Poker Politics

This is the second in a series of columns concerning laws regulating poker. In my last column, "The Time is Ripe," I pointed out that the huge changes in how poker is currently viewed by the public provide a friendly climate for obtaining needed changes in the law, and I discussed what some of those changes might be. This column will focus on how to achieve those changes.

Who should own and run a newly legalized cardroom? There are several possibilities:

1. A group of local business people. They can hire a management team, possibly just temporarily until some locals can be trained to run the place.

2. A company already in the casino business. Of course, such a company is going to want something more profitable to be added – like slot machines. Few poker players think slot machine noise adds to the ambiance of a poker room. It may be harder to get poker voted in at the local level if a casino group runs it, since we can be sure that one of the main arguments against legalizing poker is, "It opens the door to full-scale casino gambling."

3. A racetrack. As a person who worked for two years at Hollywood Park Casino, I can tell you that the marriage of poker and a racetrack is good for poker. It brings in new people to play poker – as it is a long wait between races – and provides a pleasant playing environment if done correctly. Racetracks across this nation are hurting financially, and are hoping to acquire the ability to have gambling. Of course, they would prefer slot machines, but perhaps they might think half a loaf is better than none.

4. The municipality itself. If someone else can hire a management team, why can't the city or township? Of course, it can. How acceptable is this? In 2002, Mayor Daley of Chicago tried to get approval for a casino run by the city, but ran into a firestorm of political opposition. However, that was a casino, not a cardroom. Chicago already has riverboat casinos in the area, which felt threatened by a city-owned casino. I think a city owning a cardroom is a lot more acceptable if the room would not be competing against a facility that's already in business. The advantage in having the city own a cardroom would be to bring in more local revenue than would be the case if someone else owned it and was just paying taxes.

There are basically two places for poker players to go in order to get needed poker laws. The first one is the legislature; the second one is the people. To get a change in the penal code, the legislature is the appropriate place to get the alteration. There are lots of archaic laws on the books in many states, and the main reason they still exist is that no one has made a fuss about them. So, you need a progressive-minded state senator or congressman to get the ball rolling. There also may be progressive-minded organizations within a state that want the laws updated.

To increase the number of places that qualify for being allowed to spread poker games, the best route is to go to the people. In other words, you need to put a proposition on the ballot, which requires a certain number of signatures. Usually, a group that's interested in getting signatures pays workers to gather the signatures. I cannot picture an army of poker players going out to shopping malls to gather signatures. They prefer to spend their time playing poker. However, I can picture them paying someone else to do it. I can also see them forming an alliance with another group that's interested in having poker in its facility, such as a racetrack operator.

When getting involved with political action, it helps to know who is likely to be opposed to your ideas. When I was a young man, I assumed that the main opposition to any form of gambling would come from people opposed to gambling on moral or religious grounds. Maybe I was right back then, 30 or 40 years ago, but such an idea would be out of place today. The religious right has a lot of other fish to fry that take priority over stopping poker. Furthermore, the general public would not be supportive of such an effort, so little or no resources would be devoted to prevention of legalized poker from this segment of society. For example, when Oklahomans voted in November, one of the things approved was poker on Indian reservations (as a rider on another bill). If you can get poker passed by the morally righteous people of Oklahoma, in what state do you think it would fail? Few people these days regard poker as immoral.

As it turns out, the main anti-gambling groups in today's society are organizations that are involved with gambling! Gamblers are viewed as a group of people with a set amount of money budgeted for gambling. Therefore, any widening of the gambling horizons is viewed by those groups who are already approved for legalized gambling as competition for the gambler's dollar that must continue to be shut out of the marketplace (unless, of course, the group expects to get a piece of the new pie). And guess who is a member of that monopolistic-minded group? The state itself! Nearly every state is making money from gambling these days. They worry that items like lottery revenue might decline and put an additional crimp into already tight state budgets. If the state thinks gambling money is going to be siphoned off by poker, they may well fight against it. That is why there is probably a better shot by going directly to the people, in my opinion.

My own state of Michigan is worthy of study. In the November election, "Proposition 1" passed by a wide margin. This is a law requiring any expansion of gambling to be approved by both a statewide vote allowing a specific of gambling and a vote of the people of a city or township approving it in a specific location. This anti-gambling statute was proposed and backed by an alliance of the three legal Detroit casinos and the Indian tribes (which were exempt from the statute's requirements). Opposition to the statute came mainly from the state, which was concerned that the state lottery would have a crimp put in its expansion to new areas and the revenue-gathering idea of allowing slot machines at racetracks would be torpedoed.

What is needed in Michigan is quite clear. There needs to be a proposition put in front of the people in a statewide election that poker is an acceptable gambling activity that can be instituted if approved in a locality. I would not be surprised to see racetracks trying to do this (perhaps as a rider on a bill allowing slots at racetracks).

This brings up another subject. What is poker? You may think you know exactly what poker is – and you do. But if poker is not defined by the law, you can be sure that some people who run games such as video poker and Caribbean stud poker are going to claim that those games have been legalized.

Here is my suggestion for a legal definition of poker: "Poker is a card game for two or more persons in which the players bet in turn among themselves on hands whose full content is unknown to the other participants; the bets are gathered together to be won by the best hand or an unmatched wager, and the hands are ranked according to a scale based on the frequency of their occurrence." Feedback on this definition is welcome.

Editor's note: Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Holdem Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons: E-mail [email protected]. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert's Rules of Poker, for free. Ciaffone is the cardroom director for the ChecknRaisePoker.com website.