Vacation?

I've recently been on a bit of a hiatus from everything, but I've still managed to keep incredibly busy. Last month I took a "vacation" to Las Vegas and San Francisco. I use quotes because I played poker three out of four days in Vegas, and six out of seven days in San Francisco. So it was more of a work-cation. The poker itself was a change of pace from my normal games. In LV I played in soft live $15/30 and $30/60 games, and got to meet a few of my online poker friends. I also went with my girlfriend to see Love, the Beatles/Cirque du Soleil show. In SF I began learning new games like Triple Draw, Badugi, and Pot Limit Omaha. Learning new games has rejuvenated my love for poker. We also went rafting and played some tennis, so it wasn't all work and no play. However...

The night before we left for Vegas I got a distressing email from one of my poker sites. It warned me not to deposit a check I had recently received because it would not clear. Well, I had already deposited the check, and it had cleared. And I had written checks to the US Treasury against that money. So I checked my online bank statement, and the check had uncleared! Now, I didn't know that checks could actually unclear. Since my flight left at 6 AM, I had no way to deposit cash from my live poker bankroll to cover the checks. I did my best to put this whole mess out of my head while in Vegas.

The day I arrived in SF I read this article, which explained what happened to my money: Feds Seize $30 million. A U.S. Attorney from New York had $30 million of online poker players' money seized, citing the Wire Act. But the Wire Act doesn't apply to online poker. In fact, there is no Federal statute that applies to online poker, so this seizure amounts to outright theft. To summarize, the Feds stole money from me that I was trying to send to them for taxes. Awesome.

It wasn't exactly a relaxing vacation. In the end, though, I got reimbursed by the poker site (who took the $30 million hit), and this may be the act that incites US poker players to unite and fight back harder than before. Speaking of silver linings, there wasn't a cloud in sight in LV or SF. Meanwhile, it continues to rain in NYC. Welcome home, I guess.