Online poker is legal in the United States and there are plenty of options for players. However, it is still not a national network and some states are further away than others from allowing real-money gaming. We’ve taken a look at the status of online poker across the country to help you make an informed decision on where to play and how to best protect your money.
Online gambling began to take off in the early 2000s, and by the time Congress passed the SAFE Port Act in 2006 it was a mature industry with millions of dollars being pumped into the system every month. The law did not outlaw online gambling but it did restrict how operators could obtain funds. As a result, major sites like Full Tilt and the Cereus Network shut down and unable to pay out their players. This was a big blow to the industry but despite this a few major providers survived and continued to operate in the US.
Then, in 2011 a series of events known in the poker community as Black Friday occurred. This is a reference to April 15 of that year, when a series of prosecutors filed charges against the founders of Full Tilt Poker and the Cereus Network for violating federal laws relating to online gambling. While this essentially shut down the regulated market, it didn’t stop people from playing and a few sites found ways around the banking issues.
In the years since, several states have made significant moves to legalize and regulate online poker. Some have been more successful than others, but all are on the way to making it legal in their state.
Some states, including West Virginia and Michigan, have already launched a regulated online poker market while New Hampshire is preparing to do so. However, other states, such as Nebraska and Texas are significantly more gambling-averse and will likely be some of the last to allow regulated poker operations.
Many of these efforts to legalize online poker have piggybacked on sports betting legislation. This is because when a state legalizes online sports betting gaming operators push to add regulated online poker to their offerings. This may be helped by the fact that the federal Wire Act only prohibits sports betting, not online gambling.
There are several companies that are interested in launching an online poker site in West Virginia, the most notable being BetMGM, which operates in both Michigan and New Jersey under its WSOP brand. Additionally, FanDuel’s parent company Flutter is also exploring a potential opportunity in the Mountain State. However, the state’s small population could make a real money poker operation difficult without access to liquidity pools. A solution to this issue is likely through litigation over the federal Wire Act. This will be a critical factor for the state’s ability to launch a poker site.