Sheldon Adelson is known for having the conviction of hardened iron. It’s gotten him in trouble in the past but it’s also made him billions upon billions of money. So when rumors began circulating that Adelson had changed his long-time stance on online poker, it caused quite a stir in the poker community, enough, even, to force a high-ranking Las Vegas Sands official to debunk the gossip as nothing more than bull-hokey.
The hysteria began when Brett Collson, Managing Editor at PokerNews, put out a tweet late last week that Adelson had “supposedly switched his position on internet poker and is now backing a federal bill with Sen. Harry Reid”. That wouldn’t have caused so much of a ripple in the water had it been any other name attached to the rumor. But this is Sheldon Adelson, the same man who once called poker as the “most addictive game that requires no skill”. Him switching sides and embracing poker while roasting marshmallows and singing kumbaya seemed about as far-fetched as me growing a full-sized beard.
It’s highly unlikely for a man who has been so against online poker for years on end to simply change his mind at a drop of a hat and our own Steven Stradbrooke even voiced his skepticism over this apparent about-face. Ultimately, Steven’s Spidey Sense proved to be dead-on after Andy Abboud, LVS Vice President of Government Relations & Community Development, responded in the Facebook comments of the article, “Adelson Changes Mind, Gives New Hope to Federal Online Poker in US”, that was posted by PokerUpdate.com over the weekend, calling the piece “not accurate”, before adding that “Sheldon Adelson has not changed his position” with regards to his hard-line stance against online poker.
The comments compelled the poker news affiliate site to post a subsequent update, stopping short of explicitly retracting its words and opting only to say that “a source familiar with the situation” said that the LVS boss “might be even more firm than he was previously about his opposition to online gaming.”
So if you were one of the lot who got a little too excited about Adelson’s supposed fence-jumping, you might have to tamper that excitement for the next bazillion years. Sheldon Adelson has always been against online poker and he’s as likely to change his stance as snowball’s holding up for five minutes in a boiler room.
