The Sheldon Adelson Saga Revisited, Part 3: A Partial Bloomberg TV Transcript
If you’re still catching up with Sheldon Adelson’s attacks on online poker, we’re bringing a special treat this time out — an excerpt from the Bloomberg TV interview in which Adelson launched an extended attack, specifically against poker and its skillful aspects, which he called a pile of “baloney”.
Here’s the link to the Bloomberg TV video on YouTube, on the show “Money Moves with Dierdre Bolton,” which we recommend visiting so you can enjoy all of Adelson’s crassness in it’s totality, but it’s important to get the whole text of his poker attack on the written record in its entirety, rather than the bits-and-pieces quotes that have been published so far.
Starting about 3:44, just after a claim of underaged kids being set up to gamble online by other underaged kids, until all of them lose all their money:
Adelson: … I believe that poker and other forms of gaming, poker particularly, since it’s considered a social activity and not “gambling”, per se. Ahh, kids will get up in the middle of the night, if they can’t sleep, or they come online, and they challenge each other to say, “Let’s play some poker. Let’s play some blackjack. They’re going to lose.”
Bolton: So you’re not going to make an exception, then, for poker? ‘Cause your point, is…. Poker is skill-based. Actually, players are playing against each other and not against a house.
Adelson: That “skill-based” is, in my opinion, just a bunch of baloney. The cards — to get a card, it’s not skill-based. I know people say it’s skill-based, but it’s just so they can categorize it in a certain category, in a certain segment.
Bolton: So you would never make an exception for poker?
Adelson: Absolutely not. Look, I’m a citizen. I’m a father. I’m a grandfather. I don’t want my children… I was, I’m a veteran of the Korean War. I don’t want my children to have opportunity to become addicted to gaming. And poker, in my opinion, would be one of the most addictive games, because people don’t get addicted to playing [] or playing blackjack, they get addicted to … games. It’s one of the many compulsive behaviors, and if somebody is addicted to gaming, they’re addicted to some other compulsive behavior.
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And on from there. Another Adelson gem from later in the interview, when asked about the business revenue online gambling can provide: “You can also, you can also make the argument for legalizing heroin, and cocaine, and prostitution, and you can legalize creating a lot of sin taxes, so that the government could earn money.”
Think about this man the next time you’re tempted to set foot inside the Venetian, Palazzo, or another Las Vegas Sands property.
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