I was born in Houston in 1973.

A couple months later, my parents moved to Dallas.  About a year after that, my 1-yr old ass was back in Houston.

I was there for the next 18 years.  Then I went to Austin.  I wish I could say that Austin was fun, but it would be more accurate to say that college was fun.  After 5 years there, I returned to Houston.

I worked for about 5 years in Houston.  It was 1996-2001.  I got married and we up and left to go to the U.K.  Specifically, we went to Aberdeen.  Aberdeen was lovely.  We had a great two years there.  At one point – about halfway into our two-year stint – I fancied never leaving.  I liked it that much.  Our lives were simultaneously simply and exciting. That’s what happens when you settle into a place that is a small town 10,000 miles from home.  It wasn’t our decsion to leave, but when the time came, we were ready.  So when we were sent to Houston, and we were happy.

That was 2003.  While I was in Houston, I beat Junell out of his life savings in poker.  He has since won it back.

Then, on a Friday in April 2004, I was asked to come to Dallas.  I couldn’t resist the opportunity.  Professionally, it was about as good of a situation as I could have asked for (at the time).  So we up and left Houston.  We thought we’d be in the Big D for only 3 years.

Six years later, in 2010, it occurred to me that everywhere I went ended with me coming back to Houston.  So it made perfect sense when I learned recently that I was getting shipped down south to Houston once more.

There’s plenty I’ll miss about Dallas.  Both my kids were born here.  The Horns are 4-2 vs OU since we’ve been here.  I love Lakewood, and we love the friends we’ve met.  If there’s one obvious difference between my Dallas life and my Houston life it would be that in Dallas I have to beg people to come play 50c blind poker…in Houston I send a text message about $1k buy-in for a $1-$3 game, and we end up squeezing 10 guys into a table.

And since this is, after all, a poker blog, let me just say that I look forward to the action.

Shuffle up and deal…

fro

I spend a lot of time at Reason magazine when I surf the web. Today they have a blog post about the story of Daniel Tzvetkoff, an Australian entrepreneur who founded Intabill , a payment firm that I’ve never heard of (but that doesn’t mean anything).

Apparently he made the mistake of visiting Las Vegas last week, and got himself arrested – the first person ever thus charged – for violating the UIGA:

When the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan unsealed Tzvetkoff’s indictment on Friday, it was the first time anyone had been publicly charged with violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). The UIGEA, enacted in 2006, makes it a federal crime for someone “engaged in the business of betting or wagering” to accept a payment in connection with “unlawful Internet gambling.”

Since Tzvetkoff did not run any gambling businesses, he is accused of conspiring with others who do, including the operators of such popular websites as PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. The indictment also alleges a conspiracy to violate the Illegal Gambling Business Act.

Based on the same transactions, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara threw in two money laundering counts and a bank fraud charge, which alleges that Tzvetkoff misled American financial institutions about where money drawn from their customers’ accounts was going. Since the only gain from the alleged fraud was the banks’ usual services at their usual rates, this charge seems legally questionable.

When you add together all the maximum sentences—five years for the gambling conspiracy, 20 years for each money laundering count, and 30 years for bank fraud—you see that Tzvetkoff faces up to 75 years in prison for the crime of helping Americans play poker. To top it off, Bharara is demanding more than $2 billion in asset forfeiture, representing the four criminal counts multiplied by $543 million, which he says is the total amount of payments the company processed in the U.S., most of which involved gambling.

Jesus Christ.

I’ve said it before, my own personal preference is that I don’t want a casino or poker room – and the hookers and mobsters and petty criminals that come with them – within 100 miles of my own house, but I also don’t think that gambling is some moral vice that needs to be regulated by any government level above my city or county, either. If people want to play games of chance with their own money, whether in a casino or their own homes, they should be able to do so and that decision should not be any business of the federal or state government. Until state lotteries and state-owned casinos or OTB parlors are eliminated, and until every politician outside of Nevada turns down lobbying money from casino corporation, every bit of anti-gambling enforcement from the any level of government is nothing more than hypocrisy.

LSFW, especially if you work near old biddies. The joke is also the soundtrack, so turn it up.

Has it really been almost 2 months since I posted? Man, I’ve been busy.