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Frank Catania, former Assistant Attorney General and Director of New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, online gaming consultant and independent director of the player protection group eCOGRA gave a straight-from-the-shoulder briefing to state legislators last Friday, emphasising that Internet gambling is here to stay.

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New Hampshire legislators have passed a new tax on Texas Hold ‘Em and other poker games being run by charities.

The legislation raises the maximum bet from $2 to $4.

A 3% tax would apply in tournaments where the playing chips had no monetary value. A 10% tax would apply if the chips had a monetary value.

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The California Gambling Control/ Intrastate Online Poker Legalization Act (AB 2026, authored by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys) passed another historic legislative milestone on May 29 as the bill advanced from the Assembly floor to the State Senate for action. Within the next week, the Senate Rules Committee will assign the bill to the appropriate Committee in the upper house for consideration.

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CONCORD – Charity poker tournaments could see bigger bets but would pay a new state tax under a tentative agreement that key legislators approved Thursday.

The tax would raise at least $2.2 million a year from this popular form of gambling, which is used to generate profits for charities at sites across the state.
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An archaic statute

In the fall of 2005, there was a police raid made on a group of people who were playing poker in an apartment-complex recreation room near Greenville, South Carolina. After several discussions with some of the busted players and their lawyer, I decided to do some legal research, based on the way the state law there governing poker is worded. Based on that research, I wrote a series of three columns in Card Player, stating that the law under which the players were charged was unconstitutional.

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In September of 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was passed. Poker players strongly opposed it because the law made it illegal for banks, credit card companies, and other payment processing companies to allow transactions to illegal online gambling sites. The law didn’t specify that online poker was illegal, but instead left it as a grey area and backed it up with threats that were sufficiently severe so that these financial institutions have done whatever is necessary to avoid possible violations.

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While it is unlikely that any action will be taken this year to enforce the UIGEA through regulation, congressional representatives continue to endorse HR 5767, a bill that orders the Federal Reserve and the Dept. of the Treasury to cease trying to implement any rules that would govern the online gambling ban law.
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Poker players in Denmark received encouraging news when the Danish Supreme Court recently agreed to hear arguments against a late 2007 law banning poker tournaments held in private clubs.
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PokerPages News: South Africa Approves Online Poker, Internet Gambling Regulation Bill

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(Reuters) – South Africa’s parliament approved a new Internet gambling law to regulate an industry plagued by crime and vulnerable to money laundering and terrorism financing, parliamentary papers showed on Monday.

A memorandum attached to the National Gambling Amendment Bill said the interactive gambling industry in Africa’s biggest economy was currently unregulated and “generally plagued” by crime.
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