All Hope Lost

Poker Politics

You would think that poker players would be strategic thinkers, but they're not.

Recently a ban on internet poker was inserted into a must-pass port security bill. This was not the first attempt to ban internet gaming. Previously the House had passed H.R. 4411 (official vote). Luckily, the November, 2006 election was coming up and poker players would have an opportunity to make their voices heard. It was hard to say which Senators were good and which were bad when the vote was over port security.

But with 4411 the members of the House had mostly taken clear stands. This is so obvious I shouldn't have to say it: vote for people who vote for you, vote against people who vote against you.

Instead, what would happen quickly became sickeningly clear. As I looked around different poker web sites and forums I found very few people that said they were going to vote. I could not find one single person that had said they were voting in the Congressional race based upon how their Representative voted on 4411. Most were like Cardplayer Magazine CEO, Barry Schulman, who wrote a blog entry advocating a "vote out the Republicans" strategy. (See also his followup article.) Some writers said they were voting only for Libertarians.

These were not optimal strategies. A better strategy would be to vote against Republicans and Democrats who voted against poker, and vote for Republicans and Democrats who voted for poker. Let me spell it out. Republicans voted 201-17 against poker, almost a 12 to 1 ratio. Democrats voted 115-76 against poker, about 3 to 2. So voting out a bad Republican will result in an unknown Democrat voting, on average, 3:2 against poker, which is better than a Republican 100% against poker. But voting out a good Republican with a vote 100% for poker will also result in an unknown Democrat 3:2 against poker. Voting out any Democrat will result in an unknown Republican 12:1 against poker.

So Cardplayer Magazine would lock in the Democrats: 115 against, 76 for, 10 not voting (unknown votes), and would make 234 more seats Democratic (unknown). The 244 unknown Democrats would vote an estimated average of 147 to 97 against poker, for a total estimate of 262 to 173 against poker.

An improved strategy is to keep all good votes: 76 Democrats and 17 Republicans, and switch parties on 115 Dems and 201 Reps, and make any leftover miscellaneous votes Democratic, resulting in 93 for, 115 unknown Republicans (estimated 106 to 9 against), and 227 unknown Democrats (estimated at 137 to 90 against) for a total estimate of 243 to 192 against.

The improved strategy sounds only a little better until you realize that voting out every member who voted against poker would have a profound impact on the thinking of the new members who replaced them. I would have liked to vote out at least 1/3 each of the bad Dems and Reps, and kept every good one.

So what happened? Well, I got results from CNN last week, and I'm tired of counting, and I could have easily miscounted, but when I checked Mr. Schulman got his wish and not one bad Democrat running for re-election had been voted out, but fortunately neither had any good Democrats. Fortunately no good Republicans were defeated, and bad Republicans were 163 still in office to 20 defeated (almost 11% defeated). Some members had not run for re-election and some races were still undecided. Still in office are 271 known bad votes and 86 known good ones, plus 46 unknown Democrats and 22 unknown Republicans.

Everyone says that the election was all about Republicans versus Democrats, which it was. Poker players have to point out when they lobby that every defeated Republican voted against poker, and not one member of either party who voted for poker was defeated.

Updated Election Results

There were nine close elections that weren't included in my count previously. This weekend I went back and checked, and, unfortunately, two good Republicans were defeated. So, it is no longer true that no member of either party who voted for poker was defeated. However, five more good Republicans and two more good Democrats squeezed back into office.

The total still in office now stands at 271 known bad votes and 93 known good ones, plus 48 unknown Democrats and 22 unknown Republicans. My total accounts for 434 out of 435 representatives, so I must have missed one somewhere

posted by Roboto @ 1:28 AM