TIL - To Some : Playing Poker = Gambling ... Even When No Money Is Risked

in Hive Gaming2 years ago (edited)

please stahp.png

Unregistered Security Tokens vs Freeroll Poker

Yes you read that right. According to some, even if you never risk a dime of your own money playing poker, it's still "gambling". And you will get muted in their gaming community without any research on their part ... or critical thinking for that matter.

However, you can buy hundreds of dollars of card packs with monsters or heroes on them to fight other players in games to ... win money ... and of course that's not gambling to these same people.

You can upload vidoes that are less than 2 minutes long into their community (we were invited to post in) and show yourself battling it out with a randomly generated outcome with the hopes of ... winning money after risking your own money to play ... and that's just fine and it's of course ... not gambling.

Playing a game of skill where it's YOU vs ANOTHER PERSON where you can even win with an inferior collection of cards and do it repeatedly because ... it's a game of skill, well that's just "gambling" according to these same people, despite putting up none of your own money.

Yes folks, buying cards with your own money with cute, futuristic or monsterous things on them and battling undisclosed RNG code to hopefully win more money (as long as your monsters are more powerful than the other person's or AI's cards) equals not gambling. Not to mention most of these crypto games NFT's and tokens are actually "Securities" according to the Howey Test ... but that's just fine apparently (until they get big enough and the SEC shows up for their fine in the millions).

Versus

Not putting any of your own money into playing freeroll poker (a skill based game that's not illegal and doesn't sell obvious unregistered securities) against actual human opponents where you can win with 2 of the crappiest cards known to mankind and win money with no risks at all ... equals "gambling" to these same people.



The fact is, the people who have this mindset likely know nothing about the laws regarding poker (and other online gaming) or why people think poker is illegal (it's not) to play online. We even outlined this logical fallacy in a post and include a link to it at the bottom of every post.

These same types of people have likely invested into NFT's in the Hive ecosystem that according to the Howey Test are more than likely unregistered Securities, buy into tokens that are more than likely unregistered Securities and promote them (it's illegal to promote unregistered securities) in this same community.


One lead developer on Hive even stated publicly, on an immutable blockchain, that his token is more than likely an unregistered security according to the Howey Test. But guess what ... this same gaming community promotes that games posts repeatedly, despite the fact that their NFT's and token fit the definition of a security according to the Howey Test.

Screenshot 2022-05-05 104910.png

A lot of the Hive community supports this game which is selling a token and an NFT that fit the exact description of an unregistered security and promote it far and wide and have no issue with it whatsoever. Yet ... they hear the word "poker" and all of a sudden they have an issue.

It's nothing new though. This is the way it's been for a long time due to the governments (mainly the US gov) clamping down on "money laundering" (not poker) in the United States and then most people (who don't actually read articles, but only headlines) got it into their heads that "poker is illegal".

No, playing poker online is not illegal and never has been. Money laundering and unregistered security tokens (probably like the one's these same people promote) are illegal though.



Anyway, I just wanted to vent because it's annoying to see a community and ecosystem openly promote tokens and NFT's that can't pass the Howey Test (i.e. an unregistered security), the lead developers describe their token by the exact definition of an unregistered security and are too uninformed on the law to even realize that they've just admitted this ... on an immutable blockchain. 😖

It's crazy, but on Hive we have people blindly supporting illegal activity and promoting it (which I've read is a crime #DYOR), but a game of skill that is free to play with no risks whatsoever is a problem and considered "gambling" for these same people in this gaming community.

The amount of cognitive dissonance required to come to these conclusions is either based in complete ignorance, willful ignorance or simply the fact that they benefit from the illegal activity and not from the legal activity, therefore the legal activity is muted in their community.

Maybe read up on the Howey Test, then go talk to some of the developers (like I did) at some of these games you openly promote on Hive and in your gaming community and discover ...

"Oh sh-t, I'm promoting an unregistered SECURITY and that's illegal!" 🤦‍♂


All images licensed via Shutterstock

Sort:  

To Whom It May Concern:

I've been a member of the Poker Community for over four and a half years now.. ever since finding Steemit long ago, and now on Hive. It is impossible to "gamble" on the poker site, you cannot send Hive there and gamble with it.

Tournaments that have HIVE Prizes are sponsored by the Hive community. We've had Top 20 Witnesses sponsor huge tournaments. In fact, ALL HIVE Tournaments are Witness sponsored.

I sponsor a tournament every weekend for the Community. Nothing major mind you.. but I've always given back ever since I joined. I freely donate HIVE, so the people of Hive have a place to play some poker.. for free if they so choose.

It is a donation, and I make the decision to donate my HIVE. I also donate my time as well.

I support most games on Hive, even though I do not play them. I've even played some games on Steemit, like Drug Wars, and that space colonization game.. that I forget the name of and etc. In those games, I paid A LOT of Steem and I lost out because the games fizzled out or whatever. There were grand promises made, that were never kept.

My point is, I gambled my coins on those games.. and I lost. And to be honest, those games left me not wanting to play games like that again. I would much rather just give the coins away and have some fun.

I enjoy playing the Game of Poker. It takes time and dedication, to learn the skills needed to win a tournament. You cannot buy your way to a win. You cannot upgrade your cards. You get what you get, and you better have the chops to take home the win. It's not really about the coins, it's all about the Win. With that being said..

Have An Awesome Day!

I knew there would be an overreaction to my reply as soon as I saw your message in the Discord. I feel like it should be unnecessary to repeat myself but I guess I'll have to. As I said I'm fully aware that your site doesn't let people gamble their money away but poker in general is related to gambling. Also while poker is a game it's not gaming in the sense that we're looking for in this community.

Never once did I tell you to leave the community. You yourself uttered the words "I won't post in your community any longer, sorry" so that was your own choice.

Hearthstone Screenshot 05-02-22 16.09.36.png

I play Hearthstone. I play poker on Lucksaks. I have sunk more money (USD) into Hearthstone than I ever have into playing poker on Lucksaks. Lucksaks has cost me ZERO USD and ZERO Hive.

Both games are based on cards. Both games are based on card RNG. Both games are based on the SKILL you learn over time.

Poker is a lot more fun and interactive. You meet people from all over the world while playing and form friendships. One could call those friendships GUILDS.

Guilds or teams could play against other teams for the prize to see who is the best team.

There is no difference. It should never be treated as such.

Also coming to someone's post and being snotty is rude. If you are not adult enough to learn how to express yourself without being rude you should learn. You get farther in life when you treat people fairly and try and see both sides to an argument.

If you would have come to this post and calmly stated your problem with Lucksaks posting in your group I would have taken you seriously and looked into your side more. As it stands I read your first reply and how it was worded and dismissed any claims you had. You came here throwing a temper tantrum and were treated as such by the author of this post.

My reply best left unsaid cause I would rip em all a new asshole.

Didn’t and don’t have a problem with Lucksacks posting in the community. We had a mod misunderstand a rule but listening to reasoning wasn’t on Lucksacks agenda today. They’d rather throw this tantrum and segregate themselves.

Let us try this again...

Also coming to someone's post and being snotty is rude. If you are not adult enough to learn how to express yourself without being rude you should learn. You get farther in life when you treat people fairly and try and see both sides to an argument.

I am immature. Always will be.

For a man that is running a gaming company to build a RPG game on the blockchain and needs investors saying

I am immature. Always will be.

is really not a good look. Just a little advice.

Have a wonderful day.

I am not running any company and am not building any RPG so you must have me confused with someone else.

Loading...

This "gambling" thing is so silly. Especially on a crypto platform 😅
I learned how to play poker on lucksacks.com in freerolls thanks to Tuck and other members. A bit more than a year ago I started to play on other platforms too (where you need to put money on the line). I had 1 negative month since then and 15 straight positive months with exponential growth in profit. Cant' say the same about crypto 😅Crypto is way way more of a gamble than poker. In poker you need only a few skills - to have patience and understand math and human behavior.

This whole situation was blown out of proportion by you. You came into our discord and asked a why the post was muted and @pusen told you that he was going to find it out, then you throw a hissy fit like a child and write novels trying to bash the gaming community instead of waiting until @pusen found out who muted the post. It was muted by one of our mods that is not a native English speaker and this whole situation could have been fixed pretty easily. Pretty disappointed in the Lucksacks team for this whole thing.

pretty disappointed your mods would just mute without understanding.

Could have been fixed pretty easily without the temper tantrum from your team.

No one had to care about what Tuck wrote. Turns out he is allowed to have his opinions without worrying about others' feelings. The fact that he's right about the hypocrisy involved is what gets under y'all's skin, so you throw your 'whatevers' and your 'hissy fit' and 'i'm so disappointed in you' - dad voice around instead of listening and making positive changes.

Probably everyone is over this by now (hopefully) but I didn't have time to get back on yesterday so... anyway.

 2 years ago  

It was just one post tho, why all the drama if we can remove the mute with just 2 clicks?

Oh yeah, because it's easier to be dramatic and make a completely absurd post instead of just waiting for an answer, right?

No one here cares about the mute. Everyone at HGC is focusing on the mute we care nothing about. Posting in your community wasn't helping us, we were invited to post so we did and now we won't.

It's about calling our site "gambling" and how it hurts our community and support for our community by continuing to spew that nonsense publicly.

It was your mod who came on our post where I addressed the "gambling" fallacy and in the same sentence where he states that he knows we don't allow gambling he says "poker in general is related to gambling". Then went on to say that poker wasn't even gaming according to the HGC.

So I pointed out that HGC allows the promoting of a game that doesn't exist and sells a token classified by US law as an unregistered security and that's considered "gaming" by HGC.

It's also considered "illegal" in the US where the lead developer resides. So it's just funny to me that you guys openly allow the promotion of a non-existent game selling an unregistered security (by the owners own admission) in your community while claiming you muted our post due to "gambling" (yet your mod knows we don't allow gambling) and that ours is not even "gaming". 😂

And now to make it even odder, "your team" is saying that some mod who doesn't even speak English very well was allowed to mute the post without consulting anyone else on it's content when we've been posting in there (invited) for months without issue, yet the non-existent game selling an unregistered security token is never questioned??? lol

Come on man, you guys can do better than this. Why shit on our project as some illegal "gambling" site not only in your discord, but on our own post, while you allow non-existent games selling unregistered security tokens to thrive as "gaming" and "legal"?

It's funny that 3 of you now are here defending this practice too and acting like the fact that I'm calling out your bullshit of allowing illegal activity to thrive while claiming freeroll poker is "gambling" is hilarious.

Being muted was no big deal, I was just curious why it was muted, but I had a good idea why and I wanted to hear it and then address the bad reasoning for why.

What I addressed is the "gambling" fallacy. Mute all you want, I was invited to post in HGC so it was just a bit odd to get muted for "gambling" after being invited.

And then I got the exact response I expected "gambling". So I addressed that misconception that has hurt our community for 5 years. That misguided reasoning is what has kept Lucksacks from getting support on Steem and Hive since we started in 2017.

I hear it time and time again and I'm sick of it and people who have no idea what they're talking about in legal terms try to break down their red herrings to excuse the fact that they have no idea what they're talking about on the legal front all while allowing an admitted unregistered security to thrive in the same community.

It's ridiculous to me, so I expressed how ridiculous it all is. I'm sorry you don't like me pointing out how "your team" allows unregistered securities for games that don't exist to thrive in your "gaming" community while muting games that have existed for 5 years (long before Hive Gaming Community came along).

I could have easily explained everything and taught the rest of the Hive Gaming team about your project without you running off and acting like a child about this whole thing. I know that Lucksacks isn't gambling, but you decided to run off the deep end instead.

Honestly, I don't care anything about HGC or being a part of it. I'll say it again, I was invited to post there and it was a big mistake obviously.

Muting the post makes it appear that we did something wrong, when we didn't. Following up the mute by one of your mods publicly (not privately) communicating that our site was muted for "gambling" in "your team" Discord, then coming on our posts and saying it again warrants a response.

Why?

Because for 5 years that's the reason that's been given to us for why we can't get support from the ecosystem. "Gambling" is the go to catch phrase everyone uses and here we are again after 5 years with someone again associating "gambling" with our website and doing it repeatedly publicly.

I think it's rather odd for "your team" to come onto my post, where I'm explaining that we're not a "gambling" site, when I didn't even name your community in the post. But you all did and one of you wanted to argue the "gambling" angle again for no apparent reason.

Why is that?

Why is "your team" not concerned at all with the fact that your community allows non-existent games who sell illegal unregistered securities to thrive and post at will, yet your biggest concern of the day is some guy who never even mentioned your community making a post destroying the fake narrative that our site is a "gambling" site?

Very odd.

But please, continue not addressing any of these points and hurl ad hominem attacks at me. It really makes you look manly and sophisticated.

I expect better of you @derangedvisions than this. :(

Out of everything I read here your comment saddens me more than anything else.

Glad I could be a disappointment to people other than my parents

Last time I checked .... all 52 cards in the deck ARE LEGAL.... so I'll be sticking to playing poker AT LUCKSACKS.COM..... very sad that people have been dumbed down so badly they can't wrap their heads around the fact that there is a difference between gambling and poker , and even when they admit the difference they still continue to mischarcterize poker as gambling.

The blind, knee-jerk dismissal of poker is so infantile, it's absurd.


@tipu curate 2

lucksacks allways going to be the best GAME here.

untitled.gif

Congratulations @lucksacks.com! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s):

You received more than 4500 upvotes.
Your next target is to reach 4750 upvotes.

You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Check out the last post from @hivebuzz:

We have finished upgrading our website
Our Hive Power Delegations to the April Power Up Month Winners
Feedback from the May 1st Hive Power Up Day
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!

can't tell if this is satire or top tier cuck posting.

i think you mean top-tier TUCK posting, good sir. Indeed!

Tuck and cuck are basically synonymous, used to be back in my day..

(lol, I jest.)

🤔
You're not wrong, exactly...
😉

To be fair projecting that US law applies everywhere is dumb as shit.

Fuck US law and the feds, incorporate and host offshore and that stupid howey test means fuck all. Incorporate and register in seychelles or some other lawless shithole and good god damn luck getting any sort of subpoena or government over-reach shit pushed through.

Also the comments section of this post is fucking LOL. Anyone in crypto whose gonna go off about unregistered securities is in the wrong fucking hood, most of us are in crypto to skirt federal over regulation and oversight... Should go without saying.. But Snitches get stitches where I'm from. :D

good laugh this shitpost and comments though.. Poker is a game-of-chance / gambling based form of entertainment. Doesn't matter if you're betting millions or fucking chips worth zero, you're wagering against the table and that by definition is "gambling".

Wager infers gambling. Anyone who says otherwise either doesn't have a strong understanding of english or is functionally retarded and / or splitting hairs.

ew, lame (to continue in the theme of this thread, ofc)

also, whatever.

Just says it likes it is.

Tuck should offshore this shit and open it up to actual money. It'd probably take off quite well. Hell do it anon and host with privex. ez fix.

Hard to grow a poker site when it's just for "funzies".. Few folks wanna waste hours of their week playing for peanuts, most if they are gonna sit down wanna chance to make decent cash else it's just not a great time / value proposition.

Are you the Ray Epps of crypto? 😉

You #FedPost so much publicly that it's concerning.

I'd block you to avoid ending up in some entrapment case after you're mysteriously not arrested, but your takes are so sophomoric that they're actually humurous to read ... in small doses.

lol I try and help you actually get some players, make an actual go out of your efforts... and you're all like "I'mma block ya"...

Cheers tuck, glad to see you're flourishing.

Loading...