Markus Kypreos, research attorney for the Texas District & County Attorneys Association, has a follow-up to his December article on public free-entry poker tournament legality in Texas in this month's issue of The Prosecutor, reinforcing his belief that free-entry poker is indeed illegal.

It�s a blatant attempt to circumvent Penal Code 47.02(a)(3) by playing musical chairs. The code specifically prohibits games where a participant "plays or bets for money or other thing of value." If the grand prize is a trip to Las Vegas and the person with the most chips at the end of the night wins that trip, then those chips' value is the amount a trip to Las Vegas costs.

Approach the issue from another angle: Why did the winner receive a trip to Las Vegas? Because he won the poker tournament by accumulating the most chips. And how did he accumulate the most chips? By betting. Betting and receiving prizes are interrelated -- they cannot be separated to evade Texas gambling laws.

If you�re still unsure, Attorney General Greg Abbott is supposed to weigh in on the subject by June. I suppose he is more of an authority on Texas laws than I am. This is also a good time to thank Ector County District Attorney John Smith for requesting an opinion on the issue and for his quote in the Austin American-Statesman newspaper on public poker: "Up here, we call that gambling."

Link

In his Q & A section, Kypreos says:

Q: By your logic, the Monopoly game at McDonald�s and radio station giveaways are also illegal. Why are those allowed to operate in Texas?

A: Because they aren�t illegal. The key word in 47.02 is "bet." No bet occurs in the Monopoly game. You can write to McDonald�s to receive as many free game pieces as you want. The same holds true for radio stations. They simply give prizes away. Betting is inherent to poker and, thus, why it�s illegal.

While I agree with Kypreos on the above point, he conveniently omits the games I posed questions to him about back in December over our email thread -- things like promotional games from companies where players can play "fake" blackjack and roulette for prizes, or free-entry casino nights that give out prizes, or television game shows where players can risk their existing points to win prizes etc.

Kypreos' answer to this at the time was "You are exactly right when you make the analogy of casino nights or fake blackjack games for prizes. All of these have long been held illegal, though we see that they occur anyway."

It's an important question to consider along with the legality of free-entry poker tournaments, since there is a pretty wide swath of activities like the ones I mention which now may be avoiding the eye of the law, perhaps because of inertia to make a decision on them, but which immediately become under scrutiny, and probably prosecution, if free-entry poker tournaments are deemed illegal.

I'll be interested to see what the AG has to say this summer on the subject, since that will almost certainly tip the scales of prosecutor opinion in the state of Texas on what is and is not legal with respect to free gambling.

I still hold that what makes chips not a "thing of value" in a poker tournament are that chips are never redeemed for prizes, since prizes are not awarded according to number of chips. At the end of the tournament many people may win prizes, but other than first place, all of the winners hold zero chips at the end of the tournament. So what holds value in a poker tournament is not number of chips, but amount of time you hold at least one chip, relative to the rest of the players. And the thing that governs the total length of time it takes you to lose all your chips is your ability to marshal your stack through the tournament. While having more chips may help you survive longer, so does playing less hands -- a chip itself is of no value during or after the tournament. The only thing that is of value is the fact that you have not lost all your chips. It seems a distinction that may likely be lost on the ears of a prosecutor or attorney general, but I believe it's an important one nevertheless.

The future of legal, public free-entry poker tournaments in Texas depends on it.

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