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The largest poker tournament in Florida history comes to Broward County this weekend, a tribute to the games popularity and to the near monopoly power of the Seminole Tribes casino empire.

As many as 210 players will pay $3,000 apiece to enter the three-day event, which begins Friday at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. The entry fee and potential first prize of more than $125,000 — exact figures depend on the final player count — dwarfs what is allowed by state law at Browards racetrack casinos and is made possible by the recent gaming compact between the tribe and Gov. Charlie Crist.

Seminoles big-money poker tourney angers racetracks — – South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

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ORANGE LAKE – More than 50 people – with no official public notice – were lined up for this week’s opening of the new card room at Ocala Poker & Jai Alai, newly renamed to add its new emphasis on poker.

Within an hour, 10 tables were full of eight to 10 players each. The players, almost all of them men of various ages, were considering their cards, watching other players’ faces, chatting about the game, bantering about past games, clicking poker chips together – on a weekday afternoon.

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When Grant Erwin started his poker club in 1962, there was no such thing as a personal computer, an online accounting tool or an Excel worksheet. The eight or nine men who met monthly around kitchen tables in Seattle and Bellevue to play low-stakes poker kept track of their winnings with tokens in old baby-food jars, labeled with their names.
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Police said they shut down a high-stakes gambling operation based in a North Texas home on Friday.

A SWAT team raided the house off Highway 10 on Friday night. Hurst police said they found two dozen people inside the home, which had tables, dealers and even a banker, and was set up to look like Las Vegas.
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Two people arrested at an illegal poker game in San Mateo last fall — one man for allegedly hosting the illicit card tournaments and a woman for reportedly bringing her teenage son to play — pleaded no contest to their respective misdemeanor charges rather than gamble on trial.
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After tentatively approving uncapped wagers at a proposed card room in Oldtown Salinas on Tuesday, the City Council now must address how much money should be in the cards for city coffers.

The City Council on Tuesday directed city staff to look into a $1,500 per table annual fee for the card room.
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MailTribune.com: Ashland poker club shut down

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ASHLAND — A state agency’s ruling that a poker club’s activities violated state law led to the shutdown of the gaming business.

The Oregon Department of Justice’s Charitable Gaming Unit said that some membership dues and fees charged by The Downtown Poker Club were outside the rules established for social gaming clubs. Following that ruling, the Ashland Elk’s Lodge, which owns the building on Will Dodge Way, declined to renew the poker club’s lease.
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DiMasi poses referendum on casinos – The Boston Globe

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Just two months after defeating Governor Deval Patrick’s casino proposal, House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi proposed yesterday to reopen the state’s heated debate on gambling by putting a nonbinding question on the November ballot.
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Senate President Therese Murray said she was open to DiMasi’s idea for a referendum, which would probably trigger a frenzy of spending by casino interests trying to sway public opinion.

But Patrick administration officials quickly signaled opposition. They said that Massachusetts residents have already spoken in favor of casino gambling in various public opinion polls and that the state should focus on life sciences and clean-energy legislation for the remainder of the 2008 legislative season.

Poker players say legal deck stacked against them – PNWLocalNews

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Some call it luck. Players call it skill. Neither on May 15 could change the fact that it’s illegal to play the game of poker for money online in the state of Washington.

Washington poker players lost a hand at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent when King County Superior Court Judge Mary Roberts ruled to uphold a 2006 law that made online gambling a Class C felony.

More than 50 members of the Poker Players Alliance, called the PPA, gathered alongside prominent poker pros Barry Greenstein and Andy Bloch outside of the Justice Center after the hearing Thursday. Wearing red “POKER IS NOT A CRIME” T-shirts and holding up signs with messages like “END POKER PROHIBITION,” they were there in support of Renton attorney Lee Rousso, the poker aficionado who started the legal battle against the constitutionality of the law.

SunHerald.com : States Move to Collect New Revenue From Sports Gambling for Critical Government Programs

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WASHINGTON, May 22 –
The Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative (SSIGI) announced its support for attempts to legalize sports betting in Delaware and New Jersey. Legislators’ in both states are seeking to collect revenue from sports gambling, which is currently being lost in an underground, uncontrolled marketplace. Bookies fail to pay about $7 billion a year in federal wagering excise taxes, according to an Internal Revenue Service estimate based on a National Gambling Impact Study Commission.

“While some form of gambling is allowable in almost every state, it is totally hypocritical that there would be a line drawn in the sand for sports gambling, an activity that continues and is estimated to illegally generate up to $380 billion per year in the U.S.,” said Jeffrey Sandman, spokesperson for the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative. “A prohibition on sports gambling means that billions of dollars in much-needed tax revenue that could be used for education and other government programs is being lost to bookies and off-shore Internet gambling operators.”