Nevada State Assembly Passes Online Poker Bill

The Nevada State Assembly voted to pass a bill for the state to develop a licensing process for online poker rooms on Thursday in Carson City, NV. The bill passed unanimously and it will now head to the Nevada State Senate for the approval step in the process of making the bill law.

The bill stipulates that the Nevada Gaming Commission will develop regulations and a process for online poker businesses to obtain licenses for operation by January 2012. That deadline should fall before Federal laws to license and regulate online poker will change but it does ensure that Nevada operations will be ready when the ban is lifted.

One major requirement in the bill is that any online site will need to be partnered with a holder of an existing non-restricted gambling license that has been in business for at least five years and is in good standing with the Nevada Gaming Commission. This was the path that appeared to be developing between online poker sites such as PokerStars and Nevada land-based casinos like Wynn Resorts before the events of Black Friday, when major online poker rooms in the United States were indicted by the Department of Justice and their U.S. players blocked from the websites.

“It highlights that there’s a need,” said Assemblyman William Horne in a Forbes report. "Where there’s a void of regulation, there’s corruption, said Horne, whose committee sponsored the bill.

The sponsors of the bill expect it pass in the Senate and then it will go the desk of Nevada governor Brian Sandoval for final approval. There were significant changes to the original bill that was proposed in the state assembly earlier this year. The bill originally called for the legalization of online poker in Nevada, but that item was cut from bill four days before it went to a vote light of the events of Black Friday.

So even if the bill passes every step in the state’s approval process nothing can take effect until federal law changes. It is another example of different philosophies when it comes to the regulation of online gaming at the state and federal level.

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