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Internet poker bills are circulating on both federal and state levels, and tribes operating Indian casinos are divided as to their position on regulating this online gambling.

Indian tribes operating regional casinos are divided as to whether to support or oppose legislation brewing to regulate Internet poker. Bills both before Congress and in several state legislatures propose rules for online poker regulation, causing debate among tribal leaders.

Both Barney Frank's bill seeking to regulate online gambling on a national level and measures in states including California, Florida, Iowa, and New Jersey are designed to establish regulated intrastate online poker. Frank's bill would essentially render the UIGEA moot, while the local proposals would act under its guidance, keeping play and operation within state borders.

In California, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians has been a leader in advocating intrastate Internet poker. The tribe is pushing a bill that would partner tribal casinos with state-licensed card rooms as online gaming operators.

Morongo representatives say online poker players are a new market, separate from the customers patronizing the land-based casinos, and would increase the gambling revenue of tribes. But other tribes disagree, saying Internet poker would simply divert customers from one form of gaming to another, and that online poker regulations could open the door to loopholes allowing states to cancel gambling compacts.

“Card game gambling on the Internet would take business away from brick-and-mortar casinos,” Robert Smith, chairman of the Pala Band of Mission Indians said in a letter he wrote to the California legislature.

While many California tribes, possessing one of the nation's strongest gaming compacts, are wary of cannibalization of their slot players by online poker, tribes in other states are less worried. Tribes located in less populous states see online gambling operations as their key to successfully using the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

“The Internet gives remote operations an opportunity to generate incremental revenue they otherwise would not have gotten," said legal gaming expert Anthony Cabot to Indian Country Today. " It becomes a separate sort of industry as opposed to a complimentary sort of industry.”

Published on March 10, 2010 by TomWeston

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