Just thought I would post a quick guide to poker/gambling in the USA for those either from the states and wondering on the legal status.
Legality of Online Poker
On October 13, 2006 President Bush officially signed into law the Safe Port Act, a bill aimed at enhancing security at U.S. Ports. Attached to the Safe Port Act was a provision known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). According to the UIGEA, “unlawful internet gambling” means to place, receive, or otherwise knowingly transmit a bet or wager by means of the internet where such bet is unlawful under any law in the State in which the bet is initiated, received, or otherwise made. Thus, the UIGEA prohibits online gambling sites from performing transactions with American financial institutions. As a result of the bill, several large publicly traded poker gaming sites such as PartyPoker.com, PacificPoker.comand and bwin closed down their US facing operations. Some operations have not closed and it is still possible for some American players to play online for real money and even sign up for new accounts. The UIGEA has had a devastating effect on the stock value of these companies.
If you actually spend a little time looking through some of the arguments currently being put up against legalizing online poker a strong feature of those arguments can be summarized as ‘protecting the moral fiber of the citizens The government thinks its citizens will all go stir crazy as soon as online poker can be legally played throughout the country. We’d all immediately start spending rent and food money gambling in online poker competitions, neglecting our children, failing to turn up for work. There are people who have addictive personalities and may well play online poker games to their personal and financial detriment.
A nation must have adequate federal laws to ensure that online poker websites have very stringent controls to prevent under-age players accessing any online poker games and, that money laundering cannot take place. There are many other controls that could also reasonably be insisted on, for example: ensuring that online poker players a have to deposit money for their betting chips in advance of a game, that gambling credit can’t be raised during a game, that there are time limits for playing an online poker game etc. I know some people will think that even measures like those would be too restrictive and online poker players really should be left to make their own decisions. However, the fact is that some people do need protecting from themselves – but not all of us and certainly not all of us all of the time! So perhaps we could accept that our government quite rightly wants to ensure that they have adequate controls over online poker ‘for our own good’.
Which brings us to the real reason why the USA government doesn’t want to legalize playing online poker – MONEY! Casinos and gambling houses are easily regulated and have to pay taxes to the appropriate state and national authorities. With online poker, or even online gambling in general, the ‘government’ may well have very little chance or control over obtaining any tax revenues from it.
Why should the USA government in effect censor us from playing online poker in our own homes? Of course this censorship in the use of the internet is difficult for the authorities to maintain. After all there are far more distasteful things on the internet, than online poker, for the authorities to spend their time prosecuting. So the reality is that while playing online poker, or OWNING AN ONLINE POKER WEBSITE IN THE USA IS ILLEGAL- you can probably carry on playing online poker without risking being prosecuted. After all, In Nevada, they advertise online poker games on TV and billboards – so not much of a chance of being prosecuted.
Now one last TIP for playing online poker. Do research on the website you are playing to see if there are scams running on that site. i.e. Google or yahoo, Full Tilt Poker scams or Poker Stars Scams, etc. do some reading on the real life experiences of players that have been in the game for years. This tip may very well save you tons of money. After extensive research, the only way to win at online gambling is not to play real money. Play fake money and have fun and enjoy. Two official cases of inside cheating have been documented, (1) at Ultimate bet.com in 2008 and absolutepoker.com in 2007. If you have a complaint you may use the following link to be heard. Good Hunting. WWW.GAMBLING.CONTROL.ORG
Comment by Ryan
Very interesting read. Being from the US I had never even heard about the bill passed by President Bush or the laws as relates to online gambling. Thanks for sharing.
Comment by james covert
This bill was one of georges big pushes before leaving office, you’ll find now with the new administration that eventually, online gambling will be brought in under government regulation. Its worth too much to the government, which is only good news for all us players