Table Of Contents
The short answer is yes, online poker is legal in the United States on the individual level. It’s certainly not illegal federally, despite many misleading statements over the years from government officials and those in favor of online gambling prohibition. It can get a little tricky on the state level. In Nevada, only poker is available for legal consumption; New Jersey offers poker rooms and other types of casino games at its state-licensed online casinos. As for sports betting - a form of gambling that was illegal under federal law - it has received a chance to be legalized in May 2018, when the US Supreme Court lifted the ban and allowed each individual state to decide whether or not legislation will take place.
Maurice 'Mac' VerStandig is the managing partner of the VerStandig Law Firm, LLC, and focuses his practice on representing poker players, advantage gamblers, and other industry professionals in all manner of legal situations. He can be reached at 301-444-4600 or [email protected]
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints, and official policies of PokerNews.com.
Is Online Poker Still Illegal In The Us
There is not, in fact, one weird trick to having the government pay your mortgage; there is no one vegetable all gut doctors recommend be eaten daily; and there is most certainly not some prescient fail-safe stock insight from the lone man who predicted the Great Recession, the collapse of the USSR, and Appalachian State's upset of Michigan.
Nor, for that matter, is there one weird trick that makes the online poker games raided by the Department of Justice in 2011 magically legal today.
With COVID-19 came the closure of every licensed live poker room in the United States.
Some are now flirting with reopening, and while this is surely not an apt forum for the dispensation of medical advice, such setups strike many as unduly risky, while their shorthanded layouts strike others as strategically unpalatable.
Thus, online poker has experienced a marked and rapid renaissance, with nascent mobile poker apps enjoying surges in traffic, offshore websites becoming predictable topics du jour for Poker Twitter, and even the World Series of Poker – our community's mainstay summer camp destination forced into sabbatical – upping its online offerings.
Yet few of these options are actually legal, let alone reasonably protected from illicit mischief. And for many, those scarce lawful outposts are beyond the reach of respective state lines.
The Clearly Legal Options
Let's start, though, with safe havens: WSOP.com, Borgatapoker.com, and other licensed poker sites in Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware are safe, regulated, secure gaming outlets.
Do we all periodically bemoan their mishaps? Sure. Is the pro-to-rec player ratio often undesirable? Absolutely. But chasing a Circuit ring online is lawful and generally secure.
A few other operators in the United States do tow the legal line.
This column is not an endorsement of any site or group of sites, but suffice it to posit at least one big-name poker operator has a domestic operation riffing off various states' sweepstakes laws, and if that platform is available in your place of residence, you should be good to go.
It is normally easy to figure out which sites fall into this category – they tend to be the ones accepting credit cards, offering domestic mailing addresses, and inundating users with geofence checks.
The Gray Area
There is another lawful online poker option for some – but not all – American residents: unraked cyber 'home' games.
In certain states, playing an unraked poker game for money is kosher. And if both you and your respective adversaries are all positioned in these states, you should be in the clear so long as no one is charging to run the game.
The problem, of course, is 50 states have 50 different laws, and not all are black and white on this point.
If staying on the right side of the law is important to you (and it ought to be), contact a lawyer before assuming the sanctity of your cyber club game. (I'll skip the shameless self-plug; plenty of attorneys less familiar with gaming laws than myself can give guidance on this point. Just make sure you're working with an actual attorney and not an out-of-work barista who took a few classes on ancient Greek law while chasing a philosophy degree in college.)
The Problem Areas
One of the frustrating urban legends borne of Black Friday is that playing online poker is perfectly legal; it is merely site operators and banks handling monetary transfers that are running afoul of the law. This is, in many cases, completely untrue.
'Every state has its own laws. And they range from obliquely prohibitive to occasionally permissive.'
Yes, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (here) – the ill-conceived federal statute that beget Black Friday – does limit much of its application to financial intermediaries. But that is not the only gaming-centric law in America by a longshot.
Every state has its own laws. And they range from obliquely prohibitive to occasionally permissive. D
Online Poker Still Illegal In Usa
o you live in Virginia? Section 18.2-326 of the state's code makes it a class 3 misdemeanor to play in a raked poker game. Whether the game is online, in an underground casino, or in your pal's basement matters not – if there is a rake or an administration fee, and you post a wager while sitting in the Commonwealth, you're breaking the law.
How about Minnesota? Section 609.755 of the state's statutory scheme renders it illegal to 'make a bet.'
Do you call Utah home? Section 76-10-1102 of the local criminal code makes it a class B misdemeanor to 'participate in gambling… including any Internet or online gambling.'
To be sure, these are not the only states that make it illegal to play in an unlicensed card game – plenty of others fall in line. And while some do seem to exempt participants from anti-gaming laws, that does not mean gaming winnings are not subject to forfeiture, your telling a buddy about a game will not give rise to a charge of promoting gambling, or an overzealous prosecutor will not one day theorize that participants are part of a conspiracy to put on an illegal poker game.
Oh, and if you are breaking a state anti-gaming law, you are also in hot water with the feds: Section 1955(d) of Title 18 of the United States Code makes clear that all money used in games illegal under state law can be seized by your cranky Uncle Sam.
But it's a Game of Skill
Poker is a game of skill – no argument here. And, yes, numerous states do have statutory schemes that seem to differentiate games of skill from games of chance and, ergo, place skill-based ventures beyond the reach of some anti-gaming laws.
Oddly enough, this is why it is often OK to wager $3 against a giant teddy bear while a carnival barker insults your spouse's unibrow. But do not rely on this distinction; it has fallen out of favor with numerous courts in recent years, and too many judges cannot look past the randomness that permits donks to scoop pots when a three-outer comes swimming up the river.
Moreover, some states are express that it matters not if the game is one of skill, chance, or antebellum French literary prowess: if you are staking money, you are violating the law.
What's the Realistic Outcome?
There has not been a notable online poker raid in the United States since Black Friday. Does that mean prosecutors stopped caring? Maybe. Does that mean we're due? Maybe.
But here's the thing: you aren't going to know a bust is coming until it happens – neither the FBI nor its state counterparts tend to post their to-do lists on Facebook.
'Illegal games lack the sort of judicial security upon which we all have grown accustomed to relying.'
If there is a bust, does it seem likely large swaths of players will be serving prison sentences for playing $20 tournaments from their bedrooms? No.
But there is also no guarantee or assurance on this front – prosecutors can be a fickle group, circumstances vary wildly, and if it turns out a few people in that tournament were under surveillance for unrelated criminal conduct, you could end up in a lot hotter of water than you might think simply by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Moreover, illegal games lack the sort of judicial security upon which we all have grown accustomed to relying.
If a legal casino impounds your bankroll, you have legal recourse. If an online operator freezes your account and ghosts your customer service messages, you are largely on your own.
There was a time when poker was generally illegal and justice was meted out with ropes drawn from trees. As a community, we have come a long way from those Wild West days, and candidly, most of us are not nearly cut out to defend our honor in a duel.
The poker players of today tend to be better schooled in the ways of ketosis than marksmanship.
By playing online, you probably are not risking the integrity of your kneecaps. But you also are not being afforded the judicial safeguards that have pulled our community out of days of yore and into the modern era. And that, in many ways, is a bigger gamble than the draws we are all accustomed to chasing.
*Mac VerStandig is an unpaid contributor to PokerNews.com.
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Are you looking for the best US legal online poker sites or a real money poker app? If the answer is yes, then you came to the right place. This is one of our many online poker reviews where you can find more about the best online poker options.
Without further ado, keep reading to discover how to play the best online poker for money and how to form an online poker strategy. So, let’s get started!
Contents
Best Legal Online Poker Sites
- WSOP
- PartyPoker
- PokerStars
- Pala Poker
- 888poker
- Global Poker
Is online poker legal? It's not always the same as legal online casinos and legal online sportsbooks. All new players who decide to explore the vast universe of real money poker sites should know that federally, online poker sites are illegal. However, on the individual level, online poker is legal in some of the states.
Some websites such as Global Poker (which is a sweepstakes poker site) are allowed in 49 out of 50 US states. Only Washington does not allow it. At the moment of writing our online poker reviews, only four states offer legal online poker websites in the United States. These are the following: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware.
For more information about some of the available sites, make sure to consult our Global Poker review.
US Legal Online Poker: State by State
Is online poker legal in your state? If the answer is no, keep in mind that the situation can change pretty quickly. Unsurprisingly, Nevada was the leader of regulated online poker. Once the ice was broken, the domino-effect followed.
One by one, many states tried or are still trying to pass the legislation. As you can see, some of them even succeeded. The last one to recently pass online poker is West Virginia, and we expect more legal US poker sites to be launched in the future.
When it comes to future predictions, we believe that chances are pretty good for some of the states to overcome all the legal obstacles and finally launch real money poker sites so their residents become able to play legal online poker.
Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, New York are some of the states that’ll probably make some innovations when it comes to the possibilities of playing poker online. These are the states that have active supporters of online poker in the state senate.
What’s more, regulated real money poker sites in neighboring states can only have a positive effect on public opinion. Additionally, within the borders of the aforementioned states, you can find a considerable number of land-based casinos.
Many of them come with the best online poker rooms where you can play various variants of poker, including the most popular one - Texas Hold’em. In other words, these poker offline options make it easier to launch legal poker sites and eventually start to offer legal online poker.
States Where Legal Online Poker Seems Like a Distant Dream
From this point of view, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah are just some of the states where we can see a certain legislative hostility towards online gambling. Therefore, we don’t believe that we won’t be able to play Texas Hold’em online there for quite some time.
Sweepstakes Legal Online Poker - Play Poker Free No Matter Which State You’re In
As said before, Global Poker, a sweepstakes legal online poker site, can be accessed in all US states except for the state of Washington. This legal online poker platform was launched in 2106, and since then, many players use its services. The virtual currency gaming business model is what makes it unique.
Instead of playing for real money, players play poker free, using gold coins or sweeps cash. That’s why Global Poker often appears when players search for “play poker free” or “play poker online, free”.
To understand how sweepstakes poker works, let’s start with some poker basics and make sure to understand sweeps poker terminology clearly. There’s a difference between gold coins and sweeps cash, and there’s a reason for which “play poker online, free” is actually a bit of a misnomer here.
Gold Coins are the name for the virtual currency in Global Poker, and they are equivalent to what regular legal online poker sites usually call “play money”. In other words, you can’t cash them out, but you can use them to play Texas Hold’em online or participate in some of the available tournaments with other players. On the other hand, “$weeps cash” is a promotional, virtual currency that can be cashed out through PayPal.
To sum up, you can buy gold coins that don’t have any monetary value and can’t be cashed out. “$weeps cash” is obtained as free of charge once you buy Gold Coins. Because of this virtual currency online poker model, Global Poker is not quite considered an online gambling activity. Therefore, it’s allowed in almost all of the US.
Where Can I Play Legal Online Poker in the US?
Pennsylvania is the last state where online poker had become legal when PokerStars was launched there at the end of 2019. Right now that’s also the only available option to play online poker for money in Pennsylvania.
If we don’t count Global Poker, which can be accessed in 49 states, all the other legal online poker sites come with pretty restricted access. For example, Pala Poker and PartyPoker are only available in the state of New Jersey.
However, they are not the only NJ poker sites one can access. WSOP, America's top legal online poker site, is available in the Garden State, and it’s also accessible to all Nevada online poker fans as well. Likewise, PokerStars NJ, available both independently and within the FOX Bet app
Claim the WSOP promo code in New Jersey and Nevada to get a $1,000 signup bonus!Where Can I Play Poker Live?
Most of the land-based casinos across different states include special poker rooms where you can play live poker. Playing Texas Hold’em online is definitely the most popular option. After all, poker is an American thing, so it’s no wonder to see it available in the vast majority of mortar and bricks casinos.
In fact, instead of listing all the states where you can sit back, relax and try out your luck with live poker, it’s better to list all those where you can’t play poker online. It’ll be easier to remember this list:
- Alaska
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- New Hampshire
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
We must add that in Texas, private poker clubs aren’t forbidden. As long as no house makes a profit from the game, poker can be played in private places for fun.
US Online Poker Basics
When talking about the current status of legal US poker sites, there are two especially important laws that you should be aware of. Let’s take a look at these two federal laws that govern online poker in the country.
The Wire Act
The first one is the Interstate Wire Act of 1961, often called the Federal Wire Act. As you can see, it passed long before online poker or even the internet existed. However, it prohibits certain types of betting businesses to operate via wired communications.
In 2011, the US Department of Justice concluded that the scope of the act was limited to sporting events. Therefore, states, where online poker is now regulated, found that the bill didn’t apply to online poker nor other forms of gambling.
However, in 2019, the US Department of Justice reversed its opinion. The new opinion concludes that the Wire Act applies to all types of online gambling.
The UIGEA
The other relevant law is the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) from 2006. This law made it illegal for US banks to proceed with transactions for offshore gambling companies. That’s how they were pushed out of the market.
History of US Legal Online Poker
Online casinos started to appear back in 1994. They were usually situated in Antigua or the Isle of Man. However, the vast majority of their users were US-based customers. Two years later, in 1996, online gambling was also brought to the North American market soil.
The Kahnawake Gaming Commission was established just outside Montreal. They started issuing licenses, and pretty soon, it was possible to find hundreds of new online gambling websites.
Once again, two years later and again in Canada, the first-ever poker online website saw the light of day. Planet Poker was the favorite source of fun to thousands of Americans who were spending endless hours playing the first real-money online Texas Hold’em.
Over the next few years, thanks to technological advances, better online poker software was developed, while the number of websites kept increasing. These online poker operators also started to offer various tournaments and cash games and got a solid fan base all over the world.
The Industry Kept Growing & Then It Collapsed
Even though there were different interpretations of the law, especially of the famous Wire Act, the newly developed industry kept growing.
The year 2003 is especially important in the evolution of online poker. Using an account from Tennessee, Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker after participating in the event through an online satellite. In Chris Moneymaker's case, we guess, it's okay to say that name determines destiny.
This online poker strategy was live-streamed on ESPN. Suddenly, the whole nation knew about Chris's story. A good number of Americans were hoping to be the next. All of a sudden, poker was everywhere on TV. Live games were followed carefully, and commercial breaks had one purpose: promoting online poker for money and playing Texas Hold 'em online.
The great number of promoted sites were, in fact, offshore online poker sites. A lot of them disappeared from American browsers after Congress passed the above-mentioned UIGEA in 2006.
However, even though a lot of sites weren't accessible anymore, online poker couldn't be erased that easily. Some of the offshore gambling companies had found a way around the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, but not for long.
In 2011, some of the largest online poker operators, including PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet, were accused of violating UIGEA and money laundering. These websites were definitely excluded from the significant US online poker market, which seemed to come to an end at the time.
Legal Online Poker Sites Rise Again
Also in 2011, the DOJ released a legal opinion that the Federal Wire act exclusively applied only to one form of gambling: sports betting. A few states saw this as a possibility, paving the way to regulated online casinos and legal US poker sites.
In 2012, Delaware was the first state that managed to do just that. Then, in December 2013, Nevada followed the example of passing online poker legislation. A week later, the Garden State became the third to legalize online gambling, and plans for NJ poker sites were made.
The first-ever regulated US online poker site was launched in Nevada in April 2013. Delaware and NJ poker sites went live that same year, a few months later. In 2017, Pennsylvania became the fourth state to join this group. West Virginia is the fifth state where online poker was regulated in 2019. Probably, more states will try to do the same thing in the near future.
Which State is Next?
Is online poker legal in California or New York? This is one of the frequently asked questions that people search for in the USA. They also search for different terms of poker terminology that sound unfamiliar to them. However, that’s another question that we could discuss on some other occasion.
Let’s get back to our question of legal online poker sites and the possible new markets in the USA. Michigan has made significant efforts to legalize online gambling, particularly online poker, while California, New York, and Massachusetts also seem to be moving in the right direction.
Real Money Poker App: How to Find the Best Poker App
It doesn’t matter if you are a Pennsylvania online poker fan or a regular visitor of NJ poker sites, the good news is that you can play poker whenever you want, anywhere within the borders of one or the other state.
Many of the best online poker websites have launched a dedicated real money poker app that you can easily download and install on your device. The best poker apps are available for both iOS and Android operating systems.
In order to find the best poker app, make sure you visit one of the websites we listed at the beginning of our review.
Also, before you replace your poker offline adventure with the one that can be found on the internet, make sure to read some of the online poker reviews and get to know the poker terminology used by the players worldwide. After a brief introduction to the poker basics, it’s time to create your own online poker strategy and join one of the legal online poker communities!