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Clicking buttons for a living [Part n/n]

Link to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6

It happened. About a week ago, the Indian Government banned any form of real money gaming, and overnight the entire poker ecosystem in the country died. Websites went dark, tables stopped, and emails were sent to players asking them to withdraw their funds.

The Government argued that real money gaming (including poker) was a big societal evil, draining money from unsuspecting youth. Suicides have been committed, and students have a very high tendency to get addicted to these games. In some cases, life savings have been lost.

I won’t argue that there is no truth to the above arguments. Poker by its nature is a zero sum game, and it is well established that 80-85% players lose money. My biggest beef with the Government is on how they rolled out this law – it was announced out of the blue, tabled and passed the very next day in Lok Sabha, tabled and passed the day after in Rajya Sabha followed by the President’s signature on the following day. For a law targeting such a big industry, this hasty maneuvering of a bill reeks of laziness and incompetence at best and malafide intentions at worst. It feels as if the Government realized that some of the upcoming Supreme Court rulings were not going to be in its favor (more specifically the retrospective GST ask from Gameskraft, a shocking example of the Government’s illogical heavy-handedness), and decided to take matters in its own hands. No Parliamentary committee to examine the effects of banning the industry, no consulting firm hired to do a pro-con analysis, just a top down measure announced by a minister in a manner suggesting he knows best.

One question worth exploring is that if more time had been spent in understanding the entire industry, would the result have been any different? I dare say yes. There is a lot of nuance to the entire real-money gaming industry, and a lot of time needs to be spent in understanding which aspects of it are more skill based. After identifying which games are more skill based than others, the Government could have invited different stakeholders to understand how it can protect the more vulnerable strata of players. Strict KYC, checks on advertisements, and limited bankroll allowance (only allowing 5% of bank-balance to be gambled for example) would have been welcome measures.

Of course, even before this, one might ask why promote skill based gambling at all, why not just ban them all together and save us the trouble. There are four main reasons why poker should have been regulated but promoted:

1. By banning skill based gaming, the Government just pushes existing players to offshore websites. These are unregulated, offer no protection to players. This is bad for players.
2. Indian gaming operators have to shut down, this leads to job losses. And when Mr Ashwini Vaishnaw comes out and says that jobs will simply shift to e-sports and social games, he is being simplistic. 85% revenue comes from real money games, there are only so many jobs that will shift to the other sectors.
3. Government loses a huge chunk of tax revenue, which is estimated presently at Rs 20,000 cr. A big loss for a still poor country.
4. At its core, poker is game of strategy and deep thinking. When embraced and taught correctly, it is a tool for us to learn game theory.

These reasons are well understood, and could have been illustrated by taking examples of the western world, and how they have regulated these games. Parts of Europe and most of USA does not encourage online poker, but they recognize poker as a skill based sport, allow heavily regulated websites to operate, ensuring player safety.

The staggering aspect of this whole business is just the way they have gone about it. To me, it’s a big loss in confidence in the India story, a story which is unravelling in recent times. The Government can of course paint a pretty picture and thump its chest and say all is well, but when it passes laws impacting numerous stakeholders without any debate, that’s not a country whose future I would bet on.