Here's a contrary viewpoint: Online gaming/gambling right now exists in an almost-perfect state of deregulation. This deregulation allows low-rake, low-vig gam

Here's a contrary viewpoint: Online gaming/gambling right now exists in an almost-perfect state of deregulation. This deregulation allows low-rake, low-vig games to flourish, and is IMO only reason why it's possible for consenting adults to play these games (online poker being the classic example) with positive expectation. Regulation of online gambling will likely create games with 20%, 30%, and 40% vigs, as this is what a politician means when he says "regulate and tax". Most state lotteries currently extract around a 30-40% vig, meaning only 60-70% of the money going into the system is paid out as winnings. Other state-mandated games extract similarly huge percentages. Nobody complains because the money gets funneled into "education" or "public works", but state-mandated forms of gambling are far and away some of the most pernicious gambling instruments ever foisted on the public. The endgame: if online gambling is ever widely regulated, the tax burdens and regulatory requirements imposed will be passed along to customers (who are mostly clueless about things like "rake" and "vig" anyway) and this will create a world in which the only available forms of real-money gaming on the net will be ones in which adults stare drooling at the screen, pressing pretty colored buttons in the futile hope that they can somehow "beat" a game which is now mathematically unbeatable. I support the call for regulation. But anybody who thinks politicians like Barney Frank are going to protect low-rake, low-vig online gambling of any sort are likely going to be disappointed. Preserving a low rake isn't even on the menu.