Possibility for the United States to legalize online poker.? 36: October 10th, 2020 2:57 AM: Online Poker: Perhaps Covid-19 can make it easier to legalize online poker: 6: May 24th, 2020 2:07 AM.
- 2020 Update: Is Online Poker Legal in Indiana? No, there's no online poker legislation in Indiana yet, but things are starting to look up. Indian has historically been a conservative state and online gaming faced opposition from a number of different actors in the state.
- Online Poker: Similar to online casino, it is strictly illegal for any operators to run online poker sites. As for players, there are still plenty of off shore sites that welcomes players from Indiana. Indiana Gambling Laws. The definition of gambling as stated in Indiana's Statutes is.
Where and how to play online poker in Indiana
There are a lot of options for live poker games in Indiana.
There are nine casino poker rooms within the Indiana borders and many more in neighboring states.
With the regulation of online sports betting underway, many Indiana-based poker fans are asking whether regulated online poker will follow. While there are no provisions for this in bill H 1015, many hope the success of sports betting will help move things forward.
You can play online poker for real money in Indiana right now at GlobalPoker, a legal online poker site that covers almost all of the US. Global Poker uses existing sweepstakesgamblinglaws in a creative dual-currency solution. It is an increasingly popular online destination for poker fans.
On this page, we will give you an overview of the current poker scene in Indiana.
We cover live and online poker. Below, you will find an overview of the current regulatory changes and how these may one day relate to online poker. After we cover options for live poker games, we follow with a look at online options, games and bonuses available to poker fans.
Bill H 1015: Is online poker legal in Indiana?
The most recent Indiana bill does not include poker, instead sets out regulation for onlinesportsbooks. It also makes some changes to live casinos (adding table games) and adds a new casino license. This new casino might have a poker room to add to the nine casinos in operation in Indiana.
There are some positives for players who would like to see their Indiana online poker options increase. The new legislation will create a licensing system for online gambling, which could expand from sports to poker in the future. With the tax revenues of states such as New Jersey showing benefits of regulation, having a licensing agency in place could be an essential first step.
At the moment, the sharing of players between poker rooms in regulated states is limited. NewJersey, Delaware and Nevada share players via the WSOP brand. With regulated online poker coming to Pennsylvania soon, poker fans hope those pools will expand further.
Current Indiana poker laws will require new legislation. Blackjack market in north hollywood. By the time this is through, the US player sharing pools could be huge. This will give a lot more options in terms of game selection, tournament prize guarantees and promo deals than if Indiana introduced a segregated poker ecosystem.
Indiana residents can already enjoy online poker for real money at Global Poker. You can find out more on this site below.
Indiana poker rooms near you
Some states have dominant players when it comes to live poker rooms. For Indiana, there are a lot of options, though these are mostly smaller to midsized venues. The biggest room, based on the number of tables, is the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond.
Here are the current options for live poker games within Indiana:
- Belterra Casino: This riverboat casino has a nine-table poker room and is located in Florence, IN.
- Blue Chip Casino: Located in MichiganCity, IN, this eight-table poker room is available 24/7.
- Four Winds South Bend Casino: Indiana's first tribal casino has a 10-table poker room, you'll find this venue at SouthBend, IN.
- FrenchLick Casino: Located close to WestBaden, this casino has a small four-table poker room.
- HollywoodCasino: Located in Lawrenceburg, IN, Hollywood offers 21 tables, spreading a wide selection of cash games and tournaments.
- HorseshoeCasino: The largest room (by the number of tables) in Indiana, you'll find 34 poker tables at the Horseshoe in Hammond, IN.
- HorseshoeSouthern: This room is co-branded with the WSOP. With 30 tables, this venue is located at Elizabeth, IN.
- MajesticStar: One of two riverboat casinos located at Gary, IN. The Majestic has 21 poker tables.
- Tropicana Casino: This Evansville venue is another smaller room with only eight tables.
Note that the AmeristarCasino hosts poker events using its ballroom, although it no longer has a dedicated poker room.
Notable poker tours which have stops in Indiana include the Highland Poker Tour, WSOP Circuit and WPT. Indiana has a history of successful poker players. Big names from the Hoosier State include MikeSexton and recent WSOP Main Event winner JohnCynn, who went to the University in Indiana.
How to play for real money
Global Poker uses a workaround in state sweepstakes laws to provide real-money online poker games. This site is growing in popularity. It regularly gets 100+ cash game tables active and a busy schedule of poker tournaments.
Instead of playing directly for dollars at Global Poker, you'll play for 'sweepscash.' You exchange it back to dollars when you want to cash out and transfer it directly to your bank account. You can't buy Sweeps Coins directly; instead, you buy 'goldchips' (for entertainment only) and Global Poker give you Sweeps Coins for free.
For those new to the concept, coming across Sweeps Coins does raise some questions about the legitimacy of the system. You'll find that this works smoothly, and banks allow you to use your credit or debit cards for buy-ins.
Promo offers include a freerollentry for new players, guaranteedtournaments (with satellites) and giveaways via socialmedia. You can even get free Sweeps Coins by sending a physical letter to an address you'll find on their website. While there have been deposit bonuses in the past, at the time of writing, Global Poker is not offering one.
Games include no limit hold 'em, pot limit Omaha and a small number of CrazyPineapple tables. You can play in cash-game format or join the small tournaments, which many of these have guaranteed prize pools.
There are also jackpot sit and gos (SNGs). These are hyper-turbo games, with random prize pools of up to 2000x your buy-in. While you won't find much in the way of high-stakes action at Global Poker, these games are both soft and entertaining at more recreational stakes.
What poker games can I play online?
Online poker has come a long way since it began at the end of the 1990s. Today, you'll find a lot of different formats competing for your attention.
When state-regulated poker rooms come to Indiana, you can expect some of the following formats and game variations to be available:
- Cash games: This was the original poker format where you play for chips which have a direct monetary value. In a live Indiana poker room, the smallest game has $1/$2 blinds. Online games can be much lower, with 1c/2c the smallest, topping out at around $5/$10. Expect many poker variants to be available in a cash-game format.
- Tournaments: Instead of using chips with real-money value, here you buy-in and get a stack of tournament chips. Play continues until one player has all the chips, with prize money distributed to around 10% of the field. The big prizes are for the winner and players at the final table. Tournaments now have multiple variations. These include rebuy, turbo and knockout bounty games as well as qualifiers for live or online events.
- SNGs: Smaller sit-and-go tournaments start at just one table, which begins as soon as there are enough players. This is a popular tournament format, as the time commitment is much lower than for the multi-table tournament games.
- Fast-fold poker: Since playing every hand is never a winning poker strategy, you'll end up waiting for other players in most games. Fast-fold poker was developed to avoid this 'dead time.' You join a pool of players at any given buy-in. As soon as you fold your current hand, you are sent to a new game with new players from that pool. This online poker format works well on mobile phones; it can be 4x the speed of regular games.
- Lottery SNGs: This newer format involves a fast, three-handed tournament, with a random prize pool. You won't know whether you are playing for 2x your buy-in or 10,000x before each game begins. With short chip stacks and 2- to 3-minute blind levels, you need to act fast to avoid being blinded away.
It is not only the range of formats that keeps online poker games interesting. You will also get to play novel games.
No limit hold 'em still dominates all the sites, and Omaha poker variants are prevalent. Pot limit Omaha is most common, along with Omaha hi-lo variants and even exotic games with extra cards. You can also play stud and draw poker. You'll need to find a more popular site to get a choice of tables for these variants.
A new game sweeping the online poker scene is short-deck hold 'em, which removes cards two through five from the deck. Not only does this immediately change the number of outs you can hit (and so your odds), the hand rankings are different, too.
Bonuses at Indiana online poker rooms
While it is too early to speculate on the exact promos and bonus offers for regulated Indiana poker rooms, there are some clues available.
Looking at the international sites and those in states that have already regulated, common types of bonus become clear. The list below gives you a broad idea of what to expect:
- No deposit poker bonuses: When online poker rooms first open, expect a big marketing push to hit that critical mass of players. A small amount of money for simply registering is a popular bonus offer. This is usually in the $10 to $25 range. You'll have to collect points via real-money play before you can withdraw cash.
- Matched deposit bonus: This has been the industry standard for online poker rooms for decades. Indiana poker sites will certainly offer a 100% bonus, matched to your first deposit. Often, you can clear this money in increments into your real-money account as you collect points from playing real-money poker games.
- Loyalty point schemes: Different online poker rooms handle loyalty rewards their way. Some rooms offer flat deals, where you collect points you can exchange for cash or tournament entries. Others have tiers, with bigger bonuses the more points you receive. Still, other sites have novel systems like the 'chests' (containing custom rewards) of the Stars' loyalty program.
- Free tournament entries: Poker rooms often have tournaments with small real-money prizes and tournament ticket giveaways. Some of these are qualifiers to larger buy-in events. Whether you play a freeroll tournament will often depend on how the potential for prizes compares to the amount of time required.
- Reload bonuses: It is not only brand-new players that can benefit from deposit bonus offers. Reloads are often less than 100% and give loyal players that need to top up their account a way to get some bonus money.
Alongside these standard formats, online poker rooms often come up with creative promotions. These include online tournament events, leaderboardcontests, rake back, extra points during happy hour and sometimes crossover promos with casino or sports betting areas of the brand.
When regulation comes, I recommend bookmarking the promotions pages of all the Indiana poker sites to make sure you don't miss out.
Wrapping up: How would an Indiana-regulated poker scene look?
The biggest question about Indiana online poker will be whether the inter-state pools will be in place before legislation is passed. If so, then there could be some huge poker rooms to join. If not, then I will be a case of the individual brands battling it out to see who gets to critical mass first.
With more players, legal Indiana poker rooms will be able to offer bigger tournament guarantees and a better choice of games. This will attract more players, creating a cycle which can be a big boost.
From other states, we know that the big international brands like Stars, 888 and Party are keen to partner with local license holders. In some cases, these sites also power poker rooms which keep the brand of the live casino. The advantage of playing with these big brands is that they already have innovative new formats and games running (at international sites).
While nobody exactly knows when state-licensed poker will begin for Indiana, there is already one safe and legal option. Global Poker turns every hand into a mini-sweepstakes contest. This allows you to win money and legally cash out to your bank. While we wait for regulation, this makes for an entertaining low-stakes option.
Gamblers in Indiana are not without legal options when it comes to playing their favorite games of chance and skill, but as a conservative state in the midst of the nation's heartland, they are strictly limited to those games that have received the official nod of state legislators in Indianapolis. Indeed, the Hoosier State is one of the few jurisdictions to apply the law equally to those operating illegal gaming options along with the players who frequent such establishments.
For those willing to play within the law however, there are plenty of outlets in which to scratch that gambling itch from riverboat casinos to pari-mutuel betting to participating in the state lottery. Let's examine the gambling laws in the Hoosier State, followed by the legalities of those laws regarding poker, and finally look to the future regarding whether the state will move towards the regulation of real-money poker.
Indiana Gambling Laws
While Indiana put the brakes on most forms of gambling for more than two-thirds of the 20th-century, the hunger of Hoosiers for gaming opportunities materialized in the 1980s with the introduction of the state lottery. Immediately popular, the floodgates opened on a variety of gambling including casino and pari-mutuel betting on horse races.
As of 2017, here is a brief rundown where gamblers legally stand when gaming in Indiana:
Casino Games— Indiana has authorized the establishment of riverboat casinos that offer an array of table games and thousands of slot machine-style games. While originally mandated to be on the move when game play was in action, these riverboat casinos can now operate while moored to the dock.
Sports Betting— Indiana is a huge sports loving state, but residents in the Hoosier State are limited to placing pari-mutuel wagering at licensed horse racing tracks throughout the state. Additionally, players can also avail themselves of electronic gaming machines that are available on site.
Lottery Betting— Indiana offers lottery play for its residents that include a range of gaming options from instant scratch off games to participation in inter-state games such as the Powerball where players can compete for tens of millions of dollars in winnings.
Bingo Games—are allowed for charitable fundraising purposes in the Indiana, which have to be individually licensed to be considered legal.
Live Poker—is enjoyed in the poker rooms of riverboat casinos, which also host tournaments boasting huge purses for the most talented players. Unlike many states however, Indiana does not condone social poker games where organizers are at risk of incurring severe legal repercussions if caught, and players are subject to misdemeanor charges.
Online Casinos and Poker— while willing to condone gambling activities when conducted locally, Indiana has adopted a hard stance against online casino and poker play. Indeed, the state, along with Washington and Utah, have outright banned gambling online although several offshore poker sites continue to offer Indiana denizens a place to play poker on the internet.
In general, two distinctive features set Indiana's legal code, which sets it apart from other state jurisdictions. First, the legal statutes make no distinction between games of chance and games of skill, which is often the distinction that allows room for legalized poker games. Secondly, the law specifically singles out the internet as verboten when it comes to playing a host of traditional gambling games ranging from slots to table game style play.
Indiana Online Poker Laws
As mentioned, Indiana went out of their way to ban online poker play, and in fact targeted the entire internet as forbidden territory when it comes to playing online poker or casino-style games. To begin with, Indiana's gambling laws are so broad as to probably include poker play, and its inclusion of the term 'gambling device' further expands the definition as it applies to online game play.
According to the Indiana legal code, unlawful gambling is defined as, 'knowingly or intentionally engaging in gambling that is not explicitly regulated by the state.' Further, the state's regulatory power takes aim at the operators of online sites with felony charges for violations.
Under the law, Section 35-45-5-3 states that it illegal to operate online casino, sports books, and poker. The law further criminalizes the processing of any type of payments to these online poker sites. Again, the language take aims at the operators of such sites, and casual players do not face prosecution.
That being said however, Indiana poker players could easily find an offshore-based online poker site that will willingly open an account for Hoosier State denizens. Existing in the legal grey area that is the jurisdictional reality of the internet, poker players in Indiana can access U.S.-facing sites for real money play from Indianapolis to Terra Haute and all points in between.
Is it Legal to Play Poker in Indiana?
Under the right circumstances, poker is most assuredly legal to play in Indiana. The watershed year for Hoosiers, who are also poker aficionados was 1993, and passage of a measure that allowed for the licensing of up to five riverboat casinos throughout the state. initially mandated to be on the move when gambling was underway, the state has since determined that these casinos can operate while permanently moored to the dock.
For a full array of gaming and gambling opportunities, these facilities offer table games and slot machines aplenty. In addition to table games like poker, blackjack, craps, roulette, and more, each of these sprawling facilitates houses thousands of video gaming machines from slot machines to video poker. Dotting the Lake Michigan shoreline and along the Ohio River, Indiana residents have a myriad of options when it comes to playing competitive, real-money poker.
In fact, the state moved further with a 2011 legislative measure granting the building of a single land-based casino, which resulted in an additional 38,000-square-foot of gaming space at the 3,000-acre French Lick Resort Casino. For the professional gambler, these outlets sponsor tournament level play with impressive purses, which underscores the fact that Indiana is the third largest poker market in the nation.
As authorized sites, operating under Indiana government sanction, these land-based and riverboat casinos provide all the legal cover players need for enjoying their favorite game of poker.
Straying outside those lines however, as in the case of social poker games, operators can incur substantial legal penalties for organizing games. Additionally, law enforcement has gone so far as to charging individual players with a misdemeanor for participating.
Will Indiana Regulate Online Poker?
Looking at Indiana's track record regarding the expansion of other gambling venues, one can hold out hope that the state will move towards regulating the online poker market, but they would be advised to not hold their breath. Legislation dating back more than a decade, 2006, legislators in Indianapolis specifically added language to the legal statutes that targeted internet gaming options. While the wording does not completely close the door on online poker and casino play, it does place some obstacles in the front of that door.
Knowledgeable observers believe, as is the case with more restrictive jurisdictions that Indiana might move towards regulated online gaming once they see the success neighboring states enjoy with increased tax revenues. For the present however, until Indiana residents begin crossing over state lines to play in neighboring jurisdictions, it is unlikely that the Hoosiers will be pushing the envelope in terms of an aggressive expansion of online play.
When Will Online Poker Be Legal In Indiana Right Now
History of Gambling in Indiana
When Will Online Poker Be Legal In Indianapolis
When Indiana drafted their initial constitution in 1851, they outright banned participation of lotteries. This opposition to games of chance stayed steadfast for the next 130 years until legislators authorized a state lottery with the proceeds earmarked for educational purposes. The sale proved immediately popular, and the state moved from scratch off tickets to inclusion of state players in multi-state Powerball games.
During the heady days of Prohibition, when famous mobsters ran speakeasies and gin houses throughout the Midwest, Indiana was a hot spot for illegal gaming options. East Chicago, Indiana was a noted stopping point for illicit play throughout the 1920s and 1930s. It wasn't until unremitting violence between rival gangs, jockeying for power, led to law enforcement crackdowns on illegal gaming parlors.
When Will Online Poker Be Legal In Indiana Casinos
Indeed, the lottery proved so popular that voters passed a referendum the following year, with an impressive 60% of the vote, to push forward with legal casino gambling, but that goal took another four years to achieve after Republican state leaders blocked the expansion attempt.
When Will Online Poker Be Legal In Indiana State
Representatives in the Indiana statehouse pushed through a measure to license riverboat casinos only to see the effort stumble and fall in pass out of a senate committee in 1991. It was not until a 1993 financial emergency that legislation authorizing five riverboat casinos was passed to help balance the state's financial books.
Racetrack fans got a leg up on their favorite hobby with opening of Hoosier Park Horse Racing Track, which offered both on-track and pari-mutuel betting on their races. This would be the first of five licensed remote horse race betting sites. Additionally, beginning in 2002, each racing complex was also authorized to add upwards of 2,000 slot machines at each location. Finally, as mentioned, in 2011 the state moved forward with a bill sanctioning the building of a land—based casino complex.
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