Full Tilt Poker owes me $120.

That’s not a very exciting story, is it? In fact, it sounds more like a text message or a random conversation starter than an actual story.  Quick aside: Maybe it’s just the Twitter generation getting to me, but I feel like putting our life’s activities into 140 characters is slowly killing us for two reasons:

• Nobody cares that you had a sandwich for lunch
• Life’s experiences should take up more space than that

But we’ll save a digression on the demerits of Twitter for another time (or as we like to say on the show, stay tuned!). This story is about why you should never gamble through an unregulated system, kids.

$120 isn’t the end of the world. Hell, I made that much in overtime last week at my pain-in-the-ass job. But it’s the principle, man, the principle. That $120 could’ve been the bulk of the payment on a 3DS or something.

Yet if $120 is a drop in the bucket by my own standards, imagine this: The FBI conservatively estimates that there is at least $500 million just sitting in players’accounts on Full Tilt alone (not to mention the other companies named in the suit, such as Poker Stars and Ultimate Bet). Hell, pro player Patrick Antonius won $1.4 million on a single hand of pot-limit Omaha, and fellow pro Blair Hinkle hasn’t seen a dime of his $1.2 million from a tournament win in February.

Suddenly I don’t feel so bad.

***WARNING, POKER LINGO AHEAD***

I like to think I’m a decent poker player. I know more than enough mental math to have that part of the game down, and my reads are usually pretty solid. If nothing else, I enjoy playing (and watching) the game even though I accept I don’t have the skills or commitment to amass a giant bankroll or win 96 WSOP bracelets. But now one of the major avenues for testing my abilities against halfway decent opponents has been shuttered.

Look, if you’ve ever played online poker before, you know about the disparity between levels of play. The competition is much tougher at $5-$10 than it is $1-$2, and moreso $.10-$.20. I’d usually play in $1 deep-stack tournaments just to get my fill of solid play while staying within the limits. Now the only option available to me is playing for fake chips — or worse, playing for fake chips on Facebook’s Xynga poker game, where 7-3 offsuit is like pocket aces and a standard preflop raise goes from 2.5-3 big blinds to all of your chips every hand. Joy.

***THANK YOU. THIS CONCLUDES YOUR POKER LINGO***

More importantly, the entire Black Friday scandal has locked down online poker in the United States. Despite the economy being in dire straits, the government apparently thinks it’s a better idea to shut down the industry than it is to regulate and tax it. I guess a slice of a trillion-dollar pie can only be so tasty.

We try to avoid politics around these parts because let’s be honest: Politics aren’t very funny. So I’ll bite my tongue a little bit here (and you can imagine how worthless that is in a written blog). Let’s just say that choosing to criminalize poker instead of regulating it is awfully stupid and short-sighted.

But if the government is going to take out online poker, the least they could do is give me my $120 back. I have needs.