… wrote the caustic Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch, in a comment to his own blog post about Yahoo! Poker (U.K. & Ireland). 
Mike Arrington takes a US-centric view that, because internet betting and gambling is forbidden in the U.S., and because the multinational Internet firm Yahoo! originates from the U.S., then the British users of Yahoo! U.K. & Ireland should be barred from playing poker online with Yahoo!. Makes no sense at all, since Mike Arrington also reports that American residents connecting from the U.S.A. are indeed prevented from paying the online game.
–> Michael Arrington has a screw lose. Judge by yourself:
Yahoo! has launched a new “for cash” poker website on their UK & Ireland property. Users can play against others via a Flash interface, and are offered $1,000 in credit when they make their first deposit into the account. Registration is allowed from most countries, although the U.S. and Gibraltar, where online gambling are prohibited, are blocked (I tried). The service is provided through a partner, St Minver, but the game play occurs on the Yahoo! site. The introductory video says “Congratulations on choosing Yahoo! Poker,use your skills and try your luck at winning the pot.” Players have maximum loss limits – they cannot withdraw more than GBP1000 from their bank account every ten days. In 2004, Yahoo! and Google announced that they were removing gambling advertising from their sites. This launch seems to contradict their position on Internet gambling. [*] This is an extremely controversial move, and one that Yahoo! may not be equipped to handle. Yahoo! does provide a “responsible gaming” tutorial, but the Press will be quick to jump on any tales of woe from players who’ve lost a lot of money from the site. Broken marriages and lost homes will only make the stories juicer. [Punctuation slightly edited.]
[*] The contradiction is brewed by Mike Arrington’s hyper fertile imagination, only.
Should Americans tell the other world’s citizens (in Ireland) and “subjects” (in Great Britain) what should or should not make it in their merchant economy? Go fugging yourself, Mike Arrington!!!
