Description

Just a few years out of college and David "Doc" Sands has already racked up nearly $2.5 million winning poker tournaments, and this January he became the world's top-ranked online tournament player. Sands sat down with Reason.tv's Ted Balaker to discuss Sand's love of poker and individual liberty, the parallels between marijuana and gambling policy, and the hypocrisy embedded in America's gambling world.

Transcript

David Doc Sands on Gambling and Freedom Reason TV David Doc Sands: Just form an ideal standpoint I’ve always been a type person that thinks you know people should be free to do what they want as long as they’re not harming anyone else. Ted Balaker: Hi I’m Ted Balaker with Reason TV and today I’ll be speaking with David Sands. David Doc Sands is a Doyle’s roomed sponsored professional poker player who’s won more online majors than anyone in the world and in addition to poker you’re interested in the free market world? David: Yeah. Ted: How did that happen? David: Well I’ve always just I grew up in a small town called Bozeman Montana and there was a libertarian organization there called Free Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment and I did an internship with them for 2-1/2 years while I was in college and I was fortunate enough to be able to work on Mont Pelerin Society and for those who don’t know the Mont Pelerin Society is sort of be all and end all of the free market world. They were started by F.A. Hayek in the 40s. Ted: Exactly. David: Yeah Mont Pelerin you know to me is just basically a celebration of a free market and libertarian ideals and you know that the conference I was able to help organize and attend you know 4 years back was just a great learning experience really got to hang out with a lot of brilliant minds and just kind of see you know quite a bit about the libertarian world and the ideas that hose people are fighting for and if I wasn’t involved—so much I really think I would still be working or your involved in libertarianism and promoting free market more you know just as a day time job so I really think they do great stuff. Ted: And what are you drawn toward any kind of policy areas or? David: Well used to work when I worked at free. I dealt a lot with just government taxation and just sort of cutting unnecessary spending. I used to do you remember this is like 5 or 6 years ago but I used to right papers about you know portions of the Montana tax expenditure that was just wasted and you know some of the you guys know better than I do but some of the things the government spends money on just absolutely laughable I know you guys have a whole section. Ted: Got a half million dollars of public school right here and down the street. David: Yes so you know there’s just countless ways the government can waste money and I guess just from an ideal standpoint I have always been the type of person that thinks you know people should be free to do what they want as long as they’re not harming anyone else and I guess from the time that I was young when I was formulating my you know kind of my conceptions of who I was I just always thought that government policy just in general more often than not trampled and impeded people’s ability to do what they wanted rather than facilitated. Ted: It seems like there is maybe more of the libertarian strain in the world of poker just by the nature of the game and what it entails is that true, do you see that among the people you play with? David: Well I think that might be increasingly true just because of what the government is trying to do to outlaw online poker in the United states and you know all of the hoops that they’re making us online players that live in the United States due jut to be able to play the game we love on the internet. I think there’s some element just in terms of the type of people of the game it attracts but I think more than that just in recent years the last 3 years the government has really made it difficult for U.S. players to play online at the same time that they’re facilitating a lot of reasons they’re telling us that poker is a game of chance that we shouldn’t be allowed to play. And so I think it’s just kind of silly for those of us who understand the game and you know, know without a doubt that it’s a game of skill because it’s what we do for a living and we do it everyday and we see the people that aren’t skilled lose money over and over again in the long run we see the people that are skilled you know final table big events and win big tournaments consistently. Ted: Could you address the issue of the controversy over how poker should be regulated hinges to a large degree on whether it’s a game of chance or a skill? Can you talk about why that’s such a big question? David: Yeah, well I guess from a policy standpoint it’s a big question because there’s. I guess there’s a tradition to some extent in U.S. law or U.S. policy and the government banning games of chance and you know supporting or at least enabling people to engage in games of skill and so there had been multiple Supreme Court rulings that you know the Supreme Court tries to state whether poker is a game of luck or a game of skill. So anyone who actually knows the game there’s just— I mean there’s just as no argument but like I said at the offset is a completely math base game if you give me two cards and you give yourself two cards you know I can tell you in less the second what the percentage chance that I’m going to win the hand is and what the percentage chance that you’re going to win the hand is. Ted: And probably the one of the biggest ways they want to restrict your ability to dot hat is and it’s the 2006 law. It’s one of those ridiculously titled laws I’m going to have to look at. The unlawful internet gambling enforcement act or – to explain what that did in my opinion what it did? David: In my opinion what it did that people that have IP addresses in the United States can’t play online poker and since they probably knew when they wrote it that it wasn’t going to be possible to enforce, they just decided to like they always do or like they frequently do pass the responsibility for the reinforcement on the private corporations which in this case is banks. So what the U.S government from my understanding did with respect to the law is they didn’t actually make the active playing online poker illegal, they made helping poker players to have U.S. IP addresses get money on or off of an online pokers site illegal. Ted: And a silver line a liberate possible libertarian silver lining this is now with all the government spending record levels other nations primarily in Europe are now warming up to online poker because surprise they get tax revenue. David: Exactly, yeah there’s a ton of tax revenue from online poker and you know I think it looks like in recent months the U.S. government has been a little more open to the idea of regulating and taxing and just because I think they’ve finally started to realize the tremendous amount of money that has and will continue to go off shore if they don’t you know but for me from a policy stand point it’s kind of analogous to medical marijuana you know people are going to smoke anyway. People are going to play poker online anyway and you know the U.S. government especially the state of California is in a tremendous amount of debt and you know why not capitalize in the opportunity to get free money from an activity that Americans are already engaging in. Ted: The former Senator from New York Al D’Amato is now engaged in some honest work. He’s the Chairman of the Poker Player’s Alliance and this is one thing that he had to say in an article not too long ago quote under the liberty and freedom section of the new GOP website. America is speaking out more Americans voted to legalize internet poker than wait in on any other issue that should come as no surprise when president elect Barack Obama solicited ideas on his new website changed that .gov legalizing internet poker was one of the top two issues. Voters want this and politicians are always you know pretending to want to do with the voters wants so what’s the problem why isn’t this getting more attraction? David: Well that’s a really good question and I definitely think that the overwhelming amount of voters and just people in the United States whether they’re educated on the issue or not do support the legalization of online poker because you know they have to recognize that even they’re not going to play online poker themselves it’s a great additional form of revenue for the government and you know why not if they’re opposing it why not have a government tax it and regulate it. Ted: It was similar with when they have always the YouTube debate and the top question was you know why don’t you legalize marijuana or something to do with marijuana and Obama just sort of you know Chocolate because there’s stoners again. David: Yeah exactly. Well I mean you know sometimes you got to really fight to get your voice heard and you know its clear that online poker is one of those issues. It’s just despite the fact that the voters want, despite the fact that logic and you know financial reasoning economics dictates that it makes sense it’s just it’s a tough issue so the PPA is doing a lot of great work and I think, I do think that you know there’s some bright sides I think that the U.S. government is finally starting to open its ice and recognize how much money there is potentially made and unfortunately it seems to come down to that more often than not even if the voters want it you know the policy aren’t going to get changed until its obvious that the government is going to benefit for monetary perspetive but hopefully they’ve got to that point, the government you know recognize that the money is there and that the regulation is to happen.