After a recent poker night in which I inexplicably did pretty well, I’ve been watching a little televised poker. As far as I can tell, One HD doesn’t have much else to broadcast yet, besides foreign cricket matches and Slamball.
What particularly struck me on this show was seeing an advertisement for a new poker tournament TV series being filmed locally, and inviting anyone to apply. “Any player level welcome – beginner to expert!” the telly trumpeted. As you can imagine, I applied immediately. The only problem was that I was incredibly drunk at the time, so now I’m terrified I may have signed some sort of contract online requiring me to take part whether I like it or not. Considering I’m the kind of newbie to the game who still has to ask “does a flush beat a straight? What about if I have a Draw Four card?” and the like, it doesn’t bode well.
The most prominent advertiser on One HD during these poker shows is a company called PokerStars. If you’re into online gambling, you’ve no doubt heard of them – they’re one of the biggest online poker sites around. My assumption is that their executive board meetings consist mostly of them laughing ominously and endlessly, while conducting mass orgies on top of an endless flood of cash being pumped into the room from a Pacific island with hilariously lax financial laws. What causes their TV advertisement to transcend into farce is the unbelievable message they flash on-screen at the ad’s conclusion:
“PokerStars.net is not a gambling website.”
Now, if you visit PokerStars.net within Australia, this genuinely appears to be the case: you’re presented with a “Oh, we’re all clean, this is all for fun, no money involved!” type website, as you’d expect – how else would they be able to advertise within Australia? Perhaps they really are an above-board corporation and are simply funneling thousands of dollars into providing free for-fun poker online out of their goodness of their heart.
OR NOT! But this is where the genius lies. If you’re drunk, like most of One HD’s viewers probably are, you probably failed to notice they were advertising pokerstars.net rather than pokerstars.com. Therein lies what I’m sure is a gigantic loophole. Although PokerStars.net only ever mentions playing poker for free with no cash involved, PokerStars.com features all sorts of advertising noise about paid online poker.
Maybe you were clever enough to remember the correct website, and visited PokerStars.net anyway. Although they’re correct in stating that “PokerStars.net is not a gambling website”, you’ll find that once you download the client software from the noticed gambling-free website, the software itself is certainly capable of hoovering up your disposable income.
Anyway, I don’t have to worry about all these advertising technicalities – I’m just living in dread that One HD are going to phone me up and demand I audition for their new poker tournament show, probably out of my own pocket. The best I can hope for is that I’m playing against a guy named Ben whose car numberplate also starts with “BEN” – surely a dude like that’s already used up his entire allotment of luck in life?