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Advice/help needed - Live Pub Poker
At my local, we normally just play 1 table cheap (£2-£10) SnG's which are a lot of fun even if the standard is 'questionable' .
We are, however, endeavoring to set up our first live MTT in the next few weeks as a few of the regs have expressed an interest in doing something a 'bit more serious'.
I have set an easy structure (4k starting stack, 10 min blinds etc) and we will limit seats for the first one we do.
We have set the buy in as £10 + £1 which will go towards the food the landlord will be putting on. I have now been told that this may not be acceptable as all monies collected MUST go into the prize pool. The Gambling/Gaming commission has also been mentioned.
So, can someone who knows about this stuff, please advise where we stand on this as, like I say, it is our 1st one and we are hoping to get it right from the off and hopefully have more in the future.
Thank you in advance.
Comments
Can't personally see a problem if the landlord sets the buy-in and makes a small mandatory charge for some food. I think you might be on thin ice if the landlord were to provide alcohol as part of this mandatory food cover charge or buy-in (and be in contravention of his/her license to serve alcohol).
It's an absolute minefield Alan, & the "Guidelines" set by GC are so confusing that nobody, especially the Constabulary, understands them.
However, I'm sorry to say, but as to Live Poker, the GC are toothless, spineless, & impotent. You only have to look at how many unlicensed cardrooms, or Pub Poker Leagues which drive a coach & horses through the GC guidelines, to see that.
Your risk is VERY small indeed, & I can barely recall the GC ever clamping down on a Pub Poker game, but the thing is, you MAY be endangering the Licensee, & that's a different ball game altogether.
It's fairly easy to circumvent the Guidelines, however, if you use a little creative imagination & financial jiggery-pokery.
In the end it went to a good local charity which was pretty apprechiative of a very small donation. Although we also done a small pub fund raiser by us all doing Kareoke for the locals which they paid to see all the proceeds of that going to the charity aswell.
Right, so here's what I understand of it. I am not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination and this is purely what I know from experience in having played in a few games very similar to what you're looking to do here Alan.
The maximum stake that can be played for under the one roof is, as Goethe suggests, £100. No one individual can stake more than £5 though. If 20 people turn up, it's a £5 MTT. If 10 people turn up, it's still got to be a £5 tourney. If 50, it's a £2 MTT.
Games can not be 'linked'. What does that mean? You can't have a pub game in location A which then joins the prize pool with another pub game over the road in location B.
What you can do is the following: Imagine we have a regular group of 20 players who all play in our £5 MTT. We could split that £5 into a £4 in to tonight's kitty, £1 in to a end of season prize pool for a tournament or similar. One point here though - the final tourney would still need to subject to the £100 maximum prize rule.
The only way around that would be to run a points-only system with no buy-in on each night but could then allow an aggregate prize which would be times played mulitplied by £100. So if you play a league with your mates, play 4 of the 6 games organised, your prize couldn't be worth more than £400. Nor could the individual games be for money.
The amounts vary for private members clubs rather than pubs, but that's a bit beyond my understanding. IIRC, it's £250 rather than £100 per event, but don't quote me on that. Or any of the rest of this, to be honest!
Then we get to the contentious stuff, which is where the murkiness that Tikay mentions comes in. Basically it's the issue of 'rake'. From my understanding, a public house can't run a game which:
a) charges an amount of money for a compulsory fixed benefit - so £2 for a meal, £1 for a drink, etc.
b) a 'fee' for playing in the venue, using the bar services or similar also can't be made. So if they say "we have to take £1 out of every £5 to maintain the poker tables", etc that's very murky.
This means £10+1 is very out - stakes too high per individual and that +£1 is always going to be a bit of a grey area in terms of who gets it, how it's spent, etc.
My own personal slant would be this:
1) Don't play for more than a fiver a head
2) Don't charge any rake, otherwise you're opening up the grey areas that surround this whole thing
3) If the publican is caught doing anything which isn't kosher, it can result in them losing their licence so it's worth making sure the landlord knows what is and isn't allowed too.
Avoid sidebets, things that are settled away from the venue, etc too. Those could still land you in some bother.
As for Tikay's view on the Gambling Commission being toothless, I won't pretend to know enough about them to say. All I will do is mention that around 2-3 years ago one or two games which were hosted in pubs were visited by council representatives who asked about the conditions of the game and mentioned it would go back to the Gambling Commission. That was enough to put the organisers off, not because the games were outside of the rules but because none of this is very clear to anyone and at the end of the day neither the landlord or the tournament organisers wanted the aggrevation.
Like I said, all of this is personal opinion and interpretation. If you want more in depth info, I'd suggest these two links:
Poker in Pubs - Gambling Commision guidelines, July 2009
Advice on Gaming in Clubs or Alcohol-Licensed Premises - September 2008
http://www.meetup.com/Bristol-South-West-Poker-Group-sponsored-by-Poker-co-uk/
We have had cases in my part of the world where the LA's enforcement officers and police had carried out joint visits to pubs to check for breeches of licensing conditions, under-age drinking or alcohol purchases etc, and in 7 cases the names of licensees were referred to the GC for allowing gambling (ie small stakes poker games) on the premises without the appropriate licence(s) being held. This was before the GC's sheet was drawn up though, when it was a very grey area. Now it isn't, and I say that because it's down in black and white on the GC's web site, and if you organise anything that falls outside of what they state (and therefore consider reasonable without a licence) then you shouldn't be too surprised if you get caught you find yourself up in front of the local beak - the consequences of which could extend to having the alcohol licence withdrawn, and possibly making oneself unemployable in the pub trade in the future.
The fact, as stated above by another contributor, that many completely ignore the GC's rules, and organisae whatever they like, is irrelevent to the original question posted. As for Tikay's comment that it's fairly easy to circumvent the guidelines with a litte "creativity", I'm surprised he's even put this in writing, as it could be construed as encouragement to breech the regs, and bring Sky, and this site, into disrepute - no doubt he didn't run it by Sky's legal counsel first. Don't be tempted to do it.
You should try living in Northern Ireland, its worse than Iran with the ''God Police' over here. Poker is illegal in clubs and pubs, full stop, also skypoker cannot be shown on tv and is actively blocked by sky because of the N Ireland gaming laws. Google the police raid on the belfast cavendish club run by the Hendon mob, they took all the punters buy ins as it was ''proceeds of crime'', luckily they got their money back in court.
Legal Obligations
Poker in licensed premises is strictly governed by the gambling commission and a copy of the Gambling Act 2005 can be provided by the Harrogate Poker League on application.
In pubs the maximum buy in for each player is £5 per day and the maximum prize fund is £100 per day.
In some private members clubs the maximum buy in for each player can be £10 into a maximum prize pool of £250 per day, these establishments may also permitted to charge a daily £1 facilities fee.
The Harrogate Poker League will not administer, condone nor run any tournament under any criteria other than these.
The Harrogate Poker League does not want to take a dictatorial role in the administrative running of these events but recognises the absolute need for a set of governing rules that are not only formulated to keep order but to ensure that all tournaments do not contravene any criteria laid down within the letter of the law and the legal requirements of The Gambling Act of 2005.
Thanks for ALL the replies here guys.
I think I best check out them couple of web sites before proceeding. We have just had a new Landlord at the pub who used to run some kind of Poker League in his last one so I guess he is clued up more than me but I will check stuff out anyway.
Jeez, if only the old bill knew about them 25 man, £20 a head killer pool games we used to play !