Nevada Wants to Create “Black Book” for Online Poker Players

AB380 will make it so that the Nevada Gaming Commission drafts and maintains a list of people who have been known to cheat playing poker online. The language focuses on people with interactive accounts who should be kept close tabs on or be eliminated from online play altogether.

Cheating Players Should Be Banned

The bill is being worked on by Sara Cholhagian Ralston, who used to be executive director for the Patient Protection Commission, and Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager. Ralston is also a professional poker player with live earnings of a little over $26,003, so she is uniquely positioned to understand the specifics of such a bill and why it is important.

The list AB380 proposes is not much different from Nevada’s List of Excluded Persons, which bans people from entering casinos in the state over cheating offenses. The interactive “Black Book” would expect online poker operators to liaise with the Gaming Control Board and Nevada Gaming Commission who would nominate people to be included on the list.

Operators would provide the names of people suspected of cheating online and let regulators decide whether the people deserved to be banned. Ralston assured that AB380 was not intended as a piece of legislation to add to the plate of responsibilities of online operators.

Rather, she argued, it was an attempt to clear up the online poker industry. An attempt that is hard nevertheless, Ralston admits. Proving cheating online is incredibly hard. Nevada has had online poker up and running since 2013, but there have not been attempts to clamp down on cheaters outside of what operators deem necessary.

Online Poker to Become Even Bigger

However, with a Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement, the need to keep addressing cheaters and eliminate them from play has been growing. Nevada and Delaware have been sharing player bases and liquidity since 2014. In 2017, New Jersey also joined, and more are bound to be forthcoming.

The bill is ambitious as it seeks to take on a serious problem. Commenting on the draft, Yeager, who is also a part-time poker player, said that it’s about bringing accountability and letting the poker community at large know when a player is going to be banned and why.

However, Yeager, believes that the bill in its current form tends to run a little long, and may benefit from an overhaul that makes the language more “narrow and limited.”