The difference between the poker played at Shane and Laurie Anderson’s home in The Legends, a pricey housing development in one of Delaware’s fastest-growing areas, and what is going on in dozens of other homes in Delaware may only have been a matter of degree.

The Andersons and housemate Matthew Balotin face gambling and child-endangerment charges after Middletown police busted them at their home a week ago. They are out on bail.

When the Andersons’ game grew in popularity over the past year, and after they reportedly installed an ATM machine and had a topless waitress or two — one of whom may have been Laurie Anderson — it became something more than just a game.

Parking problems provoked complaints from neighbors — some of whom, police say, participated in earlier, low-key games — which triggered the investigation.

But take away the topless waitresses and pots that held thousands of dollars, and the charges help expose the ambiguity in Delaware’s gambling laws: Playing unlicensed poker for money is illegal. Probably.

State officials and others who are in a position to deal with gambling and the problems that arise from it are confused.

“The lines have gotten so blurred,” said Lisa Pertzoff, executive director of the Delaware Council on Gambling Problems. “I thought the Friday night penny poker game was legal, but a deputy [attorney general] assured me it was wrong. I thought it was illegal only if the house took a cut.”

And don’t bother asking the Attorney General’s Office, which prosecutes gambling cases.

“The Department of Justice does not analyze the statute for hypothetical cases,” the office responded to a News Journal request for clarification. “When charges are brought to our attention we make prosecution decisions by reviewing them individually on their merits.”

Frank Long, former chairman of the Delaware Gaming Control Board, who has dealt with gambling issues for nearly a decade, is certain of the rules.

“Anytime money is exchanged, it’s against the law,” he said. “It’s simply against the law to gamble without a license. If I decided to start up a poker game, that would be against the law, just like illegal numbers.”

But poker playing among friends has been going on for generations.

“There are 20 to 30 games that go on throughout the area,” said Sean, a professional gambler from Stanton, who says he now spends up to five nights a week in Atlantic City making a living playing poker. He declined to give his full name. “Are they going to bust everyone who has their college buddies over to smoke cigars and bet money?”

Probably not. That would take a lot of manpower.

Then again, the bigger players aren’t all that hard to find. There are dozens of games played each week in the state, and there are even more people actively looking to play.

There also are Web sites, including www.homepoker games.com, which allow users to advertise for players to come to their homes. Last June, Anderson advertised on the site to recruit players to his home.

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A poker series slated to start next weekend has been halted before it begins.

Local officials notified organizers for the series of Saturday afternoon card tournaments — planned as fundraisers for a North Pole charity — after learning they would violate state gambling laws.

The poker games were scheduled to be hosted by a South Fairbanks bar and dance hall. Fairbanks Police Chief Dan Hoffman said he raised a red flag after state attorneys determined the events would violate state gaming laws.

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While his casino bill’s overall prospects remain far from clear, Gov. Deval Patrick’s bid to criminalize online betting appears especially imperiled, with the administration treating that provision as incidental. Close observers of the upcoming gambling debate say the move to outlaw Internet gambling, with prison sentences of up to two years, could be a casualty. Administration officials concede that the ban is not central to the three-casino plan, which Patrick estimates could generate up to $450 million in annual state tax revenues.

Senate President Pro Tempore Stanley Rosenberg, designated by Senate President Therese Murray as her top adviser on gambling, called the ban “very, very difficult” to enforce.

Rosenberg said he recently spent three days in Quebec on a fact-finding trip, meeting with representatives from the government-sanctioned gambling industry there, visiting two casinos, and talking with social services officials. Asked if the trip had prompted him to lean for or against Patrick’s plan, Rosenberg smiled, “I am in an information-gathering stage of my work.”

With considerable opposition in the House from Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, the bill’s path to passage is challenging. The state Republican Party said Tuesday it had not received a response to Monday’s letter requesting the State Ethics Commission investigate DiMasi’s golfing trips with potential casino developers.

Current federal law prohibits online gambling, but targets the institutions that handle the money and not the bettors themselves. Patrick’s bill does not explicitly provide for enforcement mechanisms.

A Harvard Law School professor who studies Internet gambling said that, in talks with administration and industry officials, he’s been unable to determine how the clause found its way into the bill.

“I’ve been talking to just about everybody I can talk to, and it is really interesting to get to the bottom of how this provision actually got into the bill,” said Charles Nesson, William Weld professor of law at Harvard Law. “You start out thinking that it’s the casino interests, because they’re really the guys that wrote the bill, and then it turns out that the principal guys that were at the hearing didn’t even know it was there.”

Patrick’s press secretary, Kyle Sullivan, called  Nesson’s charge that lobbyists wrote the bill “outrageous and ill-informed.”

The criminalization effort also directly contradicts US Rep. Barney Frank’s effort to sanction online gambling. Frank, a Patrick political ally, has criticized the clause.

Industry experts say the Internet ban would sweeten the market for casino operators by eliminating one of the in-state gambling options that could drain the customer base of its potential. It was unclear how the provision’s removal would affect the proposal’s capability to bring revenue to state coffers. Patrick’s chief of staff, Doug Rubin, said, “It’s something that we thought was useful, but we’re willing to talk about all that stuff.”

The administration last week hired a New Jersey gambling industry consulting firm to inspect the bill’s estimates. The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce has a separate study due within weeks. Patrick’s point man on gambling, assistant secretary for policy and planning, is on unpaid leave, after being arrested for sexual battery in Florida. Patrick’s legislation, which lawmakers expect to come up before the Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies next month, creates an authority to regulate the gambling industry. But the bill holds no specific language for how to enforce the online wagering ban. Rosenberg said, “That’s a very difficult provision to implement, because how do you control Internet services that can come from anywhere in the world?”

In Quebec, Rosenberg said, he plumbed the government’s efforts toward “security, integrity, transparency, the vendors, the hiring of employees,” and controlling addiction and mental health. He spoke with social services officials who oppose gambling, and business people. He called the trip “fascinating.”

Rosenberg said he had visited casinos in Montreal and Gatineau, and the central gambling regulation offices. Legislative officials said concern over the online betting measure was premature until after the House-controlled committee began the formal deliberative process by holding a hearing. A DiMasi spokesman said Friday that the committee was working to set a date and that the speaker remained “skeptical.”

The state’s current, legalized system of gambling does not permit Internet transactions. Lottery spokesman Dan Rosenfeld said Lottery officials’ analysis found that current law would allow for online wagering if the agency could ensure that all players were in Massachusetts. The Lottery Commission has no plans to establish an Internet betting system, he said, adding, “We’re keeping our options open.”

But online poker advocates, including Nesson and the Poker Players Alliance, are actively resisting the effort to criminalize what they say is a pastime and personal freedom that should be preserved. “Right now because nobody wants to take credit for putting it in, there doesn’t seem to be anyone who would be significantly opposed to taking it out,” said Vin Narayanan, managing editor of Casino City, the industry publication.

After talking with casino developers Sheldon Adelson and Gary Loveman, Narayanan said, he’d concluded the provision’s origin was “a mystery to everyone.”

He said, “The thing is, it’s harder to undo things than to do things. Because it’s harder to undo things, it’s a fifty-fifty proposition. If this had been pre-mark-up, and word had gotten out that it had been in the bill, it would’ve been really easy to take it out.”

David Bischoff thinks he got a raw deal last year when state gambling regulators raided his bowling alley, shut down his weekly Texas Hold’em poker tournament and confiscated his cards and chips.

For months afterward, the threat of criminal charges hung over Bischoff – and his card tables sat vacant – until prosecutors concluded that Minnesota’s laws against poker were too vague to enforce.

Minnesota is now one of several states in which legislators are looking to rewrite their laws to strengthen their hand against card games at a time when poker is becoming an all-out craze.

“These are just people who have been watching poker on TV and they want to come out and play and be like the people on TV,” said Bischoff, whose tournaments are up and running again. “It’s not about spending money and winning money. It’s just about the competition and seeing who can be the best.”

The game at the center of the poker mania is Texas Hold’em, in which players are dealt two cards each and can use five community cards flipped over in the middle of the table to make the best hand.

As the popularity of the game has grown, so have problems for gambling regulators.

In Iowa, a couple of American Legion posts heeded warnings and halted their regular tournaments rather than jeopardize their charitable gaming licenses. A similar concern led a firehouse outside of Pittsburgh to call off its games.

Police in Wyoming started breaking up Texas Hold’em tournaments in bars, and the state’s attorney general advised that the events were probably illegal. In Texas – where the game thrived in smoky back rooms before becoming a hit on cable TV – prosecutors are questioning whether bars are improperly profiting from tournaments.

“The popularity of the poker shows has created a whole new beast for us as far as regulations,” said David Werning of Iowa’s Department of Inspections and Appeals.

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In 2006, Congress effectively put a stop to the booming online poker industry. But now, a group of motivated online poker players, and Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, are looking at exploiting a loophole in the federal law that could bring online poker back to California.

Levine’s bill, AB2026, would order a study on the federal law that banned Internet poker, and would explore whether a California-only online poker service might be legal. If it is, the state would be able to regulate the online games and presumably get a cut of the online action.

“Our understanding of the law is that so long as the player and server (hosting the online game) are in California, it would be legal,” said Levine. “But that’s what we are trying to find out.”

The bill is sponsored by a group called the Poker Players of America. According to its Web site, the group describes itself as “American as apple pie — free Americans joining together to fight for their right to play the All-American game of poker!”

“Founded and guided by experienced political professionals who also play poker, PPOA has been created to provide information, mobilization and coordination of legislative/political action programs necessary to make the voices of America’s millions of poker players heard.”

The federal government used its power to regulate interstate commerce to crack down on Internet poker in 2006. The feds decided to target credit card companies, restricting their ability to do business with online poker centers, many of which are not based on American soil.

Proponents of the crackdown said online gaming provided a convenient front for money-laundering while preying on children and gambling addicts. At the time the ban was adopted, it was estimated that 23 million poker players were among the Americans who bet $6 billion per year online, accounting for half the worldwide market, according to analysis by the Congressional Research Service.

The crackdown has had an impact on the growing poker boom, both on and off-line. In 2006, the main event at the World Series of Poker had more than 8,700 participants. A year later, after the Internet ban took effect, that number dropped to 6,358, reducing the grand prize of the tournament from $12 million to $8 million.

Sponsors of the event blamed Congress for the drop in attendance. Much of the world series boom had been fueled by online Internet players, who bought in to cheaper tournaments for a chance at winning a seat in the world series, which retails for $10,000. In 2007, the casino hosting the 2007 main event did not allow online poker Web sites to purchase main event seats to offer as prizes for online tournaments.

Levine said that if there is a California-only solution, online gamers might have to acquire a “GPS add-on” that will ensure that gamblers truly are located in California.

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In January, the Poker Players Alliance, the online poker industry’s main lobbying arm in Washington, D.C., sent an e-mail to its membership calling on individuals to step up and become a State Director. The newsletter, authored by PPA Chairman Alfonse D’Amato, summed up why the State Directors program was so important: “I can tell you from my own political experience that there is no more important mission for the PPA than to have a strong, vocal and coordinated grassroots effort. With 2008 being a major election year, it is even more pressing that the PPA become a player in the key battleground states and districts.” Flash forward to February, when the State Directors program is officially taking shape. PocketFives.com sat down with PPA Executive Director John Pappas to learn more about this critical campaign.

Pappas was blown away by the response the PPA received from members willing and able to step up and take on a more active role: “The deadline for State Director applications closed at the end of January. We thought we’d receive around 400 applications and ended up getting over 1,000. We’ve been trying to sort through those and hope to place everyone soon. We’ll start contacting people with follow ups shortly. We would have liked to have already notified people by now, but due to the volume, it hasn’t happened yet.”

Receiving three times the number of expected applications is quite a feat, even for an organization that weighs in at 930,000 members. Pappas comments on the overwhelming response: “There’s a real interest by our members to be more active. We hear from people a lot who say they want to be more active in the cause. The State Directors are going to get special access to the PPA’s resources and special incentives in our organization, so these are people who are interested in doing more than the average citizen.”

So what will these new recruits be doing? They’ll be the PPA’s “men in the field” on the state level, exposing new people to the organization and expanding membership. They’ll serve as media liaisons to local outlets and organize events. The responsibilities they are charged with are not small in scope, so the PPA sought out members with political backgrounds. Pappas explains, “We have a good mix of college students, a lot of attorneys, and really what we were looking for were people with grassroots campaign experience. Many have worked on political campaigns. One applicant led a community group who stopped a prison from being built in his neighborhood. Those were the type of people we were really interested in. The pool was a vast spectrum of people, just like the poker community is. There were men, women, young, and old who responded. We’ll have a good mix in every state.”

If you’re reading about the State Directors program for the first time, you may find yourself wanting to get involved as well. Although the Directors themselves have been assigned, special committees will be formed at the state level for those who are interested. To sum up Pappas’ thoughts, “We’re not going to run anyone away from being involved whether we give them the title of State Director or not. The other applicants from that state would be ideal for committees.”

Each State Director’s arsenal will include a PPA-registered e-mail address, access to a special home page for their state (which essentially becomes ground zero for state information), support and training by the PPA’s star-studded staff and board members, and the ability to e-mail all PPA members in their states with a click of a button.

Last August, the PPA launched an initiative called the August Advocate program, which was designed to mobilize the PPA army while Congressmen were in their home districts for the August recess. Pappas compares the State Directors program to the August Advocates: “The organization has grown since then. The August Advocate program was a one month campaign that was specific to the Congressional August recess. We were engaging our membership to go to meetings and events and write and call the district offices. Our members attended a large number of meetings and our Advocates found success raising the issues at certain events. We’ll likely do something similar this year.”

The success of both the membership numbers of the PPA and the State Directors program bodes well for the online poker legislation currently awaiting its turn in Congress.

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Poker Players Alliance is proud to be a sponsor in Alaska Poker Association’s “Bad Beat on Cancer” Event on Feb.24th.

“We are excited about Phil and Rafe coming to Alaska. This will be the first time
any professional poker players have hosted any events here. We have invited the
Mayor and other officials to join us at a “celebrity” table. I believe that
events like this really help promote poker in a good way.”
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Two Westmoreland County men are accused of organizing three illegal Texas Hold ‘Em poker tournaments last year at the social club for the Fort Allen Volunteer Fire Department in Hempfield.

Ronald Boggs, 60, of 123 Troy Circle, Hempfield, and James Earl Miller, 35, of 205 Oak St., New Stanton, are charged each with nine first-degree misdemeanor violations of the state’s gambling devices statute and three misdemeanor counts of conspiracy.

A state police investigation led to an Aug. 3 raid in which authorities said they seized $1,875 in cash and gambling paraphernalia, including playing cards and poker chips.

State Trooper Michael Noel said in an affidavit of probable cause that he attended tournaments that night and on May 25 and June 1 after reading an advertisement in the Tribune-Review stating the Friday night events were managed by and benefited the fire department.

Trustees for the Fort Allen Firemens Club were not immediately available for comment Tuesday about whether the fire company or social hall benefited from the tournaments.

Noel said participants paid a $50 entry fee for a set of playing chips and access to a buffet dinner and drinks.

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A bill passed by a state Senate subcommittee would allow churches and other non-profit groups to raise money through gambling. The bill says state laws against gambling would not apply to non-profit organizations that organize games with cards or dice when the activity is being done for fundraising and is of “limited duration”.

The bill passed in subcommittee Thursday and now goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston. McConnell is also the sponsor of the gambling bill.

The South Carolina Baptist Convention fought against video poker and the creation of the state lottery, so you can imagine how it feels about allowing gambling within churches. Joe Mack, director of the Convention’s Office of Public Policy Issues, says the bill “would be a huge expansion of gambling.”

He says it’s being portrayed as something a few non-profit groups might do occasionally. “But I think it’s a slippery slope,” he says. “Once you open the door, we don’t know where it will end up, just like we did not with video poker.”

At the subcommittee meeting, no one spoke in favor of the bill. Mason Hardy, president of the South Carolina Association of Non-Profit Organizations, did speak, but his group is not taking a stand yet for or against the bill.

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Dear Honorable Representative_______________;

I am a resident of Massachusetts a registered voter and a member of the Poker Players Alliance. I am contacting you because I am very concerned about the current bill (H.4307, s. 15(h)(2)(i)) that sits in the committee of which you are a member, The Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies.
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