LEGAL US ONLINE POKER NEWS & UPDATES FOR 2017
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US Online Poker News And Resources

, Apr 23, 2018 09:33 PDT

This page provides a variety of resources regarding legal US online poker.

Get snapshots of the four open markets directly below, click here to jump to the latest US online poker news and developments, click here to learn more about the states that are considering regulating online poker, and click here for some of the legal background surrounding US online poker.

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Where can I play legal US online poker?

Online poker is currently regulated in three US states: Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware.

Pennsylvania became the fourth state to legalize online poker and casino games on Oct. 30, 2017 when Gov. Tom Wolf signed the state’s gaming expansion package into law. We expect the market to go live in PA in 2018.

New Jersey

The largest of the three regulated markets in the United States, NJ is home to several distinct online poker networks, including WSOP.com / 888.com,  Party / Borgata, and PokerStars NJ.

Learn more about NJ online poker here. A snapshot of the leading sites in NJ’s online poker market is provided in the table below.

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Nevada

The second-largest state offering regulated online poker sites in the US, Nevada’s regulated internet poker space is dominated by WSOP.com.

Nevada differs from NJ and DE in that Nevada only offers poker online – no casino games.

Delaware

Delaware is the smallest online poker market in the status quo, although a recently-signed liquidity agreement with Nevada should help to bolster numbers.

Delaware operates a single online poker site that all three authorized brands feed into.

Pennsylvania

Well, you can’t play there legally yet. But a gaming bill with online poker and casino has passed the legislature in Pennsylvania and was signed by Gov. Tom Wolf on Oct. 30, 2017.

With the governor’s signature, PA officially became the fourth state with legal online poker, in addition to slots and table games. The middle of the 2018 would be a likely timeframe for launch.

Legal US online poker news

Snapshot: Week of April 23, 2018

Latest stories

Online poker USA: States to watch

Four states have active legislation that could allow them to offer legal and regulated US online poker and casino games.

Where do those efforts stand right now?

Pennsylvania online gaming

Pennsylvania is on the precipice of launching its legal online poker and casino market, after the state’s gaming expansion bill became law in October 2017. The legal online gambling industry in Pennsylvania is expected to be up and running in the second half of 2018.

Here are some handy facts about legal online gambling in PA:

  • Online poker, slot machines and table games were all legalized.
  • Daily fantasy sports and sports betting were both authorized as well, though sports betting will only be offered in the event that the federal ban on sports betting is lifted.
  • The state’s 12 existing casinos would get first crack at online gambling licenses. Licenses are divided up by the three types of games: slots, poker and table games.
  • Tax rates come in at 54 percent for online slots and 16 percent for online poker and table games.
  • The gaming expansion also means that PA will allow VGTs in truck stop locations as well as new Category 4 mini-casinos.

When can you gamble online? That’s not known yet, but it should be sometime in 2018.

New York online poker

New York made significant headway in the fight to regulate online poker in 2016, with legislation making it past the introductory phase for the first time. Online poker failed to pass in 2016, and again went nowhere in 2017.

Influential Assemblyman J. Gary Pretlow vowed in later 2017 to take up the issue again in 2018, and on Jan. 24 2018, an online poker bill advanced out of committee in the NY Senate. Pretlow told OPR that he plans to “redouble his efforts” to see online poker across the finish line in 2018.

New York voters: Use this simple tool to urge your lawmakers to pass an online poker bill this year. It only takes a minute.

Michigan online gambling

Michigan represents the newest effort to regulate online gambling in the US. Despite making some headway in 2016 and 2017, the state legislation faces a steep uphill climb if it hopes to cross the finish line in 2018.

A bill —  SB 889 — was introduced by State Senator Mike Kowall back in April 2016. Shortly thereafter, the Michigan Regulatory Reform Committee held an informational hearing on the bill and online gambling in general.

Hopes rose, when in mid-May, Kowall was quoted stating that he was “fairly confident” online gambling legislation could pass a vote 2016. His optimism gained merit when SB 889 and a substitute bill sailed by a vote in the Senate Regulatory Reform Committee in early June.

Unfortunately, the ensuing months saw nothing but inaction. And it wasn’t until the legislature reconvened in November that online gambling once again became a hot topic among Michigan lawmakers.

Advocates were hoping for a late push to legalize online gambling, but with only a smattering of session days scheduled for December, and with ambiguity looming as to whether the bill(s) will be addressed at all, the prospects of legalizing in 2016 were bleak. Ultimately, the 2016 effort stalled.

Turning to 2017, Rep. Brandt Iden said he hoped to get his online gambling bill through the House prior to Thanksgiving. That didn’t happen, but the bill did carry over to the 2018 session. Whether or not the issue gains any traction this year is largely dependent on whether or not the state’s tribes will be on board; Detroit casinos are in favor of Michigan online gambling.

In December 2017, language was added to the bill to permit online sports wagering, should the federal prohibition on sports betting fall.

California online poker

Despite some promising developments, California did not legalize online poker in 2016. Nor did it legalize online poker in 2017.

Unfortunately, the same issues that plagued the 2016 and 2017 sessions are bound to reemerge in any 2018 push. They are the same issues that have been stymieing online poker in California for more than a decade.

The 2016 legislative effort  — AB 2863 — kicked off in similar fashion to the year prior, with the bill passing in the committee by unanimous vote.

However, 2016’s effort held more potential than the 2015 push in that the horse racing industry was largely in favor of the bill. This was thanks to a subsidy in the tens of millions of dollars it would receive as part of the legislation. In exchange, the horse tracks gave up the right to be an online poker operator.

At the same time, the “bad actor” debate — aka whether PokerStars would be allowed in the California market — reared its ugly head yet again.

A June amendment to AB 2863 further defined the tax rate and moved the bad actor bright-line to December 31, 2011, but that was hardly enough of a compromise for an influential coalition of tribes spearheaded by the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians and Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

Despite the ongoing debate, the bill passed Appropriations, leaving hope that it would head to the Assembly floor in August.

That never happened. In an attempt to get the bill to a vote, Assemblyman and AB 2863 author Adam Gray introduced 11th hour amendments that would place PokerStars in the “penalty box” for a period of five years.

While the amendment satisfied the Pechanga coalition, it was now the PokerStars coalition — consisting of Amaya/PokerStars, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, and three of the state’s largest card rooms — that strongly opposed AB 2863.

Ultimately, without both sides on board, the bill could not drum up the necessary support to justify a vote.

Likewise, in 2017, a bill was introduced but consensus between the many factions remained elusive. The bill died without much action.

The outlook for 2018 is similarly bleak, with New York and other states now deemed more likely to legalize online poker than California.

There are currently no federal laws that directly prohibit or authorize online poker.

However, several federal statutes have the potential to prohibit online gaming in some way shape or form, if state laws are ambiguous. That said, only two of the four federal statutes that could apply to online gambling, IGBA and UIGEA, could reasonably be applied to online poker.

The other two federal laws often cited in online gambling discussions, 1992’s Professional and Amateur Sports Act (PASPA) and the 1961 Wire Act, are sports betting specific.

For the Wire Act, this wasn’t always the case.

Up until 2011 The DOJ’s interpretation of the 1961 Wire Act (first officially entered in 2002) effectively made online poker illegal in the US. That changed when, at the urging of Illinois and New York, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel reexamined the Wire Act, and concluded its scope is limited to sports betting.

2018 – The status quo is likely to persist

With each passing year, it becomes far less likely than any type of online gambling ban is implemented at the federal level.

We now have four states that have legalized online gambling of some sort, with seemingly more on the way in 2018 and beyond. Congress is going to be increasingly unlikely to ban something that is becoming more and more established at the state level. And seeing action from the DOJ seems far-fetched as well.

The possibility of legal sports betting outside of Nevada will also likely have some states looking at online wagering; indeed mobile wagering is a part of many of the bills we’ve seen throughout 2018.

It’s foolhardy to think there will be no attempts at a ban at the federal level this year. But their odds of success get longer as time goes on.

2017 – A revitalization of anti-online poker efforts?

There was reason to believe that supporters of a federal online poker ban will launch revitalized efforts in 2017, if only because the new administration appears more willing to listen to their arguments.

Again, some members of Congress — Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — asked the DOJ to act.

Still, with the OLC opinion still intact, and several states exploring online gambling legislation, it was unlikely that we would see legislation pushed through Congress that either legalized or banned online poker. And that was the case again.

2016 – The anti-online gambling rumblings continue

In 2016, there was little movement toward either legalizing or prohibiting online poker on a national scale. This was to be somewhat expected, as 2016 was a presidential election year, which are historically slow on the legislative front.

On the pro-online poker side, no legislation to legalize the activity was introduced.

Opponents of online poker were more active, yet failed to match even the modest traction gained in 2015.

In March, supporters of the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) bill refocused away from RAWA and toward stopping illegal offshore online gambling. This was largely viewed by the industry as a way for backers of the unpopular bill to save face.

Then in May, RAWA senate sponsor Lindsey Graham attempted to backdoor RAWA language into a funding bill penned by the Senate Appropriations Committee. Little would come of the effort.

During the Lame Duck, anti-online gambling supporters attacked from multiple fronts, on both the state and federal levels:

  • Lobbying firm McAlvey Merchant Associations penned a letter citing the cannibalization risks of online gambling in Michigan.
  • Pennsylvania Sen. Robert Tomlinson encouraged the PA legislature to remove online gambling language from the host community casino tax fix.
  • A letter signed by 10 attorney generals directed at Vice President-Elect Mike Pence and the Trump transitional team called for Congress to institute an online gambling ban.
  • Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick introduced an anti-online gambling House resolution (H.R. 6453), attacking the 2011 Department of Justice OLC opinion.

But despite the aforementioned, and rumblings that RAWA would rear its ugly head during the eleventh hour of the 2016 session, the 114th Congress closed without the introduction of RAWA into a larger piece of legislation.

2015 – Online poker USA advocacy comes up short

Congressman Joe Barton introduced his semi-yearly online poker legalization bill in 2015, dubbed The Internet Poker Freedom Act of 2015 (HR 2888). Unfortunately, there is simply no momentum for this issue at the federal level and HR 2888 managed to entice just two other members of Congress as cosponsors in 2015.

On the opposite side of the coin, the continued efforts, led by Sheldon Adelson, to ban online gaming has also garnered little support in Congress.

In 2015, the Adelson-inspired Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) bill was introduced in the House and Senate for the second consecutive year by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) respectively.

RAWA managed to muster two hearings in the House in 2015, but both hearings seemed to have done more harm than good, as they hypocrisy of the bill was on full display, and the wind has completely been taken out of its sails. RAWA is one of the rare bills in Congress that has widespread bipartisan opposition.

A late effort to attach RAWA to the budget bill passed in December of 2015 never received serious consideration, and warranted a single sentence in a Politico column on the bill.

Chris Grove
- Chris is the publisher of OnlinePokerReport.com. Grove also serves as a consultant to various stakeholders in the regulated market for online gambling in the United States.