Texas Hold em Strategy Guide

A study financed by gambling tribes and some of California’s biggest card rooms estimates that state government could rake in more than $100 million a year in additional tax revenue from online poker.

Even if the revenue estimates are accurate, $100 million is a pittance in the context of an $87 billion state budget. Certainly, it is not enough to pay for the host of ills that the exponential expansion of state- sanctioned Internet gambling would undoubtedly spawn. How does the state benefit from poor people gambling away their grocery money or rent on state-sanctioned Internet gambling sites? Or thousands of 20-somethings playing Texas hold ‘em on their smart phones? While all proposals under consideration would ban those under 21 from gambling online, rest assured that tech-savvy California teenagers would find a way.

Gambling does not produce new wealth. It merely redirects money from one form of entertainment to another, from one player to another, with the big win ultimately going to the lucky sponsors of the gambling websites — California’s already wealthy gambling tribes and their card room partners in the campaign to legalize Internet gambling.

The public is not clamoring for more gambling in California. This initiative is driven totally by card room operators and gambling tribes, who already pluck billions from the pockets of California gamblers every year. They want more.

Despite the harm Internet gambling poses for California’s most vulnerable citizens, an Internet gambling measure has a good chance of making it out of the Legislature.

Opponents don’t even rate a meeting with the so-called stakeholders who are crafting this bill. So far, only the governor has expressed skepticism about the size of promised revenues. Good for him.

But the forces of greed are strong.

And the state is broke — sadly perhaps too broke to resist the lure of easy money, false though it surely is.

Editorials are the opinion of the Merced Sun-Star editorial board. Members of the editorial board include Publisher Eric Johnston, Executive Editor Mike Tharp, Online Editor Brandon Bowers and Guest Editor Jessica Boerner-Grissom.

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