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Ayotte: Charities
using poker loophole
The state wants
a better hand in Texas HoldEm poker tournaments.
Attorney General
Kelly Ayotte wants to close a loophole that she says some charities
are exploiting.
"Charitable
gaming is regulated by charitable trusts (within the Attorney
General's Office) and there is a $2 limit wager, but with Texas
HoldEm there are ways to get around the law," she said this week.
"We recognize it
is a concern," she said. "They are using a loophole in the law. We
are trying to do everything we can,"she told Gov. John Lynch. "I do
think the law needs to be tightened, and we have been discussing
this with the Legislature."
In Texas HoldEm,
players are dealt two cards each and can use five community cards
flipped over in the middle of the table to make the best hand.
Players can risk everything on a single turn of a card.
New Hampshire's
gaming law has a $2 bet limit, but tournament promoters get around
that by assigning no monetary value to the poker chips.
Charitable
organizations throughout New Hampshire are raising money by
sponsoring poker tournaments where $5,000 is typically the top
prize, enough to draw hundreds of card players - and leaving some
legislators wondering whether the state should share in the jackpot.
"I'm not
suggesting that we tax the winners," said Rep. Neal Kurk, a Weare
Republican.
"We need to take
a good serious look at whether promoters may be taking an
unacceptably large portion of the gross and charities are not
getting enough. It seems we've increased the amount of revenue by an
order of magnitude, and we need to look at that as an issue."
About 30
charities have filed applications to hold poker tournaments in
Derry, Keene, Pembroke, Laconia and a half-dozen other communities,
said Audrey Blodgett of the Attorney General's Office of Charitable
Trusts.
The charities
must report to the state the prizes awarded, expenses paid and
revenue raised, but there is no state oversight of the games.
Permits are obtained from local police.
In Manchester,
the tournaments have been held at the Manchester Bingo Center,
sponsored by On the Road to Recovery, a charity that helps the
mentally disabled.
Under her
contract with the promoters, Andrea Tinkham, executive director of
On the Road to Recovery, agreed to pay "50 percent of all net
proceeds," after prizes and expenses, to S&T Consultants Inc., the
bingo center's managers.
She said her
charity made an average of $2,500 for each of its 10 poker nights,
supplementing the organization's annual state allocation of about
$177,000. |
