Trump Bill Will END Fantasy Sports And Pro Poker, POISON PILL Could Ban Gambling And BLOCK Bill
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Summary
Trump's bill to expand the number of casinos in the United States is a hot topic in Washington, D.C. and around the country. Will it pass? Will it hurt the poker pro industry? And what will it mean for the rest of the sports betting industry? All that and much more on this episode of DraftKings and PBR.
Transcript
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Yeah, like if I'm in Vegas, do you think I want to see this pass?
00:01:04.980
If I'm like at any level of government, if I'm in any of the casinos,
00:01:08.000
if I'm DraftKings, if I'm FanDuel, if I'm you name it, I'm MGM,
00:01:11.760
I'm like any of these entities, they're not going to want to see this pass
00:01:20.840
But you certainly feel the heat when it's your industry on the line.
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From Newsweek, Trump's big, beautiful bill could kill professional gambling.
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I have a problem with alcoholism and addiction.
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Within a certain within within reason, these things can be fine and okay, but they do get abused.
00:02:02.740
And so when you see the mass expansion of casinos, you have to wonder what's happening to our society.
00:02:07.820
So naturally, if there are regulations or restrictions, I'm not going to cry about it.
00:02:12.420
But I'll tell you what I really think with this.
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I think that this provision was put into the bill to sabotage it
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because they can't afford to have even one GOP member of Congress break.
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What this bill will do, as I've been talking about it yesterday and this morning,
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and again, we're going to be joined by Doug Polk, who's going to break down for us
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how this will affect the poker pro industry and what it means for professional gaming.
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This means that even if you're a casual player, it's not about professional gambling,
00:02:41.040
Let's say you go to Vegas just for a weekend and you want to see Katy Perry.
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And while you're there at the old Rio, you say,
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I'll play some blackjack for a little bit with my friends.
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You're just having fun with your friends and it's fun to see what the cards come up.
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And so you set a budget for yourself for your holiday weekend.
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Hey, what people don't understand is what this bill does.
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It says you can't, you can only write off 90% of your losses, no matter who you are,
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If you play $500 and you're winning half the time and losing half the time,
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you might actually just end up leaving even maybe a little bit down.
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However, if you bet $500 one time and you win, your winnings are $500.
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If you then bet $500 again and lose, your losses are $500 of which you could only write off 450.
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Meaning the government considers you to have made $50.
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I believe it was intentionally put in the bill because they want it to fail.
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They put something in that conservatives are going to cheer for, which will cause one Republican to bail.
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So instead of just sitting here rambling on it for eight hundred times,
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what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull in poker professional Doug Polk,
00:04:08.660
who's going to talk about how this will affect his industry.
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I want to ask him about the size of the industry, where we're at with things like the World Series of Poker,
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of which I'm a big poker player and poker fan as well.
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But this is a big issue which could sabotage the entirety of Trump's agenda.
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Hearing what Doug, I say, will be particularly interesting.
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So for those that are not familiar, do you want to just briefly introduce yourself?
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I've been a professional poker player for, man, I don't even know, 10, 15 years.
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I have a poker YouTube channel called Doug Polk Poker.
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So Trump's big, beautiful bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation,
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When the Senate debated over the weekend, they put in this, and I've been investigating this,
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so we'll get into that in a little bit, a provision that says that you can only write
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You're one of the biggest influencers in the space.
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So what I want to say first to most people, as I already stressed before we started, again,
00:05:25.460
I think this is a poison pill meant to sabotage Trump's agenda because this is a nuclear
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bomb on Las Vegas, Atlantic City, any casino in the country, the entirety of the poker industry,
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And you, as a poker professional, explain to me what this bill would do to your businesses,
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So taking a step back here and just looking at specifically this car belt, right, because
00:05:52.040
there's a lot of stuff in this bill, all kinds of different things going on.
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I'm trying not to take a political stance, any of that, just as it pertains to gambling
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specifically, the way that it's written appears to me not written in the best terminology.
00:06:06.180
But basically, it seems like you can only write off up to 90% of your losses.
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And I can give you a couple of really basic examples here.
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So let's just say you gamble over the course of the year.
00:06:27.920
But what this new provision says is that you actually owe on 10% of the winnings because
00:06:37.120
So basically, you are now taxing either losing gamblers, you're taxing winning gamblers extra
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It's basically just, you know, yeah, we'll take a little piece of that.
00:06:47.600
Oh, just because it's thrown into this bill at the last second.
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So the impact this has on gambling is tremendous.
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It most impacts people in two specific scenarios.
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Let's take a look first at like if you're a recreational gambler, maybe you like to play
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slot machines, you have to go to blackjack, play blackjack, you go to Vegas every now and
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Well, maybe over the course of the year, you know, you lose $20,000, $30,000 gambling,
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You hit the jackpot for $20,000, whatever it might be.
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Well, if you now go to do your taxes and you want to deduct all of those losses beforehand,
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now you actually can't deduct all those and you're now paying taxes on money you lost,
00:07:27.620
Additionally, and this is probably more impactful for people kind of in my sector, if you are
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a professional gambler, well, now it is imperative that your edge is gigantic.
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And just to break that down a little bit, there are many gambling industries where people just
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I think of the movie 2021, right, where the MIT blackjack team had to, you know, count
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Those guys, they had like one, two, 3% edges at most where they're betting these huge dollar
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You now need to break this 10% barrier to even be able to gamble profitably.
00:07:59.980
So what that means is for people that are smaller edge professional gamblers, which let's
00:08:04.000
face it, that's most professional gamblers today, you can no longer profitably be taking
00:08:08.340
these bets because you can't clear that 10% barrier.
00:08:15.500
I would imagine, Tim, that there are tens of thousands of professional gamblers in this
00:08:19.160
country that their jobs will be eliminated immediately if this bill goes into effect.
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Thousands of Texans in my state, tens of thousands of people outside of the state.
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And personally, like, I don't think this is even an issue that either side, the left or
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If this passes, its impact on gambling will be tremendous.
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The mayor of Las Vegas came out with a press conference this morning saying the bill was
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bad because it's going to strip medical care and stuff like that.
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And I just laughed because we talked about it last night on Timcast IRL.
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And I said, there's no way Las Vegas will let this bill pass.
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And sure enough, first sure enough, first thing in the morning, the mayor of Vegas comes out
00:09:35.100
You've got a gaming caucus, a bunch of all the Democrats, of course, are going to vote
00:09:42.460
And the Republicans, you'd expect largely to vote yes.
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I had people tell me any Republican who votes no will never get reelected because Donald
00:09:50.760
Trump is going to primary them and go up against them.
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However, I'd also I'd also argue that in Louisiana, in New Jersey, in Vegas, any Republican
00:10:00.900
member of Congress who votes for this bill is also not going to get reelected.
00:10:06.000
There's one rep out of Nevada whose largest contributor is the gaming industry.
00:10:10.540
So here's one thing that I want to clarify, and you can help me out with this.
00:10:13.900
When we say things like you get you, you wager a million dollars in one, you lose a million
00:10:20.200
dollars in a year gambling and you make a million dollars.
00:10:23.220
Most people don't understand how those numbers play out.
00:10:27.740
They assume this means that a millionaire walks into a casino and says, I'm going to bet
00:10:32.620
a million dollars just dumping money from his bank account.
00:10:38.940
So when you as like a poker pro are tracking your winnings and losings, like what is what
00:10:45.860
is an average amount of total money wagered for for a poker pro, say, like at the highest
00:10:56.640
I'd like to kind of maybe dissect that a little bit for a high stakes player.
00:11:00.180
There are tournaments that are one million dollars.
00:11:02.040
So a very high stakes player might be spending five, 10, 15, 20 million dollars a year just
00:11:06.420
in buy-ins to play all of the highest stakes tournaments in the world.
00:11:09.020
But I just thought to hone in on what you're saying, because it's a great point.
00:11:13.420
Let's just say that you only like to gamble for a few hundred dollars at a time, right?
00:11:16.840
You go down to your local casino, you play in a tournament every day.
00:11:20.000
Well, you know, maybe that buy-in is $200 and maybe you play it a hundred times.
00:11:27.960
And then you deduct all of your cashes against that.
00:11:34.620
But the point is, it's that same money as long as it's taken over time.
00:11:39.580
It's like the net result of all of the wins and losses.
00:11:44.260
Because you're supposed to be, there's two ways to do your taxes.
00:11:48.900
But just generally, as I understand it, there are two ways to do your taxes.
00:11:52.340
You can either take the standard deduction or you can itemize.
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And when you have a big gambling win, typically you itemize because you can get the maximum
00:12:00.980
We're going to pay the least tax you possibly can within the confines of the law.
00:12:05.000
But this now penalizes that massively for someone who is in that scenario we mentioned earlier,
00:12:10.500
where you're just playing your small stakes gambling game every day.
00:12:15.800
Well, now Uncle Sam's come and knock him for 10%, even though you've lost money.
00:12:21.960
So I think the big impact, fantasy sports are going to get hit massively by this, which
00:12:27.680
is massively, I think they were expecting in 2025 fantasy sports to double the amount
00:12:33.100
of, I don't want to say revenue generated, but the market share, the amount of money that
00:12:39.140
passes through is expected to hit something like $25 billion.
00:12:46.580
What ends up happening is, you know, I try explaining this to people that I might say
00:12:52.120
something like, oh, I've, I've gambled $10,000 last year.
00:13:00.860
I put a hundred bucks on a slot machine and press the button for a $5 bet.
00:13:08.960
Every time you bet $5 on a slot machine, your losses go up.
00:13:22.460
But he's, he said in one video, he goes, I'm going to wager $100,000.
00:13:26.880
And I'm thinking, whoa, he's going to put a hundred grand in the machine.
00:13:35.680
And then he, he made bets winning and losing back and forth, like 50, 50 until a total amount
00:13:42.740
And then he walked away slightly up, like very little.
00:13:46.620
So there could be for, for poker pros or for, for anybody.
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I, I, I, I think this ends gambling in its entirety.
00:13:57.360
So, um, typically speaking, the way we log results is by session or by tournament, which
00:14:01.820
is typically the way logs work, but let's just go the most extreme, just to kind of highlight
00:14:05.760
Let's just say that we want to look at poker by hand.
00:14:08.500
So I've played about like 7 million hands in my career.
00:14:11.640
Um, I've looked at what the results look like when you look at all the wins, all the
00:14:16.200
You know, I've won, like I could make a headline.
00:14:21.700
I've, I've just also lost like 785 million in poker.
00:14:26.200
So if we looked at it like that, like I've done really well, but if we look at it, letter
00:14:30.660
of the law here, and we went by hand, like, Oh, I guess I owe money on, uh, you know, $80
00:14:36.800
And then all of a sudden I'm paying like 32 million out of pocket.
00:14:40.500
So, um, if you start to go really extreme on this and you, you, you take it and you,
00:14:45.640
you fine tune comb, fine tooth, whatever the saying is on that, go through it.
00:14:49.640
You can find a way to get dramatically high tax numbers really quickly.
00:14:53.700
And, and frankly, this is what I think is, is the most silly about this is look, I know
00:14:59.880
Like there's a lot of stuff going on on both sides, but they're trying to find ways to
00:15:03.720
make money that isn't in a way that impacts people where they don't feel it.
00:15:07.920
And it's like, Oh, gamblers, we'll just take a little bit of the gambler money, but it's
00:15:11.600
short-sighted and it doesn't work the way that they think, because you know what?
00:15:15.020
Like the people, when people make money, they're smart and it's kind of like when you see richer
00:15:19.080
people in countries that are aggressively taxed them or states that aggressively tax them,
00:15:22.560
they, they move to where they don't get aggressively taxed.
00:15:25.420
Um, at some point, when you try and add this 10% tax onto gambling, there are now people who
00:15:32.400
There are people that will, um, instead of paying taxes, they're going to go, uh, into,
00:15:36.280
into black markets, trying to avoid having to pay those taxes.
00:15:42.500
In my opinion, you might see that we end up losing more than this 10% back anyway, just
00:15:49.240
And to the point you made at the start of this conversation, is this a poison pill to
00:15:56.020
But yeah, like if I'm, if I'm in Vegas, do you think I want to see this pass?
00:15:59.940
If I'm like at any level of government, if I'm in any of the casinos, if I'm draft Kings,
00:16:04.180
if I'm fan duel, if I'm you name it, I'm MGM, I'm saying like any of these entities,
00:16:09.160
they're not going to want to see this pass because it's going to hurt their bottom line.
00:16:14.360
I hope maybe that's what this is, but you certainly feel the heat when it's your industry
00:16:22.140
And I will also add there, there is a strong presence of conservatives that want gambling
00:16:29.980
I think there's a big distinction between social poker and casino gambling.
00:16:34.600
Obviously with cash games, uh, you know, you sit down at a table, maybe you have two
00:16:39.340
to $400, whatever, you know, some places might have higher, uh, buy-ins.
00:16:43.400
You're, you're putting money on the line, but it's all lumped together and there's no
00:16:48.680
clear line of when it becomes gambling and when it doesn't.
00:16:53.020
If you go say, I think the bears are going to win this game.
00:16:57.160
But if you're sitting at a social poker game, like Texas Hold'em and you don't actually make
00:17:02.540
any bets and that you get your cards first, you look at your cards, you fold, you've wagered
00:17:08.400
So there's, there's a big difference between that.
00:17:10.720
And this is going to destroy what is a, a sport with tournaments.
00:17:16.500
Here's, here's what I think, uh, on the poison pill thing.
00:17:22.180
I think the bill's not going to pass because of it.
00:17:24.600
I think it was put in intentionally because people wouldn't understand it.
00:17:29.460
Members of the Senate are going to look at it and say, well, who cares about gambling
00:17:35.320
And it's a small paragraph, but it's a poison pill because it's $170 billion a year industry.
00:17:42.040
And there's no way Nevada is going to say, we will lose our tourism industry and allow
00:17:49.400
But let me, let me, let me bring this to like regular people.
00:17:52.440
Cause I, like I said, I know a lot, there's a lot of conservatives that like find banned
00:17:57.880
I'm not a big fan of how expansive gambling has gotten with all the casinos everywhere.
00:18:01.800
But what this bill would do is effectively ban all gambling with the only argument being
00:18:07.300
you should lie in your taxes of which legally no one in law, no one in the Senate is going
00:18:15.080
But this means that if you go to a Vegas vacation, you're like, Hey, at the end of the year,
00:18:22.880
They legit, they have a mountain and go skiing.
00:18:24.120
And you can also go to the, go watch a big show.
00:18:27.340
Maybe you want to see Penn and Teller and you're like, I'm going to set aside 500 bucks
00:18:31.500
on my vacation budget for some blackjack and some craps, just to have fun with the family.
00:18:35.780
But if that $500, let's say you're paying, you're playing craps and you win one, lose
00:18:40.740
one, win one, lose one after, after a weekend of playing that $500 becomes 5,000 in losses,
00:18:49.140
And you now owe the government on $500 in income you never made.
00:18:57.160
So it's absolutely going to blow some people out of the water.
00:19:00.300
I think for the small time gamblers, it won't be too, too impactful unless you have a big
00:19:04.540
score, unless you hit a big jackpot, unless you win a big tournament.
00:19:07.780
Then all of a sudden, you know, the government's going to come knocking, looking for their 10%
00:19:11.420
on something that you didn't even win money in, which I think is like the real issue.
00:19:15.320
There was, in the past four years, in the previous administration, they hired 87,000 IRS agents.
00:19:22.360
And they also announced that they were going to be tracking any transaction over $600.
00:19:27.640
Now, the big argument was the IRS agents are going to help them track down the billionaires.
00:19:36.440
I don't see how Vegas or Atlantic City or anybody, like because Maryland's got a big casino industry
00:19:43.500
And if the argument is you might only pay a few hundred dollars, well, then you've got
00:19:48.560
the issue of maybe right now this administration is not going to hunt you down over your gambler,
00:19:55.900
But I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future, maybe in a couple of years,
00:19:59.640
this is how this is how the government does it.
00:20:01.760
After texts are filed, you get a bill in the mail saying the casino did track your winnings
00:20:08.720
Somehow they knew who you are, whatever they've.
00:20:10.540
And then the IRS agents come and they say, hey, look, we noticed your PayPal account,
00:20:13.880
your bank account had this money come in from a deposit.
00:20:18.280
And then you're going to get a bill for a couple hundred dollars at the end of the year.
00:20:25.280
In Texas, you guys have a big, like there's a big industry of poker clubs.
00:20:29.880
Like, are there a lot of players that are trying to make a living or are just recreational
00:20:36.300
Obviously, there are other sites to stay in the industry, right?
00:20:38.840
So poker has really exploded in Texas over the course of the last 10 years or so.
00:20:44.660
It's people pay a membership fee, seat rental fees.
00:20:47.320
You're not allowed to rake legally in the state of Texas.
00:20:50.200
And so we've seen these rooms pop up in all of the major states where poker is being played
00:20:55.640
And I think that's also one of the reasons why when I see this bill, I realize how many
00:21:00.900
And, you know, you talked about a little bit earlier with with people that may now try and
00:21:06.000
Like, let's just say let's just let's give an impossible scenario.
00:21:08.440
Let's just say you're someone making sixty thousand dollars a year as a poker professional.
00:21:14.420
So now rather than making money, you're going to lose money every year.
00:21:20.640
Well, OK, it's easy to say as someone talking to someone else.
00:21:23.240
But as that person who might have a family, might have children, might
00:21:25.500
now they have to decide between like following this law or losing their career because someone
00:21:30.820
in D.C. just tacked this on to a bill with no discussion, with no thought, with no
00:21:37.720
You know, the impact this will have on people like and certainly I live in Austin, Austin
00:21:42.040
that I know in Houston and Dallas and all these major Texas cities will be will be giant.
00:21:47.100
But it's also going to apply to, you know, all these places across the entire country.
00:21:50.560
And I want to say this just on on kind of the conservative aspect of poker, because it is
00:21:57.040
In my experience here, we've tried to pass laws in Texas to kind of clarify some things
00:22:04.160
And generally speaking, conservatives have been kind of split with us on whether they
00:22:08.560
It sort of boils down to like which camp you're kind of in.
00:22:11.380
They're sort of the more pro business wing of the Republican Party, which is like maybe
00:22:17.580
And then you have more of like the conservative Christian values side.
00:22:21.880
The way I kind of see it is like the less government, maybe this is very taxonomy, I
00:22:26.120
don't know, but the less government we have getting involved in people's lives and telling
00:22:29.320
them what they can and can't do, you know, in terms of their taxes, in terms of their
00:22:33.320
businesses, in terms of like their personal lives, in terms of anything that's not impacting
00:22:38.860
I feel like we should have less government, not more.
00:22:41.140
And when I see, you know, a 900 page bill, Tim, where, you know, this is going, our industry
00:22:47.340
It makes you wonder how many other industries might just have something thrown in there
00:22:50.860
that might have something that's significant impacting them.
00:22:54.220
This is what's crazy is my team, well-connected with the Hill.
00:22:58.260
Several people have, well, we have one individual particularly who worked there for over a decade.
00:23:03.860
Lisa, and we've been asking around and looking, trying to figure out how this got added at
00:23:12.360
We can't figure it out, which apparently I'm being told is kind of odd.
00:23:17.880
Who was the senator that put this, it's just two small paragraphs, but it is a nuclear bomb
00:23:26.880
And again, I want to stress, you know, I had the other night, we had a conservative
00:23:31.540
on Amber Duke and she laughed and she's like, good, gambling is bad.
00:23:36.860
Like to the conservatives that don't like gambling, by all means, you're allowed not
00:23:42.340
But we need to ask ourselves, how did something so nuclear get added to a bill that's putting
00:23:49.140
Because, you know, I find interesting is you were mentioning, you don't want to get political.
00:23:51.800
So here we are, I'm sitting down, I'm a news guy and politics guy talking with a poker
00:23:55.740
pro, a poker pro being concerned over a spending bill, which let me, let me just be honest,
00:24:02.400
ask you, when was the last time you decided to do a big public, you know, discussion on
00:24:14.360
It's like, I just woke up one day and it's like, your industry is under attack right now
00:24:18.640
on a bill that's going to get voted on maybe tomorrow, you know?
00:24:23.060
I mean, you were the first person I reached out to.
00:24:24.800
I'm like, okay, who do I know that actually has a voice kind of in this space?
00:24:27.340
And obviously, like, I appreciate you giving me the chance to speak and talking about this
00:24:31.620
But when you get dragged in, you have no choice.
00:24:35.440
And it reminds me a little bit about 15 years ago, people might not realize this, but online
00:24:40.300
poker was banned overnight, where basically all of a sudden, one day people could no longer
00:24:46.320
The federal government seized all of the sites.
00:24:48.140
Um, and then poker went overseas and it's not been until very recently with sites like
00:24:53.560
club WPT gold that people can come back and play in America.
00:24:56.380
But what happened was because of the UIGEA and, and basically enforcing through the wire
00:25:02.180
act, as I understand it, they seized all of the money of these online poker players
00:25:06.100
and just overnight people's jobs became illegal.
00:25:08.460
I remember having to leave my home, move away from, from my house in Las Vegas, Nevada to
00:25:14.720
Canada to be able to play online and continue to work.
00:25:17.280
And you want the most messed up thing is I had to send, pay my taxes back because America
00:25:21.560
is the only country where even if you live overseas, you have this in your, so I went
00:25:24.500
to Canada to make money to send my taxes back to America because I love this country.
00:25:30.140
And then you have to just deal with these random moments like that.
00:25:34.800
I, this is why I think it's a poison pill that it was added.
00:25:43.980
They're trying to figure out ways to offset the tax deductions and make it look like the
00:25:48.220
deficit's going to be smaller and the debt spending is going to be, going to be smaller.
00:25:50.940
And I think they did it in a way that most people wouldn't understand, but now Newsweek's
00:26:03.860
Chip Roy, my understanding is also a no on the bill and he's your rep, but not because,
00:26:13.800
I also think it's probably, there's probably other things in the bill that we haven't noticed
00:26:20.940
I can't imagine a Republican rep in any of these big gaming States deciding to vote yes
00:26:28.340
on this, especially as I mentioned with the mayor.
00:26:30.300
So my, you know, ultimately it's when you get Doug Polk doing an interview with Tim Poole
00:26:35.720
on a political issue, I think for conservatives who don't like gambling, just the main takeaway
00:26:41.080
from it is they put this in here to trigger a $170 billion industry into a panic against
00:26:50.920
And with a single day, I don't know how you get a debate to pull that provision out considering
00:26:58.180
It seems like the only possible outcome is that the bill will fail and Trump's agenda
00:27:06.700
And if you figured that out, that is, that is, I got to give a tip of my hat to you, man,
00:27:13.620
And it does make sense because if you think about the urgency now from my industry to
00:27:17.940
step in here from all of these big players, like I'm not a big casino guy.
00:27:21.320
Like I'm a small time card room owner here in Texas.
00:27:25.460
But, um, you have to imagine the amount of money at play here, the amount of money at
00:27:29.900
stake, the impact of this decision is so tremendous that, I mean, I hope it kills the bill like
00:27:34.860
selfishly for, for, for my industry because of how brutal it is for me, not because any
00:27:38.780
of the other stuff I I've, I've honestly not been following that closely.
00:27:41.860
I follow state level politics more than national, but, um, certainly you rile people enough up
00:27:47.200
that have enough power and enough say, and Lord knows that the lobbying in DC from gaming
00:27:53.040
There's no, there's no reason for this in the bill.
00:28:02.540
There's been no large gaming, uh, anti-gaming lobby.
00:28:07.960
And it is a, it is a tax increase disguised as some kind of, you know, uh, policy position
00:28:16.940
And it, it does so in a way that is a nuclear bomb on one of the biggest industries we have in
00:28:24.320
The only outcome could be to cause an uproar that nukes it's, it's my mind is blown on this
00:28:31.100
If this, there was, there were a few provisions in the bill, like the short act and the hearing
00:28:36.060
This would have made it, uh, much easier to attain a suppressor for your gun and a short
00:28:41.680
barreled rifle, which are restricted on something called the national firearms act.
00:28:44.520
There are lobbies that have been fighting really hard for this.
00:28:51.940
And so this was culturally popping up in the news, but overnight out of nowhere with no conversation
00:28:59.300
whatsoever, they put in one of the weirdest provisions imaginable that could only disrupt
00:29:06.080
And then you just said it, Doug, you said you hope the bill fails for that reason.
00:29:12.820
So, so let me just, um, ask you one more, one more question.
00:29:17.920
Uh, do you know how many, uh, players so far are expected to be at the world series of poker
00:29:27.440
Because right now we have the, uh, the flagship event of, of poker.
00:29:31.700
It's, it's the world series of poker main event.
00:29:33.400
It's the biggest poker tournament that we get every year.
00:29:35.500
It's $10,000 to buy in last year had 10,000 people playing in it.
00:29:38.560
So this is a giant, giant, giant, giant tournament.
00:29:41.460
Um, I don't think it will impact this year because the people going to play don't know if
00:29:48.740
So, um, I think where we're, where we will really see this rear its ugly head will be next
00:29:53.700
year at the start where people already know, and the series hasn't begun yet.
00:29:57.840
Um, but yeah, like, like this is the, the biggest event of poker.
00:30:03.380
Um, but yeah, it's going to be tremendous for tournament poker.
00:30:06.100
But, uh, so specifically though, though, I think like two years ago, there was something
00:30:09.300
like close to 11,000 players who each spent 10 grand to enter the main event.
00:30:17.280
Uh, I don't actually know the number of, do you, do you know how many people go to, I think
00:30:24.780
Like how many people come to Vegas for the world series?
00:30:28.580
I would just, I would guess conservatively about a hundred thousand people, maybe more
00:30:32.740
one 25 come to Vegas over the course of the summer to play.
00:30:38.460
I think they were trying to find a way to kill Trump's bill.
00:30:41.560
It passed only because of a tiebreaker vote from the vice president.
00:30:44.800
And they did it when one of the biggest gaming events and times of the year is taking place
00:30:51.820
with the world series of poker, specifically in it with a, with a single paragraph that
00:30:56.860
would kill pro poker, aside from all of the gaming industry and fantasy sports, you've
00:31:01.700
got a hundred thousand or so people that have traveled to Vegas for this big event where
00:31:06.540
on the side of, I think it's the horseshoe, right?
00:31:09.060
They have the big WSOP logo and it's a permanent fixture.
00:31:15.140
Like they said, how can we cause the biggest problem imaginable for this bill?
00:31:20.060
They put in this one paragraph that gets largely overlooked.
00:31:23.740
Meanwhile, there's a 100,000 players that have just flown to Vegas who are all now hearing
00:31:30.340
about this, who are not political, who I imagine are going to be talking in all of the press
00:31:36.080
around the game with hat, which has millions or tens of millions of viewers.
00:31:44.540
And I will say like, it's worth noting as well, because I've seen this take, which I think
00:31:54.700
It could have been someone from Trump's team, you know, disseminating it down.
00:32:04.160
All we know is it did get added and it got passed in this giant bill.
00:32:07.880
And so that's the political side gamesmanship that I'm totally unfamiliar with.
00:32:15.060
And yeah, maybe this is maybe during one of the biggest gambling event of the year, maybe
00:32:19.500
this will help get the word out to, I don't know, man.
00:32:26.620
Well, I'll just I'll just final thought on this.
00:32:29.180
All the poker players want to see Trump's bill dead.
00:32:33.720
And if Trump celebrates this victory, there is this is I think what will end up happening
00:32:38.260
is in the midterm elections in contested districts.
00:32:42.080
There are going to be attack ads against Republicans where they say so and so Republican voted against
00:32:49.140
So and so voted to tax your, you know, your sports gambling, your daily fantasy stuff,
00:32:54.280
because regular middle middle of the road guys, they're playing their fantasy sports on
00:32:59.060
FanDuel or DraftKings or whatever it is they're doing.
00:33:05.900
I do appreciate you joining and talking about this.
00:33:15.020
You know, Lodge Card Club out in Austin or San Antonio, if you're ever in the in the
00:33:18.720
And then online at Club WPT Golds, where I play online using code Doug.
00:33:32.020
He's he's one of the one of the biggest pros in the world.
00:33:34.220
I think he's most famous for, you know, online stuff.
00:33:36.440
But I'm going to say it again, because I know, guys, I'm well aware of all the comments
00:33:45.600
Maybe maybe I'm getting all worked up for no reason.
00:33:48.340
And every single Republican is going to fall in line except for Chip Roy and Massey.
00:33:51.720
And this thing passes with the slimmest 218 to, you know, they have to get 218 to pass
00:33:58.560
it, even though there's three vacancies for the Democrat side.
00:34:02.080
It really feels to me like I got to say, I'm bummed to see Doug Polk say, I hope the
00:34:08.480
bill fails because of how important the bill is for Trump's agenda, particularly around
00:34:23.140
I do think there's a component of chance in gambling.
00:34:25.400
Obviously, I think the argument is fine to have.
00:34:27.960
I'm not a big fan of degenerate over gambling and addiction or alcohol or drugs or any of
00:34:32.480
But we're talking about 100,000 people who are flying to Vegas right now for the biggest
00:34:37.540
gambling, gaming event, whatever you want to call it, the tournament, the World Series
00:34:40.960
of Poker, where people dream of entering, where the everyman has a chance if they save
00:34:47.000
up that one time to maybe be the dude who wins the main event, because it's like a 16
00:34:53.560
day long grueling fiasco to try and win this thing.
00:34:56.460
It's a marathon where you're playing for like 16 hours a day.
00:35:00.080
It is a brutal feat of math calculations and outwitting your opponents, and people love
00:35:05.860
By all means, say you hate gambling, say you want gambling bad.
00:35:09.940
But understand, this is maybe I'm thinking too conspiratorially, but what I'm asking my
00:35:17.760
team, like, who was the senator who put this in the bill?
00:35:27.540
And then you get, you know, Doug Polk, he gets hundreds of thousands of views on his
00:35:39.760
Because he even mentioned he's like a pro business right leaning guy, but he's not a
00:35:44.680
Anything that pulls in normies to get them to blame Trump and sabotage his agenda, to
00:35:51.980
So, but I'm going to wrap it up there, my friends, I'm going to, we're going to gear
00:35:56.020
it up to send this right over to Russell Brand.
00:36:00.560
I believe Russell Brand is gearing up to go live.
00:36:02.680
I always usually just pop over to Rumble and grab that URL for you guys.
00:36:11.540
Share the show with everyone you know, my friends.
00:36:17.260
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00:36:39.180
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