Poker Players Alliance Hails Gaming Law Review and Economics Article Questioning New York’s Interpretation of Gambling Laws

Washington, DC (December 29, 2009) – The Poker Players Alliance (PPA), the leading poker grassroots advocacy group with more than one million members nationwide hailed a recently published article in the leading academic journal dedicated to gaming laws that raised questions about the state of New York’s interpretation of its gambling statutes with regards to how it treats games of “skill vs. chance”.

The article appeared in the Gaming Law Review and Economics and was authored by Professor Bennett Liebman, the Executive Director of the Government Law Center at Albany Law School. In his piece, Professor Liebman suggests that the current legal test which the state of New York poses in questions of gaming prosecutions is being interpreted incorrectly and that in fact the question of “what constitutes gambling” was answered over a century ago in New York legal precedent and affirms that a game of predominant skill over chance is not gambling.

“Recently the state of New York has been a hotbed of legal activity and questionable prosecutions regarding gaming law and specifically poker,” said John Pappas, the Executive Director of the Poker Players Alliance.

“This article once again corroborates what every poker enthusiast knows as well as what numerous legal decisions have pointed out—that poker is a game of skill, not a game of chance. In turn, the article will hopefully serve as guidance to prosecutors to stop bringing baseless cases which adversely impact the rights of law abiding poker players in the state of New York.”

A copy of the full article can be found here: http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/glre.2009.13603