Is Online Poker For Money Legal In The Us
Online poker has changed a lot since I started playing in the mid-2000s. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by this; after all, it has been close to 20 years.
- Is Online Poker For Money Legal In The Us 2020
- Is Online Poker For Money Legal In The Us
- Is Online Poker For Money Legal In The Us United States
- Is Online Poker For Money Legal In The Usa
I thought it would be fun to reflect on some of the changes in online poker, though, so here’s this post with some observations and thoughts about the state of online poker today.
Recreational Poker Online Is Still Alive
On April 15, 2011, the Department of Justice indighted Absolute Poker, Full Tilt Poker, and PokerStars. These were far and away the biggest three companies offering recreational poker online to United States players.
It didn’t take long for these sites to respond by pulling access to US players to their real money poker games. Online poker had been booming until that point, but it came crashing to a near-halt at that point.
After all, you didn’t have many places left to play.
- Online poker is fully legalized only in several US states – Delaware, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and New Jersey. Nevertheless, you still have a chance to play poker even if you’re not in one of these four states, as players are not forbidden to take part in online poker games, nor are they prosecuted for doing so.
- You may be surprised to learn that, despite a confusing legal landscape, it is generally accepted that playing online poker is currently legal in the U.S., at least at the federal level. For this reason we feel a better way of approaching the issue is to look at when online poker will be regulated on a state by state basis.
Absolute Poker, which also owned Ultimate Bet, went out of business soon afterward. PokerStars acquired what was left of Full Tilt Poker, but they still don’t offer real money games to United States players.
This doesn’t mean you can’t play recreational poker online if you’re from the United States. Many – if not most – online poker sites will let anyone play their “free money” or “play money” games regardless of where they live. Global Poker is one of the biggest outfits specializing in play money poker, and they have a unique sweepstakes-based poker model that enables them to offer games that are almost just like real money poker games.
But you can also find a handful of sites still offering real money poker for recreational players in almost any jurisdiction. These are usually attached to a sportsbook of some kind, like Bovada.
In some of these states, recreational poker online for real money is still new. I expect more states to follow suit, which will expand the availability of online poker for actual cash.
The Offshore Poker Sites Accepting United States Players
Presumably, the United States government was acting to protect gamblers from shady offshore gambling sites that were going to take their money. Their legal action had the opposite of the intended effect, though.
When you outlaw the operation of an online poker site, only outlaws offer online poker.
Of course, there’s honor among thieves, but it’s hard to beat the kind of reliability and trustworthiness you saw from operators like PokerStars.
Of course, the newly legalized and regulated poker sites in the states I mentioned in the last section are trustworthy and reliable.
Poker has a long tradition in the US, from boom to bust. There is a new era in real money USA poker games as individual states license and regulate the games. So far, there are four legal states for real money online poker: Nevada, Delaware, Pennsylvania (where PokerStars launched in 2020 and PartyPoker is expected to follow) and New Jersey. Legal Online Poker in the United States April 2013 marked the first-ever legal, real money online poker game within the United States. Since then, online poker games have achieved legal status in three states: New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware. To play online poker legally in the US, one must be physically located in one of those three states.
But as I write this, only five states have legalized and regulated online poker.
Poker players in the other 45 states only have a couple of options when it comes to online poker.
They can skip it entirely and just play in person. This is increasingly unrealistic as I write this in the middle of a pandemic.
Or they can roll the dice and play at one of the offshore sites that have so far managed to evade US law enforcement.
Some of these sites are reliable and pay out in a timely manner. They offer excellent customer service, too. Bovada is a good example of this.
But it behooves you to proceed cautiously.
When Black Friday rolled around before, many poker players had tens of thousands of dollars tied up in online poker accounts and had to wait months before getting their cash. I know one player who had over $100,000 in his PokerStars account.
I’m not the only one who’s noticed that you should be cautious with online poker from the United States these days. In fact, you’ll see a noticeable shortage of high stakes poker games happening online that are available to United States players.
It’s Not as Bad as It Might Seem
You might think that player pools are really small since the state gambling laws with legal poker restrict play to people playing from a computer in their state.
But this year they created an interstate agreement — a “compact” – which allows them to share player pools between the following states:
The other states that have legalized online poker are mostly still setting things up. I’m assuming they’ll enter into the compact with the other states. After all, that’s good for everyone participating. Larger player pools mean more action.
And that means more tax revenue for everyone involved.
Is Online Poker For Money Legal In The Us 2020
Also, and just because I’ve characterized many of these poker companies as “outlaws,” who do you think are running the poker sites in the states that have recently legalized online poker?
Many of them are sites that used to offer poker “illegally” from offshore. Yes, that includes Party Poker and PokerStars, among others.
The Poker Bot Scare
I’ve only recently started dipping my toe back into the online poker waters, and I’ve stuck with the play money games for a couple of months. One reason I have trepidations is the rise of online poker bots.
An online poker bot is just software that makes poker decisions on behalf of a player. They’re not actually robots like C-3PO. They’re just programs that run on someone’s computer next to the game they’re playing, and they tell the player what the mathematically best move is. Sometimes they actually make the moves, too.
You can imagine how helpful a HUD might be. How you handle a bet from someone who’s categorized loose-aggressive by your HUD and how you handle a bet from someone who’s categorized as tight-passive by your HUD might be entirely different.
The idea that someone is using a HUD to beat me scares me.
The idea that someone is using an artificial intelligence to actually play against me scares me even more.
What Do I Do if I Want to Play Online Poker for Real Money?
My suggestion for what to do if you want to play online poker for real money is simple and straightforward:
Stick with low stakes games and only play with money you can afford to lose.
That way you can have fun without trying to earn a living from gambling online.
I don’t have much respect for anyone trying to make their living by running a poker bot on their behalf, by the way. It’s cheating, and nothing angers me more than a cheat.
I even frown on using a HUD during play. I prefer my contests to be a fair test of my abilities versus the abilities of my opponents. If you’re using a computer to help you make decisions, well… I’m not really competing with you anymore, am I.
How much pride can you take in winning a contest against another person when you’re not actually calling the shots yourself?
You might have an entirely different opinion about all these issues, and that’s okay with me, too. I can only advise you based on my own life experience and opinions.
Live Poker Really Is More Fun
I’m a big fan of live poker. You’re less likely to face cheaters. You don’t have to worry about the online cardroom being unable to process your withdrawal because they faced legal action from the US government.
And I’ve played live poker in casinos and in home poker games alike.
If you decide to go the live poker route during the pandemic, I encourage you to take appropriate steps to protect your own safety. Most casinos have strict procedures in place, but home games might be trickier.
Find out beforehand if masks are allowed and/or required. I won’t be playing in any games without masks, personally.
Also, if I do play in a home poker game, I’m going to bring a big bottle of hand sanitizer with me.
If the host is willing to open the windows and limit the number of players – even better.
Conclusion
The world of online poker in the United States keeps limping along. It might never reach the dizzying heights that it saw during the early 2000s during the poker boom, though.
This doesn’t mean the game is dying out. At least five states have legalized internet poker, and I expect more to follow.
And even if you live in a state that hasn’t legalized online poker, you have options.
The simple answer is: yes, online poker is legal.
Online poker has a tumultuous history in the United States, but things are looking up. Four states, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware all legalized online poker and sites are up and running in each of those states. Others like Michigan and West Virginia legalized online poker and are working on launching sites soon.
Several other states are in the process of legalizing it too. This is a big 180 from where poker was a decade ago.
In 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act passed in the United States, making it illegal for U.S. banks to do business with online gaming sites. Some sites left, others stayed. Then in 2011 The Department of Justice seized the domains of major poker sites for charges that included bank fraud and money laundering.
After that, online poker pretty much vanished from the United States until a federal judge ruled in 2012 that poker was a game of skill, not luck. This paved the way for Nevada to open up the first state-regulated online poker site and several states followed.
The floodgates really opened up after the Supreme Court struck down a ban on sports betting, letting states regulate it as they see fit. Many states have taken the opportunity to address online poker along with sports betting.
Is Online Poker For Money Legal In The Us
Where can I play Online Poker in the United States?
That depends on where you are. There are several different poker sites out there, some serve the entire United States while others are specific to each state.
If you’re in Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware or Pennsylvania, you have access to a few extra state-specific sites. PokerStars is live in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and you can play WSOP Online in Nevada and Delaware. These sites have partnered up with local casinos to offer online poker and you have to be within state lines to play. New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware have share player pools though. That means players from all three states play against each other.
More states are legalizing online poker, so this list will grow. We’ll keep it up to date as more sites launch in different states.
But a few sites accept players from all 50 states.
BetOnline, Bovada.lv,Ignition andAmerica’s Cardroom all accept players from any U.S. state. We’ve reviewed each of these sites in detail. So head on over to our reviews page to find out more about each one.
Didn’t the U.S. Ban Online Poker in 2006?
No.
A lot of sites did pull out of the United States after it passed though. The 2006 UIGEA made it illegal for banks and financial institutions to process payments linked to online gambling. The law was a little ambiguous though and there was nothing explicitly banning poker.
Some big sites, like Party Poker, pulled out of the United States, but other giants like PokerStars and Full Tilt stayed in the country. To process payouts for U.S. players, these sites had to break the law. Then, in April 2011, the Department of Justice seized the sites’ domain names and indicted a few key people on charges of money laundering, bank fraud and more.
Absolute Poker imploded, Full Tilt almost went bankrupt. PokerStars, on the other hand, paid the fine, bailed out Full Tilt and is now back in the United States.
Is Online Poker For Money Legal In The Us United States
New State Laws Regarding Online Poker
After a federal judge ruled that poker was a game of skill, not chance, Nevada took the first step to legalize online poker. The state paved the way for others to do the same. Delaware followed and also legalized lottery and casino games. New Jersey did all of this on an even larger scale. The latest to join the group was Pennsylvania, which passed its law in 2017 and finally launched regulated online poker in late 2019.
Michigan has passed online poker legislation but won’t launch until late 2020 at the earliest. West Virginia also legalized online poker and sites won’t be too far behind.
All these states have sites that are linked with land-based casinos. Several other casinos are developing sites too. We’ll see more develop as online sites keeps gaining popularity. The big question now is whether sites will share their player pools.
New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada have all signed up to share their player pool. Pennsylvania is the most populous state to legalize online poker, but it has yet to join the pool. A joint pool would be critical to creating large tournaments, a wide selection of cash games and a healthy poker ecosystem.
Is Online Poker For Money Legal In The Usa
State-by-State Laws
We here at USPokerSites have been keeping tabs on several different states. Our list isn’t complete, but if you want to find out more information on where each state is regarding poker legalization, just search and click below.
Alabama – Arizona – Arkansas – California – Colorado – Connecticut – Georgia – Idaho – Iowa – Kansas – Maine – Maryland – Massachusetts – Michigan – Minnesota – Mississippi – Montana – Nebraska – New Hampshire – New Mexico – North Carolina – North Dakota – Ohio – Oklahoma – Pennsylvania – Rhode Island – South Carolina – Tennessee – Vermont – West Virginia – Wyoming
What About Online Sportsbooks?
Online sportsbooks have also been gaining popularity recently. Is that because of online poker? Well, not really.
In May 2018, New Jersey won a landmark Supreme Court that overturned a federal ban on sports betting. New Jersey quickly legalized online sports betting and other states quickly followed.
Many states are using the sports betting debate to reconsider other forms of online gaming, especially poker. So many states that are currently debating sports betting are also considering sports betting.
They don’t always go hand-in-hand, but they often do. Many sites that these days even offer both a sports book and an online poker room.
So, is it Legal to Deposit for Online Poker in the USA?
The answer is yes. The laws may be confusing, but we tried to break down the individual components of those laws. And as things change, we will update these pages with the most current information. You can check ourpoker reviews to learn about potential places to play.
If you’re ready to play poker, let’s get to it. We’ll see you at the tables!