the WSOP main event. If the climate of online poker had been as it is now, would you be a WSOP Main Event world champion right now?

Greg: Well I was going play the main event whether I won that seat or not. I'd already booked the trip. I won the the last available seat on PokerStars, essentially. The main event started on a Saturday and I won the previous Sunday night, six days before. But, I had already booked my flight, I had my hotel room reserved at Binion's, and I was going to play and pay cash for the entry fee if I had not won. Having said all that, though, if things had been then like they are now with respect to the legal uncertainty surrounding online poker, it wouldn't have changed anything.

I don't consider online poker to be illegal, and I think there's essentially zero chance that the DOJ would ever arrest me and charge me with any crimes that are related to my playing online poker. If they arrest me, indict me, and go to trial, they know that if they lose they in turn lose all their power to threaten everyone else who has cowed down to them.

You know, the fact that we don't see PokerStars.com ads on network television, only ".net" ads, is because the networks felt they had to do that to avoid legal problems with the DOJ. Lots of national publications, magazines and newspapers and such that would have run ads for poker sites, now won't accept those ads. If the DOJ were to indict me, go to trial, and lose, then all those business would start running ads again. They would also probably lose their power under the UIGEA, because then it would become clear that online poker is not illegal, and therefore the UIGEA does not apply. People could start using their credit cards again, instead of having to go through the much more slow and involved processes.

I'm not worried about it at all, and unless the law changes again in a more negative way, I'm not going to worry about it.

J: Going back to something you said just a minute ago, did I correctly hear you when you said that you won the last possible seat on PokerStars to satellite into the main event back in 2004?

Greg: There was one that finished after [mine], but it was a large multi-table tournament that had begun before my tournament started. Mine was the very last chance on PokerStars, certainly.

It was funny. I'd had one of my worst losing streaks ever during the first half of that year. I had actually finished second in the big Sunday tournament at the beginning of the year, and then was just getting crushed in everything I played until I won that seat on PokerStars. Then I got crushed again in the couple of satellites I played at Binion's before the main event started. If you believe in luck as a tangible thing, you might say that I saved it all up.

J: A lot has changed since then. This year, Bluff Magazine became the "official media provider" for the World Series of Poker. Recently, Card Player signed a similar deal with the World Poker Tour. What's your opinion on this kind of "exclusive coverage" partnership?

Greg: One of the things that interests me is to what extent there is any precedent for this kind of thing in other sports. I've never heard of anyone being the official media provider for the NFL. It sounds to me like there's really no good benefit, unless there's something I don't know about. I don't think it could help the players or the game.

It doesn't sound like a good idea, to give exclusives. It's not so much the official media provider reporting everything through rose-colored glasses. Unless there's something shoved in someone's face, there's not much incentive for the reporters or the media sites to go dig up dirt. I would be amazed if I saw some story where some reporter from one of the magazines were to do true investigative reporting to dig up a scandal.

Mostly I just don't see any advantage to the poker community in having an exclusive. It's really just a way for the World Series and the World Poker Tour to make some money. You know, they'll charge a fee and Card Player or Bluff with pay it. I'm sure that if no one was willing to pay more than a nominal fee they wouldn't have bothered, they would have just let everyone come and do their thing.

I think the disadvantages aren't significant, but they're real, and the advantages only seem to accrue to the company that's doing the reporting. Presumably, they think they're able to make more money off the deal than they're paying to the poker tournament.

J: You mentioned scandals. Seemed like the "scandal" of 2007 was Vinnie Vinh and his supposed drug problem...

Greg: I played with him. He actually knocked me out of one of the tournaments in one spot a few hours into the event, and he looked horrible compared to what he used to look like. He did look like he was either on drugs or recovering from a serious illness.

The rumors were that Vinnie had huge drug problems and he was missing day two of a few tournaments. That's a scandal, it's a story for people to talk about, but it's nothing meaningful. It happens in every walk of life in the world, whether in public competitions, or just the guy that develops a drug problem and is calling into work.

J: Aside from Vinnie and, of course, Jamie Gold last year, the most immediate "scandal" that comes to mind is the "extra chips" debacle from 2006.

Greg: That was a big issue and that's the kind of thing we want the reporters to dig into. That's an example of when you probably want to have multiple services reporting, because that was something that was going on inside the ropes during the tournament. If there were something else going on, people signaling each other or cheating at the table, the reporter is not likely to see it, anyway. In other words, if they're good enough to fool the other seven or eight players at the table, they're probably good enough to fool the reporters that are standing on the rail watching the game.

J: Thanks for your time, Greg.

Greg: You're quite welcome.

Justin West played poker since the age of 17, he spent more than a year earning a living on the green felt; a modest living, to be sure, but a living nonetheless. His aim was at one point to win the WSOP main event, thus causing Hell to freeze over. However, given his penchant for sin and his extreme dislike of cold weather, Justin has put that dream to rest.

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