POKER POLITICS

POKER POLITICS

by Bob Ciaffone

This is the second of a series of articles concerning laws regulating poker. In = my previous article, “The Time Is Ripe,” I pointed out that the hu= ge changes in how poker is currently viewed by the public provide a friendly c= limate for obtaining needed changes in the law, and discussed what some of those changes might be. This article will focus on how to achieve those changes.<= o:p>

Who should own an= d run a newly legalized cardroom? There are several possibilities:

(1)&= nbsp; 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)&= nbsp; A company already in the casino business. Of cou= rse, such a company is going to want something more profitable to be added—like slot machines. Few poker players feel slot machine noise a= dds 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 one of the main arguments against legalizing poker is “it opens = the door to full-scale casino gambling.”

(3)&= nbsp; A racetrack. As a person who worked for two year= s at Hollywood Park Casino, I can tell you that the marriage of poker and racetr= ack is good for the poker. It brings in new people to gamble with––= it is a long wait between races––and provides a pleasant playing environment of done correctly. The racetracks across this nation are hurting financially, and are hoping to acquire the ability to have gambling. Of cou= rse, they would prefer slot machines, but perhaps they might think half a loaf is better than none.

(4)&= nbsp; The municipality itself. If someone else can hir= e a management team, why can’t the city or township? Of course, it can. H= ow acceptable is this? In 2002, Mayor Daley of Chicago tried to get approval for a cas= ino 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, who felt threatened by a city-ow= ned casino. I think having a city own the cardroom is a lot more acceptable if = the room would not be competing against a facility 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 were just payin= g taxes.

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

To widen the number of places that qualify for being allowed to play poker, the best route is to go to the peo= ple. In other words, you need to put a proposition on the ballot, which requires= a certain number of signatures. Usually, some group 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 intere= sted in obtaining poker in their facility, such as racetrack operators.

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 wou= ld come from people opposed to gambling on moral or religious grounds. Maybe I= was right back then, 30 or 40 years ago. Such an idea would be out of place tod= ay. 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 reservati= ons (as a rider on another bill). If you can get poker passed by the morally ri= ghteous people of Oklahoma, in what state do you think it would fail? Few people these days regard poke= r as immoral.

As it turns out, the main anti-gamb= ling group 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 gambling = is viewed by those groups who are already approved for legalized gambling as competitors for the gambler’s dollar that must continue to be shut ou= t 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 monopolistically minded group; the state itself! Nearly every state is making money from gambling these days. = They worry 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 at going directly to the people, in my opinion.=

My own state of Michigan is worthy of study. In the No= vember election, “Proposition 1” passed by a wide margin. This was a l= aw requiring any expansion of gambling to be approved by both a statewide vote allowing that sort of gambling and a vote of the people of a city or townsh= ip 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 exempted from the statute’s requirements). Opposition to the sta= tute 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 i= dea of allowing slot machines at racetracks would be torpedoed.

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

This brings up another subject. Wha= t 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 defined as a card game for two or more persons where the players bet in turn among themselves on hands whose full content is unknown to the other participants, the bets are gathered togethe= r to be won by the best hand or an unmatched wager, and the hands are ranked acc= ording to a scale based on the frequency of their occurrence.” Feedback on t= his definition is welcome.