New Jersey's International Poker Sharing Ambitions

New Jersey's International Poker Sharing AmbitionsBefore vacating his position as NJ state senator, Ray Lesniak said that he would like to turn New Jersey into an international online gambling hub. However, a number of potential challenges will have to first be overcome before such a lofty ambition stands a chance of becoming reality.
One of the biggest obstacles is the different ways in which individual markets and countries treat their own online poker industries. This could involve either regulating their market nationally, supra-nationally, or where there is no regulation in place referring applicants to an offshore licensing jurisdiction, such as the Isle of Man. Needless to say, New Jersey would have to deal with each of these situations separately, with each requiring their own different approaches by the NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE).
Ray Lesniak’s Senate Bill S3536, however, stipulates that no shared liquidity can be established with any country that does not have its own national or state laws governing the industry, which will ultimately rule out NJ state residents playing against players in international dot-com player pools.
This would then leave just a small number of players in countries with segregated player pools to compete against, such as Spain, France, Italy, and Portugal. However, this requires obtaining an individual license from each jurisdiction, such is the case with PokerStars which so far is the only online poker brand to operate across all of these countries.
Then there is the problem with the different tax rates associated with individual countries. If, for instance, PokerStars allowed its UK players to compete against those in France the company would then be liable to pay taxes in both countries, therefore making any liquidity sharing agreement a non-starter. Of course, New Jersey could organize it so that players from each individual countries collect taxes on their own citizens, but then the questions is how does New Jersey get to benefit from such an arrangement.
Quite simply, the influx of new players would enable New Jersey’s poker sites to start offering more attractive tournaments and prize pools, which in turn would ultimately result in a much healthier online poker market in which the game to grow.


Poker News
DOJ wire act
24 Jun 2021
It looks like the long saga of the Wire Act potentially killing interstate online poker is over. Interstate poker officially became legal again earlier this week after the Department of Justice declined to appeal the decision in a lawsuit between the DOJ and the New Hampshire Lottery. The DOJ had until June 21 to file
UK's Poker Sector Just 5% of Online Gambling Market
27 Oct 2020
A major outage by GeoComply last Thursday left several online poker players with nowhere to play. GeoComply is a geolocation surface used by most online poker sites in the US. It determines where players are physically located which online poker sites need to know so ensure only legal players are using their sites. When GeoComply
UK Gambling Commission
15 Jan 2020
Online poker players and gamblers in the United Kingdom who currently fund their accounts with Visa or Master Card will need to find a new funding method. Earlier this week the UK Gambling Commission released new regulations that would make it illegal for online gambling deposits to be made with credit cards. The ban will
pennsylvania online poker
23 Jul 2019
Previous reports that stated online poker would launch in the state of Pennsylvania on July 15 have proven to be wrong. July 15th came and went last week and no online poker rooms went live in the Keystone State. Nearly two years have passed since Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf legalized online gambling in the state.