By Marvin Vining
I have been asked to write an op/ed piece on the trustworthiness of internet poker in the United States.
I’m not going to address the prevalence of collusion or AI bots because those areas are outside my field of expertise. Assuming cheating can be detected, or a site doesn’t pay you, the question then becomes: What are your legal remedies? That’s my field of expertise.I’m a gaming law attorney. I live with my wife and family in Mississippi, but I represent clients in civil and criminal gaming law disputes nationwide.
My most famous client known to the poker world is probably Cheung Yin Sun, aka “Kelly, the Queen of Sorts.” Kelly, together with Phil Ivey, beat the casinos out of tens of millions of dollars by edge sorting at mini baccarat. I sued Foxwoods casino because they kept Kelly’s winnings, but we were unsuccessful because I couldn’t overcome their tribal sovereign immunity.
A similar fate likely awaits you if an offshore online poker site keeps your money. An unpublished slip opinion, Lewis v. Clarke, 581 U.S. ____ (2017), allows patrons to sue employees of a tribal casino in federal court for torts, including the tort of intentional fraud, but against an offshore casino you don’t even have that remedy. U.S. courts have no personal jurisdiction over offshore casinos. That means you have no way of getting a U.S. judgment against an offshore site and no practical way of enforcing that judgment if you did.
Another problem of offshore sites is that you constantly run the risk of the government seizing your money because those sites are most likely in violation of the Uniform Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). I recently advised a client to withdraw their funds from Ignition (online poker site) because I learned the Executive Director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission sent them a cease and desist letter directing them to stop doing business with Mississippi citizens. Better to withdraw your money while you still can before it gets caught in a Black Friday type seizure.
U.S. players do have legal recourse in the states that have licensed and regulated internet poker, but unfortunately there are very few of them. Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and West Virginia have licensed and regulated online poker, and they share their player pools under the Multi–State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA).
That leaves the unregulated market. Unregulated U.S. internet poker can vary in sophistication, from grassroots “speakeasy” private clubs that use play–money sites and settle up their wins and losses in real money, to private clubs that have their own platforms like ACR and Ignition. However, all unlicensed U.S. internet poker is essentially unregulated.
Let me break down what unregulated gaming really means.
If you’re living in a state where online poker is not licensed and regulated, it’s unlikely the police will come barging into your living room and arrest you for playing online poker in your underwear. The problem is you are an outlaw, meaning that you are operating outside the benefits and protection of the law.
Mississippi was one of the first states to establish “riverboat gambling” and many other riverboat gambling states have based their state gaming laws on our laws.
When the Mississippi Gaming Control Act was passed in 1990 it established the Mississippi Gaming Commission (MGC). Among its other functions, the MGC has an administrative law tribunal that decides gaming law disputes so they don’t clutter up the state court system.
All forms of contracts that involve wagers contingent upon an outcome involving some element of chance fall within MGC jurisdiction exclusively. The reason is that, prior to our legislature adopting the Mississippi Gaming Control Act, gambling contracts and gambling debts were completely void and unenforceable under longstanding Mississippi law.
Gambling contracts and gambling debts are legal and enforceable now, but only through the administrative dispute resolution process run by the MGC. Hence, the only way online poker can be done legally under Mississippi law is if the MGC licenses it and regulates it––and currently it doesn’t.
Read the rest of the article in the July/August issue of Rounder Magazine. Preorder your copy now! (ships June 30th).
To keep track of the progress with the MIPA go to www.gaminglaw.us.
Lead image: georgejmclittle. BetMGM ad featuring Jaimie Foxx courtesy og BetMGM
