Four Months of Work

the_Grinch

I am a regulator for online gambling in New Jersey and after four months (they brought me in late in the game) we're doing a soft opening at 6 pm today. Talk about a hair pulling process, I've never been part of a project that was important and difficult. Delaware went live two weeks ago, but it appears most of the country is looking at us to see what the future will hold. Working the night shift tonight so I will be there for all the action! Amounted to six casino openings in slightly less then a year.

cgrimaldo

Sweet man..Sounds exciting. Update the thread when you get a chance...

paul78

Hope your evening went well. Sounds like it's quite the challenge. Good luck.

santaowns

Bet we never get that here in California

the_Grinch

Surprisingly, the first night went extremely well. We joked that one of the casinos had more registered users and deposits in a few hours then healthcare.gov had in a day (on top of us pulling it all together in less time). News coverage was good, with the major complaint being that people in the state being blocked from gambling even though they were actually in New Jersey. It's a federal issue if people outside of the state are able to gamble, so further testing is being done to lock down the borders a bit better. We are starting again in a few minutes, so we'll see what tonight brings.

the_Grinch

Oh and California actually has a law in the works (if it hasn't been passed already). Believe me, many states will be jumping in on this.

ratbuddy

Can't wait till we get online gaming in CT. My only concern is that Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun are going to want a piece of the action. Hopefully something federal happens before too long, so state residents aren't held hostage by the one-sided gaming compact our idiot representatives signed with the tribes.

phoeneous

Perhaps I'm missing something, what's preventing people from gambling online from any state?

Ivanjam

This maybe? Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

N2IT

Grinch you are a cool cat. Gratz on the gig

the_Grinch

Gambling Act is the biggie, along with the Wire Act of 61 (I know that wiki says it's not suppose to apply, but it has been used previously). If Connecticut follows our lead then there are two things that can happen. First, as we require, online gambling can only happen by licensed land based casinos. Two, we specifically wrote in our law and regulations that we can enter compacts with other states to run online gambling. The basic idea is a state signs an agreement with us, gets a share of the tax revenue, and in return agrees to our regulations and our ability to enforce regulations along with settle any disputes. Thus if a state signed said agreement, citizens of that state would be cable to go online to one of the casinos in our state website and gamble there.

So far California modified their law to allow for an agreement with a state that already has regulations (Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey). PA is waiting to see what happens with us along with New York.

It is definitely the most interesting thing I've done in my career and honestly I don't think I will ever be involved in a project that is bigger or more interesting. Experience wise I've learned more about so many areas in four months then I have in four years of fulltime employment. Regulations, network/server configurations, project management, geolocation, Excel, programming, ever changing deadlines, and dealing with several vendors at one time. In my case I was assigned to casino games to start (so had to test those), then I was put on testing poker, and then put in charge of a platform (user registration, responsible gaming measures, and revenue reporting). Removed from casino gaming only to be put back again. The company I dealt with was in Sweden thus I was on their time frame much of the time. All that and it was basically Office Space because I had literally 12 bosses. My direct boss, his counterpart, the director of the lab, the director of the division, his second in command, various engineers with the division, the casino's project manager, the casino's IT director, the games platform project manager, poker project manager, the casino project manager. With the casino and their vendor fighting me tooth and nail on every regulation to where my answer was "ok, you fail and won't be allowed to go live on x date." Only works so many times haha