One of the best ways for charitable organizations to raise funds is to throw a “Casino Night” or, more recently, a charitable poker tournament. The funds raised by such activities are a boon for the charitable cause and they provide a return to the participants, usually in the form of prizes but sometimes in cash. In several states charitable poker is legal and recently two states have experienced issues with their systems.
In the state of New Hampshire, the betting limits for charitable poker games were removed by the state legislature, which has greatly affected the money being raised during these events. The previous law had set the stakes at $4 per hand but the new bill, known as HB 169, removed the bet limit but put a $150 cap on what a player could buy in for at the table. The bill was signed into law on June 30 by Governor Maggie Hassan and went into effect on July 1.
According to the New Hampshire Union Leader’s Garry Rayno, a rep from a Milford charitable gaming location has stated the new law has caused a tremendous increase in revenues. Rick Newman, who is the representative of the River Card Room in Milford, stated that the room took in $40,000 in July 2015, a twentyfold increase compared to the same time period in 2014. Rayno quotes Newman as saying that everyone is pretty pleased with the situation, saying “The charities got 35 percent, the state 10 percent and a lot more dealers have jobs.”
All is not good in the legislature, however, who have heard of some of the charitable rooms bending the rules a bit. In one case, a particular room allegedly allowed up to five buy-ins for a stake of $750. Newman’s facility in Milford allows for a player to have $300 in front of them and to only buy-in twice. The action has gotten so good that some players who used to frequent the Indian casinos in Connecticut, Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino, are now staying in New Hampshire to play instead of trekking to the tribal casinos.
Several members of the Racing and Charitable Gaming Commission made the comment to Rayno that the bending of the rules “takes the games out of charitable gaming into real gaming.” The chairman of the Commission, Ted Connors, denies that it is out of control but has stated that the Commission will be looking to make some changes to the new laws when they meet on September 9. Until that time, Connors says, “It’s quite a bonanza for the charities.”
The second instance of issues with charitable poker comes from Michigan, which has had a very convoluted history with charitable poker.
According to the Michigan Gaming Control Board, counterfeit currency was passed at a charitable poker room in the Detroit area. Nine fake $20 bills were used to buy chips during one of the “millionaire parties” that was staged last month. The event was to benefit a Michigan children’s summer camp and it was the workers at the poker room and volunteers from the charity itself (all charities have representation on site during one of their events) that discovered the counterfeit bills while paying out players.
The case is still under investigation, but an official with the MGCB offered some suggestions for identifying whether a bill is fake or not. “Look at the printing quality and the paper characteristics,” Mary Kay Bean of the MGCB told CBS Detroit. “Check for watermarks, look for fake corners and some other things that could be triggers that the bill is not a real U. S. bank note.”
Michigan’s charitable poker industry has been involved in a lengthy fight with Rick Kalm, the chairman of the MGCB who has attempted to hem in the industry over the past three years. While he has been successful in some of his efforts, Kalm has been thwarted by a strong grassroots effort from charities, the charitable card rooms and the Michigan legislature from fully putting his oversight into full bloom. The Detroit instance isn’t expected to have a significant effect in swaying any side in the ongoing fight, however.
Michigan charity poker needed to be under more control at the time we brought in the current governor. However the MGC got the ‘power’ away from the state lottery division and (whether under the direction of said governor or on their own) pulled a little too hard to the point where it almost disappeared.
The ‘industry’ has settled down (with over 60% of the rooms closing) but the current rooms are still handcuffed by some guidelines that were put in effect many years ago. The most glaring of these being the daily limit of $15K in chips sold per license along with some funking ways of handling dealer tips and other ‘paperwork’ issues.
Not knowing all the internal agendas makes it difficult to know how these rooms move forward beyond each 6 month period. But one thing we do know is that if it’s something we would like to see we need to make sure it becomes their idea, not ‘ours’. GL