Tuesday, September 26

Responding to a comment left to my last post: I mentioned that a common thread you read in biographies of successful entrepreneurs is that they often say that they owe it all to a risk that they took in their naive youth, which -- if they knew what they know now -- they never would have taken. The commentor raised an interesting point, which I had previously also thought about a lot, and it's this: Are the "Andy Beals" of this world the exception to the rule? Are there really 500 failed would-be entrepreneurs who regret straying from the beaten path for every 1 big success story? Mike McDermott once said "You don't hear much about guys who take their shot and miss. But I'll tell you what happened to them. They end up humping crappy jobs on graveyard shifts trying to figure out how they came up short." It's so hard to tell, but man, what a fascinating and important question. Maybe Mike McD is right, and unconventional risks result in disastrous ruin more often than not -- are they just "sucker plays"? Are the Andy Beal-style success stories essentially the real-life incarnation of the LAGgy maniac at the poker table who consistently makes atrocious -EV plays, but runs up a huge stack by catching cards? I tend to distance myself from that position: I don't think it was an objectively dumb move that just happened to pay off -- but I do think that that's a story that a lot of people tell themselves to make themselves feel better about living ordinary and mundane lives. I'm not knocking the people who do think that the Andy Beals of this world just got lucky: after all, there's a certain intuitive appeal to the argument >> it's a lot easier to accept life's rote tribulations if you convince yourself that the few shining stars in the world just won the "life/success lottery." I can't say I have much, if any, actual proof for my position...but I'm not sure just what form such proof would take. All I an do, for now, is to paraphrase one of my favorite passages from "The Richest Man in Babylon" (required reading, by the way; it's < style="font-style: italic;">can put yourself in a position where opportunity can see you. In other words, you can't control whether or not you get lucky, but you can control whether you even give yourself the chance to do so. I concede that this still doesn't address the question of what happens when putting yourself in that position involves a substantial risk that might leave you even worse off than before, but I find it inspiring nonetheless.

Someone also asked about the pending legislation. I am very, very far from being well-informed on this topic, but here is the gist of it, or my understanding of it at least. This week (of Sept 25) is very, very important. In short, we will likely know by the end of the week (or if not, certainly by the end of next) what the fate of the bill (and hence of internet poker in the US) will be. Here's the somewhat underhanded method by which proponents of the bill are trying to get it passed in the Senate (reminder: the bill already passed in the House, so all that needs to happen for it to become law is for it to be voted on and ratified in the Senate, and then signed by the president.) BUT instead of simply bringing the internet gambling bill to the Senate floor for a vote, Sen. Bill Frist and others are doing something a little sneaky: they're trying to attach it to another bill which is GUARANTEED to pass. The Department of Defense Appropriations bill (I'm sure i got the language on that wrong), will likely be voted on in the Senate very soon, and will pass without a doubt. So Frist is trying to hitch the internet gambling bill to that one to assure its passage. Kind of underhanded, but this type of stuff goes on all the time in Washington. What Frist is trying to avoid is a full-fledged debate on the merits of the internet gambling bill -- after all, it's incredibly controversial, so an informed debate might bring to light all of the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the bill; better to slip it through 'under the cover of darkness', so to speak. The good news is that a lot of Senators (even Republicans) are resisting Frist's attempts, claiming that internet gambling is not an appropriate matter to be included in a Dept of Defense bill (how right they are.) But Frist is really stubborn. Some people surmise that he's making a run at the Presidency in 2008, and really wants to shore up his support among right-wing religious groups, and he thinks that ploughing the internet gambling legislation through will be a testament to his belief in "family values", whatever that means. So everyone's just holding their breath now to see what happens. The final variable is that no one even knows what the version of the bill that might get added to the DoD bill will look like. To appease some of his critics, Frist is making some concessions on the language of the internet gambling bill, but no one really knows just how many compromises will be made. Some have suggested the bill might just prevent credit card transactions to gaming sites. That would be pretty good news, because no one in the US even uses credit cards to fund their accounts (they haven't been able to in years, thanks to industry self-regulation by the banks.) Others have suggested that the bill might cut out any sort of bank transfers or even Neteller use by Americans. This I find rather hard to believe, but the key thing to remember here is that the version of the bill that was passed in the House is NOT absolutely identical to the one that is being negotiated over in the Senate. In order to become law, the only requirement is that the version from the Senate needs to have a substantial resemblance to the one already passed in the House...and that's where these compromises come in. In the next 10 days, we'll have a very good idea of just what the final language of Frist's Senate bill will be, and whether or not he succeeds in getting it through the "back door" by attaching it to other pending legislation.