Legality of hosting a homegame online

[techvoodoo]

Why not just go to any poker site, find a play money table that has similar blinds that you want to play (you may convert $25/$50 to .25/.50 for example), then have one player be designated as the banker. This may require having a room where you can password protect the table so only your players can sit down, I think pokerroom.com allows this.

The banker keeps a note pad of all the players who get stacked and have to rebuy into the cash game, and keep track of everyones final stacks who are up. Once the game is over, all players who lost send/give the banker the money they lost, and then the banker pays out to all the players who won.

If someone welches on paying for their losings, well you have to handle that, but if your friends are trustworthy it shouldn't be a big deal. For having to play the role of banker you can even say the banker gets to keep some % of the money paid to him.

I'm sure you could even handle collecting payments via paypal, which will cost a small fee but if everyone is looking at paying the small fee or waiting for the check in the mail it's probably worth it.