CASINO CLUB

With the US on the verge of legalizing online gaming, the California legislature will vote to legalize online poker. When legislators became aware of how in debt the state of California is, they decided to be a little creative and try to seize a portion of the money that is being enjoyed by offshore online gambling providers, while players play poker. According to recent news report, it was found that the leader of the California Senate Committee on Gambling, Senator Rod Wright, had introduced an amended version of the Senate Bill.

The amended bill licensed California-based web gaming companies to operate online poker websites exclusively for California residents. The proposition would raise a minimum of 20% of revenue from these websites to help counter the state’s huge budget deficit.

The new amended rules will place a ceiling on the number of online casinos in California. The bill has been given urgency status, which means that action is to be taken immediately and implementation will soon follow. If the proposal passes the critical vote in the legislature, the State Department of Justice will be able to grant three contracts, each with a five-year duration. However there is a possibility of a glitch in the process, as representatives from Tribal casinos and card rooms are expected to oppose the legislation. Federal law in the USA permits individual states to authorize intrastate online gambling. Raising revenue becomes an issue because the authorization of new online poker websites may endanger income under existing tribal-state agreements, which are expected to raise 365million USD in the budget year 2010-11. Current estimates propose that Californians only spent approximately 300million USD on poker websites in 2009. The state of affairs in California’s financial picture is austere with a threatening deficit expected to reach 19.1 billion USD by next year at this time.

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