My curiousity was more than piqued when a couple of folks adding comments to a recent "Casino Junkie" blog suggested that legalized online poker in California was going to begin in June. I hadn't heard that and wanted to get to the bottom of it.
Well, there is a bill pending in the Legislature called the California Gambling Control/Intrastate Legalization Act, AB 2026, introduced by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, a Van Nuys Democrat. Originally the bill was intended to study the issue of whether California wanted to comply with a fairly recent federal law which would allow states to legalize gambling on online poker for residents within a state. The bill was amended to actually allow poker, then re-amended, and as it now stands, it remains strictly a study. Here is the key provision:
The enactment of this act does not authorize the play of Internet poker. In enacting this act, it is merely the intent of the Legislature to have the appropriate state agencies develop a suggested structure, potential regulatory guidelines, and estimate on the amount of revenues to the State of California that may be generated by the play of Internet poker for possible consideration in the future.
Further, my reliable Capitol source, Steve Wiegand, who has been known to play a hand of poker every so often, says the bill is stuck in the Senate Appropriations Committee because "it would cost money to do, and there ain't no money. Bills with price tags aren't moving until there's a budget."
Online gambling, except for horse racing, is still illegal in the United States in the sense that the federal government has blocked banks and other sources from funding these offshore sites for gambling. There are still Web sites where you can use a credit card to fund your account but most of the major banks are blocking the funding. You can get around it but it is a major pain in the butt. Western Union, for example. I made an occasional sports wager at offshore sportsbooks but that all ended more than a year ago when Congress moved in to stop it. There are plenty of sportsbooks, such as Bodog, which heavily promote poker and sportsbook betting but I can no longer vouch for their reliability. And although the feds won't prosecute you for betting, at least for now, they sure as hell will try to enforce the law which says you can't send money to offshore Web sites for the purposes of gambling.
