Translated material
Poker. Legally
The American businessman decided to make the gambling analogue of the NHL and NBA: Quartz
Millions of people around the world play poker, and for many it has long been not only a gambling game, but also intellectual entertainment. Nevertheless, all over the world, poker (and even more so online poker) are in a semi-legal position-the authorities consider it a gambling and put on a par with roulette and Blackjack. QUARTZ tells about the businessman Alexander Drefus, who wants to change the situation.
Many sports have their own supranational leagues: in the American National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, both clubs from the USA and Canada play. There is a continental hockey league in Europe, as well as the Champions League in which the strongest football clubs are found (however, in the case of football, they also play in national championships). It occurred to businessman Alexander Dreyfus that you can arrange something similar in poker.
To create a poker league, it is necessary that poker is perceived not as a gambling game, but as a sport. To do this, Dreyfus wants to deprive the players of money for winning (they will receive salaries - just like NBA and NHL players), gather them in teams (in ordinary poker everyone plays first of all on himself), and these teams themselves are formed on the basis of a draft (a lottery, with which this or that player will be determined). The first draft, if everything goes well, will take place on February 25.
The poker league will have two conferences. The first is conditionally called American, it will include teams from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Toronto and San Paulo. In the second - Eurasian - the league will fall from the teams from London, Paris, Prague, Barcelona, Hong Kong and Moscow.
Dreyfus suggests that the teams will play among themselves, sitting in glass cubes. Their cards will be shown to the audience on the stands on TVs, and television broadcasts will bring enough money for the League to earn money.
Dreyfus is not the last person in the world of poker. He organized Global Poker Index-a site about poker, which has a rating of players (in it almost all the first lines are occupied by Americans, and the strongest of the Russians-Vladimir Trojanovsky-44th). Nevertheless, there are many questions to his project, mainly about the rule of law. In the USA, for example, online poker is prohibited, and it is not clear whether the “athletes” can “perform” outside the casino. The same applies, for example, Moscow, where gambling is prohibited (in Russia you can only play poker in special gambling areas, most of which, however, do not work).
“This is a very aggressive interpretation of the laws on gambling. In the end, poker remains a poker, ”says lawyer David Klein, who specializes in laws about Internet poker and fantasy sport. (English Yaz.)