DraftKings Looks to Sway Florida Voters as Lawsuits Emerge on Gaming Compact

Appellate Court Rules Rules Against DOJ, Clears Way for Online Poker

The tax and spending policy package signed into law on July 4 by President Donald Trump reduced the amount of gambling losses an individual filer can deduct against their winnings from 100% to 90%. The special edition poker tournament will be free to play, but in order to win part of the $250 prizepool, you’ll need to get one PokerListings is one of the world’s oldest trusted poker sites. Meanwhile, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham – hardly the most pro-gambling state in the Union – has introduced the Internet Gambling Control Act of 2026, which proposes an outright ban on all forms of Internet gaming in America. There have been many attempts, of course – notably from Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) – to push through natonwide poker legislation – but so far, none have prevailed. Also high on that list is California, which has a history of solid land-based cardrooms and powerful from tribal casinos.

Meanwhile, some states have long embraced poker such as Nevada, New Jersey, www.pokernewsdaily.com and Louisiana. Find out more about the poker scene in each of those six states.

States with licensing regimes of their own are adding new operators and new poker skins, and more states are considering proposals and bills. Nevertheless, this interstate relationship allows for more liquidity and a larger overall player pool across the two time zones. Some poker sites left the US market at that point, while others waited and fell to the Department of Justice site seizures of April 15, 2011, a date that came to be known as Black Friday. The United States government followed the poker boom closely enough to notice that the global poker sites were not paying taxes in America.

Florida would also appear to offer some promise, but recent opinion polling has indicated little public support for online gaming. The remaining states listed above are the best placed to further expand this somewhat healthy player base. Finally the “forget about it” category includes those states with an historical antipathy to any form of gaming or gambling.

Oklahoma prohibits poker platforms under its gaming compacts and criminal statutes. Analysts expect Ohio to revisit the issue once tax data from its new sports betting market becomes available. No momentum currently exists for legal digital poker rooms within the state.

Pennsylvania was the latest to join the agreement in April, and online poker revenue in legalized states has grown ever since. The state’s four upstate casinos could also receive licenses along with the three planned downstate casinos, in addition to more than a dozen tribal gaming operators. Addabbo thinks lawmakers may be more open to online poker and iGaming now that sweeps are out of the way. They, and other critics, argue the platforms offer casino-style gaming with a dual-currency system meant to circumvent state gambling laws. Opponents have argued that online gaming would cannibalize the state’s three current brick-and-mortar casinos in Bristol, Danville, and Portsmouth. For poker players, the bill allows the state to join the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement shared liquidity compact.

Here, we have thousands of people that this will impact who can’t play. Jason Smith, the Republican Chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, also committed to reversing the effects of the BBB gambling provision. So you might have a $3,000 cap on the amount of loss you can write off in a given year for your stocks, but you can carry that forward to the next year for your next year’s taxes; not the case with gambling.” “But his point actually doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, because there’s also an issue with gambling in our tax code.

Under Muradian’s bill, the state’s three casinos – Plainridge Park Casino in Plainville, MGM Springfield, and Encore Boston Harbor in Everett – could offer up to three online gaming skins. A bill to legalize online casinos in Massachusetts has been effectively set aside. Multi-accounting has become a bigger issue in the online poker world after several high-stakes pros have been alleged to have been playing on multiple accounts in recent years.

Nothing in state law provides precise guidance on playing poker online. There was an effort to legalize online poker by voter referendums, but nothing has moved on since 2018. While Kansas is home to a wide array of regulated gambling methods, online gambling does not seem likely to appear on that menu at any point soon. While brick-and-mortar casinos appear to support igaming, unfounded concerns of cannibalization keep the bills from progressing.

However, the recency with which legalizing sports betting became an option, and the speed with which it then swept the nation have made that impossible. J. Gary Pretlow, who has been Sen. Addabbo’s counterpart in the Assembly for New York iGaming efforts, has proposed online poker on its own as a compromise. In the states with iGaming, online poker makes up only about 2% of gross revenue. Unfortunately, there also isn’t enough money in it for anyone to be interested in a pure online poker bill in this decade. On its own, online poker probably isn’t as difficult a sell as the full iGaming package including online poker. New York’s iGaming effort, led by Sen. Joe Addabbo, represented the Holy Grail for online casino operators.

States with lawmakers educated about igaming understand that it only benefits land-based gambling partners by opening their customer base to new and younger demographics. Pennsylvania legalized online poker nearly two years before Michigan, but it has yet to join MSIGA to allow for online poker liquidity. PokerStars was the only site that received approval by the end of 2022 to link its sites, and it did link its Michigan and New Jersey poker player pools on January 1, 2023. The governors of Nevada and Delaware signed the first interstate online poker agreement in February 2014. This site is dedicated primarily to USA online poker, but some live poker issues can impact the online scene. Tribal gambling is legal in 30 states, with 515 casinos at the start of 2023 and $39B in revenue recorded in 2021.

Because of the public’s strong opposition to gambling expansion, poker reform is not currently on the legislative agenda and is unlikely to be in the future. Legal gambling in Florida is regulated by the Florida Gaming Control Commission. This compact has enabled larger tournaments and consistent player traffic.

The bill would bar any federally-recognized tribal nations in New York from offering competing online-gaming platforms without being licensed by the state, but they would be welcomed into the bidding process. S8185 calls for the state to issue three interactive gaming licenses, to be awarded through a competitive bidding process open to currently approved gambling licensees in the state. The bill declares a \”conservative estimate\” that approving online gaming would net New York a much needed billion dollars in tax revenue in it its first year. S8185 notes that neighboring states Pennsylvania and New Jersey generated roughly $3.5 billion in online-gaming in revenue, collecting about a billion dollars in combined revenue for the two states.

Everyone else was either teaching or taking summer school and I didn’t want to do that, but I also didn’t want to look like the laziest MA candidate, so I claimed I was furthering my ‘research’ into poker players in Vegas. While the other students in her graduate program spent the summer teaching or taking classes, Welman headed to Las Vegas under the extremely convenient premise that the trip would further her research into poker players. A VPN bypasses geo-restrictions, but it also offers enhanced security and protection of your online details when playing online poker.

DraftKings Looks to Sway Florida Voters as Lawsuits Emerge on Gaming Compact

Yes, 888 Poker is available to players in the state of New Jersey in the United States. However, please be mindful that if you use a VPN to hide your IP address in order to play poker at a particular site that is not licensed in your state, you will be playing poker illegally, and it is against site rules. The Connecticut poker market is too small to be profitable on its own, so the only way to make legalized poker worth the effort in Connecticut is via links with sites in other states. No operator has applied for an online poker room license yet in the Constitution State, as of May 2022.

While Washington has embraced many forms of gambling, online gaming is not one of them. Despite not offering online poker, Vermont spoke out against the US government’s interpretation of the Wire Act and was critical in getting that opinion clarified. As one of the most conservative states in the country, Utah does not offer online or live poker and don’t hold your breath for that to change any time soon. Texas does not have legal sports betting and has not addressed the subject since the 2018 US Supreme Court ruling. There is no online or live poker in Tennessee and it seems unlikely that either will be reaching the state any time soon. In 2020, South Dakota voters approved sports betting and the first legal sportsbooks reached the state in 2021.

If it wasn’t clear before, there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to US online poker at the moment. Both bills explicitly include online poker, making them some of the most straightforward proposals in recent years. Massachusetts is another state revisiting online poker in 2025, with two separate bills — HD 4084 in the House and SD 2240 in the Senate. If passed, Wyoming could become an interesting addition to the US online poker scene. Wyoming might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of US online poker, but a new bill—House Bill 162—aims to change that.

It’s not uncommon for poker enthusiasts from nearby states to drive to Nevada just to play poker online! However, state-regulated US poker sites aren’t yet available in these two states. If you play for real money, make sure that you do not play for more than you can afford losing, and that you only play at safe and regulated operators. If even one or two of these new bills pass in 2025, the landscape for US online poker could look very different a year from now.

U.S.-licensed operators already run these systems. Offshore sites are a gamble in themselves. Until they move, the market stays small, operators can’t scale, and America’s market stays miles behind Europe’s unified liquidity. Each has its own rules, strict licensing, geolocation controls, and responsible gaming protocols. Since the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), states have been left to decide their own course.

A majority favored legalizing online gaming to other options for raising revenue. If the issue is revived, it’s also not known if a bill would be expanded once again to include online gaming beyond poker. Some reports indicate that online casino gaming might be in the plans to help alleviate those funding issues. The future of online poker in the U.S. now looks the brightest it’s been in years.

The combination of the Attorney General’s actions and the bill’s passage in the Legislature led to a mass exodus from the state even before the governor officially signed the bill into law. The legislative intent section further states that regulators must deny or discontinue operations of any person or affiliate who “knowingly accepts revenue” derived from sweepstakes gaming, directly or indirectly. They may issue subpoenas, conduct investigations, and send cease-and-desist orders to ensure compliance with the law.

Realistic proposals have been put forward, so it may be a matter of just a few years before Ohio joins nearby Michigan in the igaming world. Big Sky Country is also home to some significant penalties for engaging in actions that the state considers illegal gambling. Other forms of igaming, however, don’t have much support at all.

States Looking to Change Regulations Regarding Gaming

So, if livestreams are paramount, they can demand you delay your updates and you have to say yes. You are also beholden to your client to deliver a product they want. However, since the media has largely moved in-house or to a model in which the outlet is a contractor of the casino or tour, you only get one version of the story.

• “I used to call Pennsylvania home, and it played an important part in my early poker career. I can’t wait to log in and get in the mix,” Elias said.
• NJ, Nevada & Delaware share a common player pool with a multi-state network operated by WSOP/888 Poker.
• Recently, online betting was covered by the Senate Bill 1046 (2024), but poker was left out.

On Tuesday, the Sports Betting Alliance (SBA), an advocacy group formed by the country’s major sportsbooks, sued the city over a new licensing and taxation structure that is supposed to take effect on Thursday,… Read more » It took off in 1984, when the General Assembly ordered the Attorney General to regulate the state’s cardrooms, and was further regulated in… Read more » Since 1854, when the California Grand Casino opened in Pacheco, poker has been established in the state. We respect our trusted industry peers and scan this site with the latest security standards. It looks like the shared liquidity program has benefited Delaware more than it has New Jersey.

However, there are still many issues, such as fraud, AML, and underage play risks, that literally force the regulators to act faster to catch up with the market pace. Online poker in the United States is entering a decisive chapter in 2025. Last month, Addabbo and Pretlow jointly offered a policy piece on the need for New York to pass iGaming legislation. The sites would be open to people physically present in New York who are at least 21 years of age. However, Addabbo chose not to add the bill to the meeting’s agenda, despite nine other New York gambling-related measures being included, each of which was at least briefly discussed. That likely means strong early support for the iGaming bill and a gambling-market segment that took a back seat to other forms of gambling expansion in recent years in New York, the US’s second most populous state behind California.

There is no state-regulated poker in Alabama, where state law forbids almost all forms of gambling. The question of whether online poker is legal in the USA very much depends on your location. Under federal law, no statute directly criminalizes individuals for playing poker through offshore sites.

“And while I have concerns about the impacts of gambling on public health, I believe that this new form of gambling should be regulated. A legislator in New Jersey also recently announced a bill to regulate sweepstakes casino gaming. Addabbo also recently announced that he planned on seeking a ban on social and sweepstakes casinos in the state. Online casinos in New York would be required to let gamblers know once their lifetime deposit amount reaches $2,500. During the year, online sports bettors wagered more than $22.3 billion overall.

Home to Atlantic City, New Jersey had its first casino open up in 1978. Casinos and casino-style betting are not allowed in New Hampshire. It’s also the only Nevada-based site to allow you to compete in online bracelet events for a chance at a coveted gold bracelet. Casino gambling has a bit of a foothold in Missouri, but in general, the state doesn’t appear to have a particularly favorable outlook on gambling. Mississippi has had a bit of a hot-and-cold relationship with gambling over the years.

Multiple States Push for Gambling Expansion and Online Poker Legislation

While the companies mentioned in the section above stayed in the U.S., they started doing illegal dealings with a Utah-based bank. The bill passed with port security as an essential issue, and President George W. Bush signed it into law. It was attached to a must-pass piece of legislation in 2006, the SAFE Port Act, by Republican Representatives Jim Leach and Robert Goodlatte, who previously authored a similar bill. 5 Several years before the DOJ decision, the US government passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, also known as UIGEA.

Yet the consistent push for legalization highlights growing public demand and a shifting political climate. AN ACT TO AMEND TITLES 4 AND 29 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO THE STATE LOTTERY (Legis Delaware) Always conduct your own research to ensure legality from your location before placing a wager.