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Some poker games legal, some not, authorities say Sunday, Nov 25, 2007 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A few months ago, Christy Martin started letting the Ultimate Poker League hold poker nights at her club, the Ice House of Bentonville. The club does not charge people to play, but Martin said poker has been a moneymaker for her business in other ways. When players are away from the poker table, "they'll play pool, they'll eat food," Martin said. "It brings people in." Poker, especially the Texas hold 'em version featured on ESPN's "World Series of Poker," has experienced an unprecedented surge in popularity, and entertainment businesses are cashing in. Midland Bowl in Fort Smith, Billy's Blues Club in Fayetteville and Zack's Place in Little Rock are among dozens of Arkansas businesses that lure customers in the door by hosting poker games. "Pretty much every club here (in Bentonville) has it," Martin said. The businesses say they are able to host the games legally, despite Arkansas' anti-gambling laws and constitutional ban on lotteries, because customers are not really gambling - they pay nothing to play and no betting is allowed. "We don't take any money at all. It's totally free," said Cindy Carter, a manager at Fox and Hound English Pub & Grille in North Little Rock. The National Poker Challenge has made similar claims about its poker club in Little Rock, but the club's future is uncertain following a Nov. 18 raid by Little Rock police. "The fact that we are most proud of is that it is non-gambling, not a lottery and that no customer ever has a chance to risk money," the Memphis-based company said in a statement posted on its Web site, explaining how it could operate in Arkansas. Local authorities see things differently. Four people who worked at the club now face felony charges of maintaining a gambling house. A company phone number listed on the National Poker Challenge's Web site was not in service Wednesday. Little Rock City Attorney Tom Carpenter and Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley said they advised the National Poker Challenge earlier this year that they believed its club would not comply with state law, but the club opened in west Little Rock anyway. The league said on its Web site that the city attorney and county prosecutor "are not experts on what gambling, or an illegal lottery, is or is not in regards to NPC, and we are." Carpenter said the club did not charge people directly to play, but it offered to track individual players' statistics for a fee. It also held tournaments in which players could win cash prizes, and players whose statistics were tracked were given priority seating in the tournaments. "It's that tournament, and winning the money in the tournament, that constitutes the game of chance and gambling," Carpenter said. Carpenter and Jegley said poker games are illegal in Arkansas if players fork over money for a chance to win money or anything of value, regardless of whether the players bet on their cards. Jegley noted that in a 2005 opinion, then-Attorney General Mike Beebe said indirect methods of payment, such as annual fees or inflated food or drink prices, may cause poker games to fall under the definition of gambling. As for free poker games, like the ones at Martin's club in Bentonville, Beebe apparently gave them a thumbs-up. "Absent the risking of money or other valuable property in the outcome of a contest, there is no gambling," Beebe, elected governor last year, wrote in the 2005 attorney general's opinion. Jegley said his office has not received any complaints about the free poker games held at clubs, bars and restaurants. He said he has no problem with those games "if they honest-to-goodness aren't wagering money or paying to play." But the prosecutor added, "Anybody that wants to play poker for money or charge money to play poker ... they just need to change the law." |
