A Pennsylvania bar owner had to close for running illegal poker tournaments:
Prosecutors had stated that unlike pool or darts, poker is a game of chance, not skill, and games of chance are illegal outside of casinos in Harrisburg.
Poker Players Alliance links to lots of other stories like this. They are a lobbying organization trying to keep poker legal. They argue, quite convincingly in my view, that poker is a game of skill and should be treated as such. In the Pennsylvania case I started with, darts and pool tournaments are run the same way as a poker tournament; a fee is paid, the bar takes a cut and hands out the rest in prize money. The bar was not allowing gambling in which players buy chips that represent cash and can run through the rent money.
My main interest in the Poker Players Alliance does not exist yet. They plan to have a database of poker related laws in every state. For now, you have to be satisfied with a few, quite extensive, pdf articles such as this law review level article titled Poker: Public Policy, Law, Mathematics and The Future of an American Tradition.
As Card Squad notes, one immediate task for PPA is lobbying against the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2005, which would make it illegal for banking companies to work with online gaming sites.
Not everyone is excited about Poker Alliance. Poker Rules notes that most of the funding comes from online casino sites.
And that's what a new Las Vegas-based group is trying to do: Bluff that it is a grass-roots effort of kitchen-table poker players, rather than the professional lobbying effort funded by billion-dollar Web poker Goliaths that it really is.
The Poker Players Alliance says it wants to sign up tens of thousands of recreational poker players, each of whom would pay $15 in dues.
The group would lobby federal, state and local officials to help fight a potential federal ban on Internet gambling and stop raids on community poker games by state and local law enforcement officials.
But much of the seed money behind the group comes from online casinos . . . .
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