Zyngo, is it gambling or not?

When I go to the race track - horse racing has been determined to be a game of skill, in that state.....and is legal over games like poker and craps, which you are not allowed to wager on.

This only illustrates your naivete about the legislative history involving legal horse race betting. The reason why horse betting is legal in some states has nothing to do with skill. It has to do with politics and state interests tied into the horse race betting. In some states the government gets a direct cut of the money while in others they derive a significant amount of income from taxes and the ancillary revenue it provides. The fact that a legislative body may claim it is a game of skill over a game like poker has no merit if it is unsupported by actual game theory analysis and has been shown to be without merit in almost every single case brought before the courts.

It is possible to determine that some numbers come up more often than others.....so it's wise not to play your jokers on those numbers, and to choose a number that does not come up more often. Skill.
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That's like saying there's skill involved in knowing which bets in craps have better odds than others.


That's a huge legal morass, but it's also not relevant for our purposes. The LL FAQ says

The question, as far as LL is concerned according to this statement, is whether the outcome involves an element of chance, or whether it's a game of pure skill.


Are you sure about the horse racing? I thought that in some states it was legal simply because the legislature decided to make it legal, without regard to whether or not any skill is involved. Just like state lotteries are legal, even though no one argues that there's any skill involved in telling the clerk to give you two $5 scratch tickets. My state allows Keno in bars but doesn't allow casinos - not because of any question of skill, but simply because the legislature decided it that way.

For poker, on the other hand, there are court cases that are making the decision. I haven't studied these in detail, but I get the impression that different courts decide in different ways, in spite of similar wording between state laws.


I believe the federal law allows for state-by-state differences, but clearly LL doesn't want to get into deciding where its users are located. So they're pretty much forced to use a restrictive policy that would cover them in all 50 states. That quote above is clear, though it's probably more restrictive than they intend. (If you flip a coin to see who plays white in chess, that shouldn't be taken as introducing an element of chance, even though playing white is often considered to have a slight advantage.)


I don't have a theory on corruption. I've merely observed that others allege that corruption was involved in the widespread approval of Zyngo. I have no reason to either believe or disbelieve those allegations, as no specific facts have been furnished.


Certain types of business bias are generally considered acceptable. Software and electronics manufacturers are free to cut different deals with Wal-mart than with Staples. But at least they're up front that they negotiate individual deals. They don't say "Here's our non-negotiable policy for wholesalers, which applies to everyone" and then cut a private deal.

So if LL wants to say "We granted a special exception for Zyngo for internal business reasons that we won't divulge", then fine, they're being honest about it, albeit private. But when they say "These are the rules. We've decided that such and such complies with the rules (but we won't explain why)." And everyone else can see that it doesn't comply with the rules, then criticizing them on this decision is perfectly valid. Is it corruption? Or is it incompetence? I have no way of knowing. I just know that it's inconsistent rules enforcement, and that it's perfectly reasonable to question and discuss it here, to complain about it, and to ask that it be fixed.

I don't have a theory on corruption. I've merely observed that others allege that corruption was involved in the widespread approval of Zyngo. I have no reason to either believe or disbelieve those allegations, as no specific facts have been furnished.


Certain types of business bias are generally considered acceptable. Software and electronics manufacturers are free to cut different deals with Wal-mart than with Staples. But at least they're up front that they negotiate individual deals. They don't say "Here's our non-negotiable policy for wholesalers, which applies to everyone" and then cut a private deal.

So if LL wants to say "We granted a special exception for Zyngo for internal business reasons that we won't divulge", then fine, they're being honest about it, albeit private. But when they say "These are the rules. We've decided that such and such complies with the rules (but we won't explain why)." And everyone else can see that it doesn't comply with the rules, then criticizing them on this decision is perfectly valid. Is it corruption? Or is it incompetence? I have no way of knowing. I just know that it's inconsistent rules enforcement, and that it's perfectly reasonable to question and discuss it here, to complain about it, and to ask that it be fixed.

Surely LL's legal counsel knows "an element of skill" does not make a game legal in any state, let alone all of them.

My guess? LL *needs* gambling enough to bet the farm.

LL themselves attribute the downturn in this graph to the gambling ban:...

Online gambling does not fall under the jurisdiction of state law

The blog entry from which the chart you posted was taken says nothing about any impact of the gambling ban. Unless you can cite an actual Linden Lab source for that attribution

there were two very significant turn of events that occurred during the same period of time that could have had a large impact during the relevant period as well. The first was the exposure of numerous ponzi schemes posing as Second Life banks that bilked thousands of residents out of hundreds of thousands if not millions of US dollars.

The second was the change in pricing policy for Open Space Sims

I think it is simply a cavalier attitude based on the belief that these slot machines are not easily discernible as slot machines and therefore not likely to catch the interest of banks or law enforcement authorities.

Further while there is some relevance, there is no direct correlation to revenue streams for Linden Lab and user to user transaction volume.

According to the article I posted earlier, ESPN seems to think it's necessary to obey the laws of all the states, so there is a list of states in which you can't win anything in their fantasy sports league thingy, even though ESPN seems to think it's a game of skill, because there are some states in which you can't win a prize even in a game of skill.

To be clear....I have nothing to gain from continuing on in your debate. I do have a mission, at times to help people understand that life ain't fair....move on. But I'm not even convinced that this topic has anything to do with fairness.

Some of us have a concern (evidently I'm the only one in this thread)....that some crusaders will take away all of our tools. Most of the crusaders aren't even in a practical position to use the tools, so if you want to talk about fairness....that doesn't seem fair either. Some times it seems as though they are crusading just for the sake of crusading.

When they took camping away (I know, it's not totally removed)....they took away a valuable tool to give people money, that would keep them in game. I don't think that you've seen the total fall-out on that yet. The zyngo players that stop at my store buy stuff. Some of them win up to 400L a week - not a huge amount - but it's more than LL gives to a premium player each week. When they are in the store, they talk to me, and visit. They are not robots. Having the game there, is also a nice diversion for someone shopping. Many of them have never played before, and they enjoy testing it out. Many people use them with the free to play option. They are not always set up in large numbers in a casino type atmosphere.

I've suggested in the past that all someone has to do is find a state AG somewhere who already has a distaste for SL, and write up a nice letter detailing the shenanigans going on. LL would likely be at risk of losing their credit card processing provider if/when the investigation got underway. I still think that today. So, LL is playing with making my life (and, indeed, ALL of our lives) in SL even tougher by continuing on this path.

I worry about people like you, who have a distaste for SL, doing far more damage....than I worry about LL.

As long as this beast of a thread is still on the front page, a question: Isn't there quite a bit of uncertainty about the future of the UIGEA?

I'm not following US politics as closely as I did when I lived there so maybe something has changed again but last I knew, my old congressman, Barney Frank, was busy delaying enforcement until he could garner enough support to kill it off for good.

I suppose even if there were no UIGEA, and if online non-sports gambling were definitively ruled not in violation of the Wire Act, there's no certainty that LL would reverse itself on this, especially now that their vision for SL seems distant from Virtual Vegas.

There is currently legislation proposed in both the House and the Senate that would effectively repeal the UIGEA. ...

...If Linden Lab were to comply with any such new regulations it would have to require far more reliable identity verification for SL residents than it currently requires and, as a practical matter, it would probably have to require it for all SL residents, or create a fourth category of land rating for gambling that restricts access to residents that have undergone the more reliable system of identity verification.

LL is not the operator of the gambling devices, only the service provider.

LL is also the payment facilitator. If banks decide SL contains gambling that may get them in trouble, it is LL they will cut off, not all the individual penny-anny gambling "businesses".

Whoa! That's really dragging a quote out of one context and slamming it into another. ...I'm just saying that a requirement that internet gambling winnings be reported to the IRS wouldn't seem to apply directly to LL.

They have no way of knowing whether a particular payment from an in-world gambling operator is a payment of winnings, a refund, a gift, or something else.

Hello there, I'm on the Gteam.

*Please note, myself and other members of Gteam cannot offer approval for any in-world game. Do not send an IM. Please review the gambling blog post*

That'd be something the recipient of the money would have to deal with on their tax form. If I do contracting work, the people giving me money don't know if I'm earning a profit, and they don't have to. If they send me more than $600 (?) they have to give me a 1099, and then I have to tell the IRS, "but I spent $650 on materials, so I didn't earn a dime."

Also, "we don't know if this is gambling winnings or something else" may be another of those too-bad things the real world doesn't care about. LL not knowing won't make it okay not to report it. If they can't comply because they don't know, that might be another reason they'll have to ban gambling.