Friday, November 10, 2006

What The Hell Is Going On Around Here?

A few days ago I posted a funny little video made by UltimateBet that demonstrated, in a subtle and understated way, how many poker players feel they've been treated by sites like Party and Paradise who gave US players the boot after the UIGEA passed. As I wrote at the time, while there's nothing more painful to a guy than getting kicked in the balls, watching someone ELSE get kicked in the balls is the height of mirth.

So imagine my surprise--no, shock--when I get an email from Grace (who I worked for in Aruba) telling me that YouTube has PULLED THE VIDEO. Go ahead, scroll down and try playing it--you'll get a message that video is no longer available.

YouTube has banned the video. This is an outrage. There are currently 307 videos on YouTube featuring people getting "kicked in the balls". There are currently 4961 videos on YouTube featuring "poker". So...why ban THIS particular video? Is this yet another salvo fired by the Powers That Be (in whatever sinister form They take) in a battle that has yet to be truly joined?

(If you didn't get a chance to see it and would like to, it's playing over at Ultimatebet.com.)

As Bill said the other day, the election results on Tuesday were very good news--but they came AFTER the UIGEA was passed. That law is still in effect. Now is not the time to relax and think that, eventually, someone will step up and get the law reversed or poker legalized. We can't sit on our hands and hope the big corporate players work together to get this done. We still have a part to play in this. There's still a lot of work to be done. In fact, the work hasn't even started yet.

In a related story, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE TAO OF POKER? Pauly, a nation turns it's lonely eyes to you. I got a case of the vapors when that redirect to Absolute Poker happened twice in a row. I speak for poker people around the globe when I say, no, shriek, "WTF!!??"

UPDATE: Cancel DefCon5. Stand down the missiles, recall the bombers. Pauly is back, fully operational. Whew.

I mentioned in my previous post that Ernie likes to lie down across my shoulders. In case you couldn't quite visualize what that might look like, well, this is what it looks like:

posted by Gene @ 5:01 PM   |