Poke The Man

Two 9-year-old boys from Long Island, N.Y., say they drained their piggy banks to buy pack after pack of “low-value” Pokémon game cards hoping to find more valuable “rare” cards which are randomly distributed in the packs. This scheme to induce kids to buy the cards is an “illegal gambling enterprise,” they say. “You pay to play,” says one of the kids’ attorneys, “there is the element of chance, and you’ve got a prize” — the “three elements of gambling,” he asserts. Nintendo, which makes the cards, calls the charges “baseless,” but the kids have filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against the company. (New York Post) ...Which is, of course, a form of gambling in itself.