[Skallagrim]

Its a Saturday folks, so I am not going into the office to provide citations for the following, just working from memory. Current MA gambling laws are somewhat unique in their emphasis on places of gambling. Pretty clearly gambling among friends in a private residence is not covered. But pretty much every place where strangers might meet is covered. MA law does not say anything specific about poker. But MA lower courts have interpreted the word "illegal lottery" to include any game that is mostly chance. There is no MA supreme court opinion directly on point, but that normally means if poker is mostly skill its a legal game. If its mostly chance, your "quasi-legal" cardrooms are, in fact, illegal.

Skill v. Chance pretty much goes out the window under the new bill. Instead it concerns "banking or percentage games," similar to California law. Thus a game of poker is covered by the law if a percentage of the wagers is kept by the house (if its raked). A game of poker with no rake (say a membership fee, or possibly even a time fee) is no longer a percentage game, and would be legal (provided it did not violate any other statute - I have not researched this in depth in a long time).

So as to live poker, any raked poker game would only be legal under the new bill in one of the licensed casinos, but a creative poker room operator may be able to structure his room so that it is not covered and thus not illegal. Under current law it pretty much depends on the Skill v. Chance argument as to whether its legal or not.

On another point, dont feel bad Randy, over all I think you came across pretty good in the Globe article. That the article fails to correctly state the current law and does not distinguish poker from other forms of gambling is all too common. Does any journalist actually research what they write these days? Nah, its much easier to just google somone else's opinion and include it unchecked. I will write a letter to the Globe correcting their mistakes after the weekend (its my birthday and I deserve a little fun time), for whatever good that will do...

Anyway, overall, the mere fact that the state's major news publication has brought the issue forward and presented even a small picture of our position, is good for us. Keep fighting folks!

Skallagrim