While the recent passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act has done its job of basically ending the heyday of the extremely popular online poker rooms and casinos such as Fulltiltpoker.com by removing a large portion of their American audience due to the restrictive laws passed involving making transactions between American banks and online poker rooms and casinos illegal, there are many smaller and quieter legal battles going on all across the country in bars and establishments that have been prevented from providing free and legal gambling, which features no actual money changing hands from their patrons. Despite the no money approach to these types of legal gambling and drinking and dining establishments across the United States, many attorney general’s have decided that gambling is gambling, regardless of the amount of money that changes hands, even if it is zero. Considering that the cash free tournaments and Texas Hold’em events are cashless events and don’t involve any type of losses at all for the players, it is difficult to see where the harm can be in such events that are organized by publicity seeking casinos from nearby areas at no cost to the local proprietor.

While everyone else would seem to consider this a win-win situation, as the Casino receives free publicity, the dining establishment receives additional customers and everyone has a good time, the authorities in many states have begun to crack down on the practice of playing Texas Hold’em poker and other types of gambling while not actually putting any money at risk. With this baffling display of ineptitude, lawmakers have focused on an absolutely pointless enforcement of a largely nonexistent law. Considering that gambling is considered to be legal at the federal level, there is little precedent for the excessive effort at criminalizing the cash free Texas Hold’em poker tournaments that occur in these types of establishments largely aimed at providing publicity. For whatever reason, local law enforcement in many states such as Louisiana and California have made it their goal to eradicate this type of seemingly harmless gambling in an effort to set some form of example or other hard to decipher law-enforcement goal. Making sense of officials and their activities is not always easy, and in this case, is even more difficult. The possible harm of gambling that does not involve the exchange of money has to be minimal, at worst.

Despite the legal nature of this type of cash free Texas Hold’em poker tournament, lawmakers continue to crack down on proprietors who offer the fun and exciting alternative to illegal varieties of gaming.

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