A Westmoreland County lawyer charged with illegally operating poker tournaments wants those charges dismissed, saying the card game is not gambling.

Larry Burns, 63, of Derry Township was charged last year with misdemeanor gambling counts for running tournaments for a profit.

Police contend Burns made about $31,000 in profits from three Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments in Seward, in addition to an undisclosed amount from weekly poker games in Hempfield.

Burns, through defense attorney David Millstein, wants a county judge to throw out the charges because there are no provisions in the law that make poker a gambling enterprise.

“There are, however, a number of reported decisions of various courts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that define the terms ‘gambling’ and ‘unlawful gambling’ in ways that do not proscribe such conduct and which specifically state that wagering on poker or playing poker for money or other prices is not ‘gambling’ or ‘unlawful gambling’ within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Millstein wrote in a brief filed Thursday.

Millstein said that because the state constitution is vague, it cannot be used as a means to prosecute Burns.

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A trans-Atlantic spat over online gambling may help
rewrite the rules of the game for Internet commerce across borders. For
a change, the Europeans stand on the side of free trade, while America
dabbles in regulatory overreach.

The European Union last month launched an internal
probe into whether the U.S. Justice Department selectively enforces its
antigambling laws against European online firms that offer wagers on
sports events. Brussels is making a narrow legal point that Washington
discriminates against Europeans by simultaneously permitting U.S.
Internet horse betting. That’s against World Trade Organization rules,
and the case may end up there.

The U.S. last year lost a similar WTO online gambling
case against Antigua and Barbuda. The island nation argued that U.S.
online gambling rules violated Washington’s GATT commitments to open
its market in “recreational, cultural and sporting services.” The U.S.
countered that its policies were justified to protect public morals and
public order, a legitimate exception under WTO rules. But the WTO panel
ruled that America wasn’t applying its restrictions equally to
foreigners and domestic operators. U.S. online horse-betting sites
aren’t banned.

Washington could have stood down then. Instead, it is
“threatening and pressing criminal prosecutions, forfeitures and other
enforcement actions against foreign online gaming operators,” according
to the London-based Remote Gambling Association, which took the
complaint to the EU. In doing so, Washington is also practicing a form
of universal jurisdiction by applying domestic law to foreigners beyond
its borders – a legal interpretation that the U.S. has, rightly,
condemned in other cases.

In 2006, the former chairman of U.K.-based gambling
firm Sportingbet, Peter Dicks, was detained in New York. The Briton was
wanted in Louisiana on online gambling charges. Then-New York Governor
George Pataki declined to sign a warrant extraditing him, and he was
released. Many European industry executives now no longer stop over in
the U.S., let alone visit the country, for fear of arrest. “There is a
list of wanted people but nobody knows who’s on it,” said Clive
Hawswood of the Remote Gambling Association.

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An assistant prosecutor for Calhoun, Dorchester and Orangeburg counties was among 27 people arrested in a raid on a Hanahan house where people were playing poker, police say.

Don Sorenson was charged with unlawful games and betting. He submitted his resignation to chief prosecutor David Pascoe. But Pascoe told The (Charleston) Post and Courier that he is suspending Sorenson without pay until he decides what the 13-year veteran’s future will be with the office.

A home telephone listing for Sorenson could not be found Sunday.

“This is a magistrate level offense,” Charleston County sheriff’s Maj. John Clark told The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg. “I do not have a court date and time yet.”

The arrests Friday night were the result of a 10-month investigation. Officers executed a search warrant and seized more than $40,000, Clark said.

Investigators said the Hanahan house was hosting a well-organized poker and gambling operation with paid pit bosses and dealers. Poker is illegal under a 200-year-old state law that prohibits dice and card games.

“This isn’t boys’ poker night out,” Clark said. “This isn’t just friends getting together and playing poker for a quarter or a dollar. This was an organized poker operation in which they had people in positions who were acting as employees. They were being paid to do their jobs.”

The raid was at the home of Martin and Dawn Reyes, who told The Post and Courier that her husband began hosting the games about eight months ago. Reyes said the players were friends and her husband wasn’t paid.

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There are now 48 co-sponsors for Barney Frank’s legislative attempt to regulate online gambling in the USA
 
The Congressional representative for the 8th District of New York, Jerrold Nadler, became the 48th co-sponsor of Congressman Barney Frank’s  HR 2046 Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act this week, seeking to regulate online gambling in the United States.
 
Nadler signed in a week where a Congressional hearing heard financial institutions, politicians, regulatory drafters and pressure groups roundly condemn anti-online gambling legislation currently in force as impractical and virtually impossible to enforce.
 
Now serving his 9th term in Congress, Representative Nadler speaks for the 8th District of New York, which includes part of Manhattan’s West Side, Lower Manhattan, and areas of Brooklyn.
 
Highly respected in the House of Representatives, he is a member of Frank’s House Judiciary Committee, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and is chairman of the influential Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee, which oversees issues relating to freedom of expression and religion, personal privacy and the correct observance by the authorities of due process. He also serves on the Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee.
 
The official website of Representative Nadler sums up his strong belief in the rights of Americans in asserting: “….there is nothing more fundamental to being an American than the assurance against unwarranted government interference in one’s personal affairs.”

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Is it government business if consenting adults, in the privacy of their own home, decide to play . . . poker?

Andy Bloch says no. “It’s like sex, without the sex,” said the professional card player, who came to D.C. with 2000 World Series of Poker Main Event champ Chris “Jesus” Ferguson to lobby against a 2006 law that restricts online poker games. The pros spent two days on Capitol Hill and dropped by Reason magazine Tuesday night to talk about the politics of poker.

Bloch is best known for winning more than $3 million playing Texas Hold ‘Em and other forms of poker, but was also a member of the MIT student blackjack team that inspired the new hit movie “21.” After earning a bachelor’s degree and master’s in electrical engineering, he spent six years beating Las Vegas by counting cards. “I’ve been kicked out of many casinos and arrested many times — but never beaten up,” he told us. He made enough money to pay his way through Harvard Law, passed the bar, but doesn’t practice law. Bloch modestly says he makes six figures a year playing cards: “To be honest, I don’t work very hard.”

The libertarian crowd was, as usual, for anyone who believes in the individual’s right to lose money to friends without SWAT teams breaking down the door. “One of the most egregious and absurd things in American culture right now has to do with online poker and home games,” said Reason TV editor Nick Gillespie.

So — who looks good in the presidential election? Bloch likes Barack Obama, who played in a regular low-stakes poker game while in the Illinois state legislature: “I think he’d be the best candidate for poker players.”

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A law banning the transfer of funds from U.S. banks and credit unions to Internet gambling Web sites was sharply criticized today at a hearing of the House Financial Services Domestic and International Monetary Policy Subcommittee. Opponents on Capitol Hill and in the industry have slammed the law for failing to sufficiently define terms like “unlawful Internet gambling” and “restricted transactions,” which could hamper financial institutions’ ability to adhere to rules being developed by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department. Companies impacted might respond by “overblocking transactions to protect themselves,” said Domestic and International Monetary Policy Subcommittee Chairman Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. The plan, which has inspired a European Union investigation and a possible World Trade Organization complaint, also does not ensure legal transactions will not be impeded, he said. The rules “could wreak havoc on electronic commerce” and impinge on consumers’ lawful activities.

Gutierrez also questioned the appropriateness of the underlying Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. If lawmakers are going to impose additional regulations on financial institutions, he said their time would be better spent tackling predatory lending practices. He also questioned the effect the rules might have on the already overburdened remittance systems that immigrants use to send billions of dollars home each year. Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank called the change “an intrusion into personal liberty” and said it would set “a precedent of a federalization of the Internet based on the moral views of members of Congress.” Frank, who has introduced a bill to exempt licensed operators from the gambling ban, said Congress wrongly “enlisted payment systems and the banks of America to be our anti-gambling cops.”

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who voted for the anti-gambling bill, said she was “seldom in a position where I change my vote but this may be one of those times.” Reps. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, also expressed doubts about the forthcoming rules. King said they run “a severe risk of going too far,” while Hensarling said regulatory certainty is needed. “We need black, we need white — not shades of grey,” he said. But Financial Services ranking member Spencer Bachus stood firmly in support of the ban, which he said will mitigate “a scourge on our society.” He cited a letter signed by 45 state attorneys general who also back the proposal and said FBI and Justice Department officials have testified that Web gambling is a vehicle for money laundering and encourages drug trafficking and tax evasion.

Witnesses from the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department said they have struggled with the legislation’s ambiguity. “The payment system wasn’t designed for this task,” said Louise Roseman of the Federal Reserve. It will be difficult to enforce the law “without a more bright line on what is included as unlawful Internet gambling,” she said. Representatives from the American Bankers Association, Credit Union National Association, Financial Services Roundtable and Wells Fargo & Co. also articulated a variety of fears about how their businesses could be negatively impacted when final rules are adopted.

Poker rooms could stay open later and dormant jai-alai frontons could become greyhound racetracks under two bills that won approval from a Senate committee Tuesday.

The poker bill paves the way for high-stakes and celebrity tournaments at parimutuels and would expand gaming to 18 hours a day on weekdays and 24 hours a day on weekends. Current law allows card rooms to operate for no more than 12 hours a day.

The bill, sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Steve Geller, would allow parimutuels to host and broadcast celebrity or charity poker tournaments like the ones that have become television mainstays in recent years.

They also could have high-stakes tournaments in which up to 1,000 players each pay up to $10,000 in entry fees.

ILLEGAL IN FLORIDA

“You have tournaments that are spread across the world, in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, but currently those tournaments are illegal in Florida,” said Geller, a Hallandale Beach Democrat. “We think this is a great way of generating free publicity for the state.”

The high-stakes tournaments would be allowed twice a year, and the charity or celebrity tournaments would be allowed six times a year under Geller’s bill.

The legislation requires parimutuel facilities to give at least 70 percent of proceeds from the celebrity events to qualified charities.

Geller attempted to pass similar legislation about expanding card room hours last year, but he said the measure failed in the House.

The Senate Regulated Industries Committee voted 8-2 in favor of the bill, which now faces two more committees.

A House companion measure has not yet been heard by any panels in that chamber.

A separate bill sponsored by state Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Greenacres Democrat, won 10-0 approval from the Regulated Industries Committee on Tuesday.

Aronberg’s bill would allow some jai-alai frontons to convert their parimutuel permits to greyhound racing, so long as the facilities have not hosted any jai-alai games within 10 years.

There are other criteria jai-alai facilities must meet in order to be considered for the dog-racing permit, including having no more than two parimutuels in the county.

As a result, the only facilities that would be eligible are Palm Beach Jai-Alai, Volusia Jai-Alai and Tampa Jai-Alai.

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The lobbying group iMEGA (Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association) is proceeding with full force in its fight against the federal law that has shackled the growth of Internet poker and other forms of online gambling in the United States.

The group filed notice Tuesday in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it will challenge the recent dismissal of its lawsuit opposing the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

The challenge follows a decision last month in U.S. District Court in New Jersey that was mostly favorable to the federal government. The ruling affirmed Congress’ right to pass the law — which severely restricts financial transactions linked to Internet gambling — in a constitutional manner and rejected the claim that gambling is a form of free speech.

The ruling, however, also established iMEGA’s “standing” — law lingo meaning the legal right to initiate a lawsuit.

Jay Lakin, co-owner and vice president of Poker Source Online, who is following the case closely, was encouraged by that part of the ruling and saw it as a small victory for those involved in the Internet poker scene.

“This is certainly a big step for iMEGA,” Lakin said. “Judge (Mary) Cooper’s ruling that the organization has standing means the case will go on. Hopefully her decision and the trial’s visibility will result in the Internet gambling issue gaining steam.”

Poker Source Online, a community of Internet poker players, was founded in 2004 in Virginia and is now based in Costa Rica. It has more than 100,000 registered members, including many from Las Vegas, according to Lakin.

Lakin also touched on a couple of other developments regarding Internet gambling, including a hearing Tuesday in Washington before the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., was expected to argue for his cause of legalizing online gambling at the hearing.

Frank, who has called the UIGEA “one of the stupidest things I ever saw,” favors the legalization of online gambling and regulation by the Treasury Department. He has proposed a bill, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act, that would topple the current law.

“This will be the second major congressional hearing about Internet gambling,” Lakin said. “Congressman Frank’s bill would call for licensed Internet gambling in the United States and would revolutionize the landscape as we know it.”

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Every Tuesday night Mike Holm – and about 35 other area residents – play poker at the Sports Zone in Harrisburg.

For two years now, the bar has hosted a poker league every Tuesday night at 7 and 9 p.m. Participants take their chances on Texas Hold ‘Em, the ever-growing version of poker now a presence on television and in plenty of bars and home poker tables in the U.S.

“It’s real competitive and everyone has a good time. It’s a great social event,” Sports Zone Owner Dave Jennings said.

360 Bar & Grill in Tea, formerly the Sports Page, also has Texas Hold ‘Em competitions each Thursday and Friday. Owner Melissa Naatjes said the more games that are available, the more people will play.

“People just really want to get out and practice their game,” Naatjes said.

Texas Hold ‘Em is only one of more than 500 poker games and variations, Holm said.

In Texas Hold ‘Em, each player is dealt two cards. The player uses those two cards – called hole cards – along with the five community cards on the table to build a hand.

“It just fun and challenging,” Holm said. “It’s fun to see if you can beat the other guys.”

Players don’t bet with money in Harrisburg, but they still keep up their game.

A poker player for more than 30 years, Holm said success takes intuition and the ability to read the other players. Because many of the same players turn up week after week, Holm picks up on the their tendencies. Holm said he “tries to keep an even keel.” “I try not to have a nervous twitch,” he said. “A good poker player will pick up on that.”

As for new players, Holm said you don’t know what their ticks may be. “You bet on your intuitions then,” he said.

Jeff Hanssen, a two-year regular at the Sports Zone, picks up on little weaknesses – and takes advantage. In addition to twitches or facial expressions, Hanssen watches how the players throw their chips in, he said. Since the league began, Jennings and Hanssen said it’s grown in popularity. “When I started there were maybe 14 people,” Hanssen said.

Attracting players from Harrisburg, Tea, Sioux Falls and Brandon, Jennings said the game has grown and he now sees about 35 players turn up at each session. “It grows every week,” he said. “It gets a little bit bigger each time because people have a good time.”

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