Can poker ever be legal?

15May2009 Filed under: Poker Online Author: Bonus Casino

Professor Nelson Rose, who is considered the world’s leading expert on gambling law, recently wrote a book called Gambling and the law: Proving Poker is a Game of Skills. In his book, first of all he explains that the state of California is the draw poker capital of the world, because the state enacted laws taken in the 19th century. Those laws outlawed several games, like faro and 21, but left draw poker off the list.

Rose explained that in Florida when lawmakers authorized commercial cardrooms, they put a limit of $ 10 on the size of pots. This limit was really low of course and him as an expert he immediately recognized that a game with such a limit could not be poker.

Besides, he claimed that at the beginning it was impossible to get a poker bill through both state legislatures and be signed by the governor. The fact is that to legalize poker at all, there should be spend enormous amounts of time and money lobbing local lawmakers. An easier way would be to convince the highest court of a state to declare that playing poker for money is legal, because if the highest court of a state says it, than it is like that. Not even the US Supreme Court could do anything about it. The only thing that could happen would be if the state legislature put on restrictions.

Nelson Rose made up a plan, how to get to legal poker.
He said that there should be a group of lawyers and experts, than a state with the right laws and the proving that poker is a game of skills and therefore legal. For example the state of California could be a great example, because its Supreme Court declared that the card game of bridge is mostly skill. That means that the thing to prove would e just the fact that poker has as much skills as bridge. Next step would be to use the poker tournaments as a test case. And the public should prove that poker is a game of skill.

Professor Nelson Rose wrote other books concerning gambling and laws. He wrote Internet gaming law, Gaming law: cases and materials. If you want to know more about the author or his researches, visit the website: gamblingandlaw.com.