Is My Poker Home Game Legal?
Friday night. The beers are on ice. The poker chips are arranged in neat little stacks around the kitchen table. Pretzels are involved. It’s poker night again, and it’s a scene that is repeated every night in millions of homes across America.
So, you spent the week memorizing the odds of hitting a flush so you can get an edge on Daryl from Sales who’s clueless about the game but just gets lucky. But did you ever stop to consider the odds of a SWAT team turning up on your doorstep? Is this quintessentially American pastime even legal where you live?
Let’s find out.
OK, so the odds of the cops turning up in riot gear to break up your home game are almost non-existent, whichever state you live in. But that’s not to say it has never happened, more of which later.
Not for Profit
The good news is that 29 of 50 states (see table) explicitly allow social home games, provided individuals do not organize them for profit.
Wait, aren’t all home games organized for profit? Isn’t that the point of poker?
Well, yes, but it’s the act of taking a rake or a “vig” on a tournament buy-in that’s the no-no. To be fully legit, you must ensure that no one profits other than players who win within the confines of the game.
Confusion Reigns
Because each state makes its own gambling laws, America is a confusing patchwork of state statutes that is often hard to navigate. For example, you can play Texas Hold’em in Texas in the privacy of your own home, but playing Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska is not strictly legal.
Hawaii, where all forms of gambling are illegal -- even lotteries and raffles -- does make an exception for home games. But in Illinois, where almost all forms of regulated gambling are legal, home games, technically, are not.
“A person commits gambling when he plays a game of chance or skill for money or other things of value,” according to Article 28 Section 1 of the Illinois’ Penal Code.
Diminishing Stakes
In some states, it’s the stakes that matter. In North Dakota, for example, by the letter of the law, the game becomes illegal once anyone bets more than $25 in an "individual hand, game, or event."
Meanwhile, in Iowa, the amount won or lost by any of the players cannot exceed $50 in any 24-hour period. Of course, legislators wrote many of these laws decades ago and did not account for inflation, so the stakes lower in actual value year by year. Maybe decades ago, the games in Iowa were pretty juicy!
Iowa is also very specific about what defines a “social” game, as is Wyoming. There must be a “bona fide social relationship between the parties apart from the gathering to gamble.”
Some states, such as Texas, put the emphasis on the private nature of the games. It is a defense from prosecution if “the actor engaged in gambling [is] in a private place,” whether that be your home or a private country club.
Arkansas Bans Nameless Variants
But what about states whose laws don’t explicitly make home games legal?
Very few states explicitly ban the act of participating in a poker game. Most simply don’t mention poker, or they fail to exempt non-commercial home games from their general gambling laws.
However, Arkansas mentions poker very specifically, and even bans variants that haven’t been invented yet. The Arkansas Code 5-66-112 prohibits anyone from “betting any money or any valuable thing on any game of brag, bluff, poker, seven-up, three-up, twenty-one, vingt-et-un, thirteen cards, the odd trick, forty-five, whist, or at any other game of cards known by any name now known to the law or with any other or new name or without any name.”
But the penalty for breaking this law is relatively inconsequential – a fine of between $10 and $20. In Vermont, it’s even less, a maximum of $5. Maybe you should just think of it as a rake. Just don’t take one yourself.
Once again, these laws are not adjusted for inflation, so they were harsher once upon a time. But the fact that lawmakers in Arkansas and Vermont haven't updated them suggests that punishing social poker players is not a priority.
Crimes and Misdemeanors
But what about the states that do not specifically prohibit or authorize poker home games? It's a gray area, but keep in mind that most states illegalize gambling unless the legislature or a public referendum has specifically legalized and the state has licensed it. This means private games should be assumed to be illegal even if the law is not strictly enforced.
In most states, participating in illegal gambling is a misdemeanor that could land you with a small fine or short jail sentence at most. The exception is Oklahoma, where organizing a home game is, technically at least, a FELONY, which means it carries a maximum sentence of ten years in the state penitentiary.
“Every person who opens… or who conducts… or carries on either poker… or who either as owner or employee, whether for hire or not, deals for those engaged in any such game, shall be guilty of a felony,” states Oklahoma Statutes 21 § 941.
However, felony gambling charges are rare in Oklahoma, and back in 2009, authorities told The Oklahoman newspaper they had little interest in enforcing the law on small poker games.
Skill Vs. Chance
Many states make exceptions in their gambling laws for games of skill. Great, well that’s that settled then. Poker’s a game of skill, right?
It’s not as watertight a defense as you might think. Not many states agree with you, and some have actually written it into their gambling laws that poker is not a skill game.
Poker is a game of skill and chance. The question is which predominates. The good news is that courts in several states, including New York, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Colorado, California, Missouri, and Nebraska, have applied the dominant test factor and determined that poker is predominantly a game of skill.
But that may not be enough to get you off the hook. In 2008 in South Carolina, in the case of five defendants arrested in a raid on a home poker game, the judge agreed with the testimony of two experts in finding that Texas Hold'em was a game of skill. But he also determined that the law prohibited “any house used as a place of gaming” and convicted them anyway. Talk about getting rivered!
Shades of Gray
If home games are not explicitly legal in your state, the question is, is the law enforced and with how much zeal.
Do states fail to explicitly exempt home games from their gambling laws because they tolerate them to the degree that they consider such a statute unnecessary? Or do state authorities adhere to the letter of the law?
When faced with this possible gray area, proceed with caution. Google is your friend. Scour local media for reports of police raids. If you find none, you can probably proceed under the assumption that while home games may be nominally illegal, they do not enforce the laws. But be discreet. And definitely don’t take a rake.
The bottom line is authorities usually have better things to do than bust a friendly game with a few hundred dollars on the table.
But that doesn't mean someone won't target private home games, or that they couldn't target yours.
Blood, SWAT, and Tears
In the mid-2000s, with the poker boom in full swing, there were complaints about authorities in several states sending SWAT teams to raid poker games.In most cases, someone took a rake – and even so, this was heavy-handed – but that wasn't always the case.
In 2008, police raided a game in San Mateo, Calif. in full riot gear. No one had taken a rake, but authorities claimed the $5 that players had contributed to buy refreshments qualified as illegal gambling.
In 2007, a Dallas SWAT team raided a Veterans of Foreign Wars Outpost hosting charity games because they were not conducting the game in a “private place” in accordance with Texas law.
In 2010, in Idaho, law enforcement raided a small-stakes game organized by senior citizens. The bust sparked a public outcry, and as a result, all such raids now require the approval of the public prosecutor’s office.
Robbery More Common
Today, there are very few recent examples of these kinds of raids on small non-commercial poker games, which suggests authorities across America have chilled out a bit over the past 15 years, at least when it comes to poker.
The truth is, home game robberies are far more common than police raids, which is another very good reason to be discreet about your home game and only invite people you know.
Ultimately, if someone is going to come bursting through your door, guns drawn, you’d prefer it to be the cops.
| STATE | HOME GAMES EXPLICITLY LEGAL? |
| ALABAMA | Yes |
| ALASKA | Yes |
| ARKANSAS | No |
| CALIFORNIA | Yes |
| COLORADO | Yes |
| CONNECTICUT | Yes |
| DELAWARE | No |
| FLORIDA | Yes |
| GEORGIA | No |
| HAWAII | Yes |
| IDAHO | No |
| ILLINOIS | No |
| IOWA | Yes |
| KANSAS | No |
| KENTUCKY | Yes |
| LOUISIANA | Yes |
| MAINE | Yes |
| MARYLAND | Yes |
| MASSACHUSETTS | Yes |
| MICHIGAN | Yes |
| MINNESOTA | Yes |
| MISSISSIPPI | No |
| MISSOURI | Yes |
| MISSOURI | Yes |
| MONTANA | Yes |
| NEBRASKA | No |
| NEVADA | Yes |
| NEW HAMPSHIRE | Yes |
| NEW JERSEY | Yes |
| NEW MEXICO | No |
| NEW YORK | Yes |
| NORTH CAROLINA | No |
| NORTH DAKOTA | Yes |
| OHIO | Yes |
| OKLAHOMA | No |
| OREGON | Yes |
| PENNSYLVANIA | No |
| RHODE ISLAND | No |
| SOUTH CAROLINA | No |
| SOUTH DAKOTA | No |
| TENNESSEE | No |
| TEXAS | Yes |
| UTAH | No |
| VERMONT | No |
| VIRGINIA | Yes |
| WASHINGTON | Yes |
| WASHINGTON DC | No |
| WEST VIRGINIA | No |
| WISCONSIN | No |
| WYOMING | Yes |
