Status of Online Poker in New York The fact of the matter is that whether online poker specifically is legal or not in the State of New York would depend on the definition of Poker and whether it is classified as. New York has not legalized online poker, but residents of the Empire State still have poker-playing options. Take part in sweepstakes online poker sites such as Global Poker, or travel to New Jersey.

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Unregulated gambling is forbidden by law in New York. In other words, players can legally gamble only in state-licensed facilities. The state does not have any online poker laws, nor do they penalize residents who play real money online poker at offshore poker sites. This page provides comprehensive information about New York’s gambling laws, especially about the legality of playing real money poker at offshore online poker rooms. We have also presented a list of well-researched New York friendly offshore online poker sites.

New York Poker Laws & Statutes

According to Section 225.00(2) of New York law, a person is considered to be gambling when he/she wagers anything of value on the outcomes of “a contest of chance” or any other event that is not under his/her control on the agreement that he/she will get something of value in case of a certain outcome. Section 30-19.1(B) states that “a contest of chance” is any game, contest, gaming device, or gaming scheme, the outcome of which is dependent on luck. This holds true even if players need skill and strategy to win the game or contest.

Wagering anything of value on games of chance is illegal even if players require skill in order to win these games. If New York players want to gamble, they must do so in gambling outlets running with the state’s approval and license. Gambling under any other circumstance is against the law and those caught playing or organizing illegal games can be penalized.

New York’s gambling laws exempt social gambling to a certain extent, provided the social game or home game is organized purely for pleasure, and not for financial gain. Since home game laws do not specify stake levels, players are free to organize home poker games at any stake as long as they ensure that nobody makes a profit.

Is it Legal to Play Online Poker in New York?

New York’s gambling laws chiefly focus on the legality of wagering on games of chance at live gambling facilities. No part of the law deals directly with online gambling issues although it can be argued that existing land gambling laws in New York apply to online gambling too. However, no part of New York’s gambling law clearly states that it is illegal for players to sign up at offshore online poker rooms and play online poker games for real money. Simultaneously, it is worth noting that New York’s gambling laws were used against the operators of major online poker rooms in the US following the federal government crackdown of April 2011, a day commonly referred to as Black Friday of online poker.

Although the state of New York says that it does not permit its residents to play poker for real money online, it does not have any laws making it illegal for players to play poker online. New York poker players can therefore sign up at their favorite offshore online poker rooms and play real money poker without worrying about being penalized.

Can I Get into Trouble for Playing Online Poker New York?

New York poker players will never get into trouble for playing online poker at offshore online poker rooms simply because the state has no law preventing players from doing so. The state cannot use a non-existent law against its residents. Besides, the state has so far not penalized any of its residents for playing real money online poker.

It may be argued that New York’s existing laws can apply to online gambling too. But players must remember that New York’s gambling laws are directed at operators and not players. The state’s focus is on curbing the activities of illegal operators; accordingly, the state will penalize only operators violating its laws and players will not be held liable. New York players can therefore safely play real money online poker at offshore online poker sites.

Legal Poker Sites That Accept New York Players

Despite a love of legal online poker, many New York residents are hesitant about signing up simply because they do not know where to begin looking for a quality online poker room. Rest assured that on this page, information to finding several legal, legitimate and fun poker sites is well within reach. In fact, it’s just below.

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Our advice for all New Yorkers is to start with the very best in SportsBetting. In just about 10 years of service, this online poker room for New York residents has built up a steady and loyal fan base of hundreds of thousands of avid poker players. When playing online with SportsBetting, there need not be any worries about whether or not they know how to serve US citizens simply because the folks at SportsBetting have been at it for a very long time, and in that time, they have grown into one of the very best legal poker sites in the world.

With a SportsBetting account, players not only gain access to some of the most readily available poker games in the business, but a wealth of resources at their fingertips from which they can learn and grow as a player. In addition to an in-depth poker glossary that includes any term even the most proficient poker aficionado could come up with, this fantastic online poker room offers many tools that help the player analyze their own game and improve. For instance, within an account, every hand ever dealt, how it ended, and the percentage of success from that hand in saved and archived. In this manner, whenever you do make the inevitable mistake, you can rest assured that you will learn from it. With SportsBetting's online poker room is not only fun and profitable, but educational.

BetOnline Poker - All New York Players 18+ Welcome Here

If you wish to keep looking, you may want to peek your head in on one of the fastest growing online poker rooms currently in the business. Dozens of New York residents are finding new perks and benefits to signing up to play poker with this superior poker client every day, and they are all learning one thing: when playing with BetOnline poker, the players calls the shots. This legal poker site offers one of the most customizable experiences a New York resident is likely to ever find, whether they want high stakes tournament play, to wager mere pennies in real time by hand or anything in between, players of all skill levels can play (and win!) poker in a variety of ways with a BetOnline account.

To show the level of devotion this legal poker site is willing to offer its customers, merely consider BetOnline’s poker startup deal. When an initial deposit into a new account is made, up to 200% of that deposit, all the way up to $2000, can be claimed in free bonus money simply from ensuring the account remains active by participating in poker games. Check with BetOnline’s promotion page for more details, but don’t let this great deal expire!

Does New York Have Legal Land-Based Poker?

New York players are permitted to gamble at any gambling facility licensed and approved by the state. The state has several licensed tribal and commercial casinos, and it is perfectly legal for New York poker players to play real money poker at the poker rooms of these casinos. Since New York laws exempt social gambling, it is legal for New York poker players to take part in home poker laws.

While New York gambling laws allow some forms of charity gambling, poker does not appear in the list of games that can be legally conducted to raise funds for charity. Poker players will, therefore, not find any charity poker tournament in New York.

Legal Land-Based Poker Rooms For New York Players

New York is home to several licensed casinos, which have live poker rooms where poker players can legally play real money cash games and tournaments. Some of the best licensed land-based casinos for poker are Seneca Salamanca, Seneca Niagara, and Turning Stone Resort.

The top online poker rooms in the industry such as Bovada, and a few others no longer choose to accept New York players because of the unfavorable state and federal poker laws. But New York players need not despair because there are several excellent offshore online poker rooms, such as the ones listed below, which accept players from New York and allow them to play for real money.

Future of Poker/Online Poker in New York

Considering the fact that New York recently requested the US federal government to clarify the legality of selling lottery tickets online, one may assume that the state might be interested in legalizing some forms of online gambling, including poker. A number of New York legislators actually support the legalization of online poker, especially now that Delaware, New Jersey, and Nevada have passed online poker laws. At the same time, online poker legalization is being opposed by several parties, including tribes owning land casinos. Recently, the senate suggested legalizing online poker to boost state revenue and even included a provision for the same in the state budget, but this did not work out and the provision had to be removed.

Do you want to play live poker in New York? You can, but it might not be easy.

It’s easier to play poker online instead. Online poker alleviates many of the issues of live poker that we’ll cover below. First, here are the best New York poker sites online right now.

New York has a few cardrooms, and each one offers different games and promotions. But the nearest cardroom might be several hours away depending on where you live.

Of course, you can play at a seedy underground club instead. But those can be dangerous, and they’re illegal.

We strongly recommend playing real money poker online. But only if you join a safe, top-rated NY poker site.

If you’ve never played poker online before, this guide will help you get started.

We’re going to begin with showing you why it makes more sense to play poker online. We’ll discuss tournaments, then give you reasons to join that apply to any type of poker.

Next, we’ll share a few of the challenges you’ll face playing live poker. After that, we’ll wrap up this guide with an explanation of how we choose the best online poker sites for New York.

Let’s get started.

Honestly, the cash games aren’t too bad in New York. The rake is reasonable. You’ll find a variety of games, too. We see no reason not to play them.

There are still a few downsides that apply to live poker cash games. And we’ll cover those in the next section. We’re going to focus on live tournaments for now, which have more downsides.

Here are some of the downsides live tournament players experience while playing poker in New York.

Only six to eight New York casinos offer poker. This is challenging enough. But then there’s also the fact that they’re spread out throughout the state.

Because there are so few poker rooms, it can take you an hour or two just to travel to one. Depending on where you live, it can take up to six hours to travel to your nearest poker room.

And that’s not all. You also have to consider the time it takes to play a tournament, which is easily another three to four hours. It could maybe even last longer.

So, if you want to play live poker in New York, you might have to set aside an entire day. This isn’t easy to do if you have a family, a career, and only a small window to play poker each week.

Another downside to playing live tournament poker in New York is that all the poker rooms we looked at don’t offer much more than Texas Hold’em.

You won’t find many variants other than turbos, knockouts, and shootouts, either.

Yet another downside is that a couple of New York’s poker rooms offer tournaments only a couple times a week. For example, the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino Resort only runs tourneys on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Even if a cardroom runs them daily, they’ll only have one or two scheduled. This makes sense because they only have so much space, and tournaments take at least two to three hours to complete.

Only a certain number of people can enter these tournaments, too. At some point the tournament will reach capacity (due to square footage restrictions). So, if you can’t get to a tournament in time, or you get there and it’s full, you’ve gone all that way for nothing.

New York poker tournament aren’t cheap. You’re lucky if you can find a tournament for less than $50 to $60, and that doesn’t include rebuys or add-ons. It’ll cost you more than that on the weekends.

Chances are you’ll want to rebuy and add-on if you drove several hours to play. Unfortunately, you can still bust early, which will suck if you made a long trek. You’ll have spent more time driving than playing.

It’s for all these reasons that playing tournament poker online in NY makes more sense than playing live.

• You can log onto a poker site and go from one poker room to the next in a matter of minutes, not hours.
• You’ll have a variety of poker games, variants, and stakes to choose from.
• Tournaments run all day long at online poker sites. You don’t have to worry about registering by a specific time unless there’s a specific tournament you want to play.

These aren’t the only reasons why online poker makes so much sense either.

Here are a few other reasons why you should consider playing online poker in New York instead of live.

Claim a deposit bonus

Most online NY poker rooms offer hundreds or thousands of dollars in bonuses to first-time depositors.

Multi-table

Poker sites allow you to play four or more cash game tables and several more, if not an unlimited number of tournaments at the same time.

Use a HUD

This is software that collects data from your opponents and turns it into stats you can use to make decisions in real time at the table.

Poker software features

Every New York poker site has features that help you play profitable poker. This includes four-color decks, display bet sizing, changing the table design, note-taking, and more.

Play freeroll tournaments

Freerolls are free to join and have real money prize pools. You won’t find freerolls offline.

Lobby stats

It’s hard to gauge a live cash game simply by looking at it. But you can do that online. Poker sites include stats in their lobbies that tell you how many players each table has, the number of hands they play per hour, the average pot size, and more. These statistics help you determine if that game is worth joining.

Select tables

Use the data the NY poker sites offer and online resources to determine which tables are too tough to join. Then, join the easier ones. You can’t do this live.

Data

There are poker websites that track players’ results by room and screenname. You can look up your competitors to see how good they are, then use this info to make decisions in real time.

Smaller stakes

The lowest cash game you can play live is usually $1/$2 or $1/$3. The smallest tournament is usually $40. But online you can play for $0.01/$0.02 per hand and MTTs for less than $1.

There are many reasons to play live poker. Maybe you enjoy socializing. Maybe you’re good at picking up tells. Maybe you want to play for higher stakes.

But if none of that applies to you, then we’d argue that it’s far more beneficial, not to mention practical, to play real money poker online in New York.

Challenges New Yorkers Face When Playing Live

The benefits we shared above aren’t the only reasons why it makes sense to play poker online. Online poker is just so much easier. You won’t face most if any of the following challenges that live players do.

You might be surprised at how bad some players’ poker faces are. They pick up a good hand or hit the flop hard, and you see their eyes open wide or notice them raising their eyebrows.

We’ve even seen players shake so bad you’d think it was freezing inside. And if they’re not physically shaking, their voice is shaking.

These are all tells (or signs) that a player has a certain hand. Or doesn’t. It depends on the tell. Anyway, here’s how this impacts you.

If you don’t play live poker often, there’s a good chance you have a tell or two as well. And your tell will make it easier for others to play against you.

You don’t have to worry about this if you play online, though.

You can only play one table at a time live where you’re lucky to see more than 15 to 20 hands per hour. And if you’re a good player, you’re folding most of those hands.

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What do you do with the rest of your time?

You can pay attention to the action, but this is hard to do, especially for prolonged periods. Many people choose to read, watch the game on TV, or play on their phone instead.

If you play online, though, you could play a couple of tables at once. That way, you’re always involved in a hand. You’ll make more money multi-tabling, too.

You should do your best to take notes whenever possible. This includes jotting down your opponents’ ranges, bet sizes, anything they do that surprises you, and more.

This information is good to have for future hands. It’ll help you make more profitable decisions.

The challenge is that some poker rooms dislike notetaking. Some players do, too. And even if you can take notes, it’s hard to do live since there’s so much to remember.

Note-taking is much easier online since you can use shorthand along with symbols and/or colors to tag an opponent. Most poker rooms have hand histories and/or hand re-players too, which you can use to recall everything that happened in a hand.

Another challenging thing about live poker is that you have to deal with other people.

This isn’t such a big deal if the people you play with shower regularly, don’t smoke excessively, and have good manners.

But a lot of guys don’t. They burp, fart, and forget to shower or wear deodorant before wedging themselves in between two other guys.

Don’t forget that some people can be annoying, too. They talk a lot or make too many jokes (that aren’t funny). Or maybe they have a bad temper that flares up whenever they lose (which is every other hand).

Sometimes, people just suck. The good news is that you can avoid them and all their annoying characteristics if you choose to play poker online instead.

This challenge is reason enough for us to play online, that much is for sure.

If you’re interested in playing online poker in New York, then the first step you’ll need to take is to create an account with a top-rated poker site.

We recommend you join one of the poker rooms above. And in the next section, we’ll explain how we chose them.

You’ll notice that we recommend several sites on this page. This list includes ONLY the best New York poker sites online.

But what makes them so great? And how the heck would we know? That’s what we want to explain to you now.

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We thoroughly review and test every poker site we recommend. Here is what we look for and test.

Does the poker room have traffic?

Traffic impacts which games run and how often.

What kinds of bonuses can you claim?

We consider the size of the bonus and how easy it is to earn.

What kinds of games and variants can you play?

Some players only want to play old-fashioned Texas Hold’em. But some outgrow that and want to play other poker games like Omaha or Stud.

Do they have high quality software?

Software impacts everything from how the games look to how well they work. It also impacts the features you can use and whether you can play poker on your smartphone.

Do they have guaranteed tournaments?

How big are they and how often do they run? Can you satellite in? Are the buy-ins reasonable?

We find the answers to these questions and play a few games to test the software. This gives us an idea of whether this is a good room for poker players. And we’re only halfway done at this point.

The other half of our process is determining that the poker site is safe and secure, reliable, and that the operator has a good reputation in the poker community.

We also test their customer support, research their banking options, including how quickly they pay out winnings.

Once we’re done, we publish everything we find in our poker room reviews.

The next phase is rating and recommending poker sites to our readers.

We go through every poker site we think will work for a specific category, such as New York poker sites. We compare their strengths and weaknesses, then weed out the subpar sites.

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We rank the remaining sites according to how great of a fit they are for the category we’re working on; in this case, it would be poker sites for NY gamblers.

The final product is what you see on this page. This process takes us hours to complete because of all the research, testing, and rating every site we recommend.

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And that’s all there is to it. That’s why you can trust us when we say that the sites we recommend are the best New York poker sites.

We’ve done the work so that you don’t have to!

We covered a lot of ground in such a short guide. For example, you learned all about the challenges that plague New York live poker players.

• There aren’t many cardrooms in the state.
• The nearest cardroom might be hours away.
• Cardrooms only offer tournaments a handful of times per day, and sometimes, no more than a couple of times per week.
• The stakes are higher offline.

These are just a few of the many reasons why we recommend you play online poker instead. You’ll have more games, variants, and stakes to choose from. You can claim promotions. And you can play games on your schedule instead of the casino’s.

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If that sounds like the path you want to take, what you need to do now is join an online poker site. We list the top New York poker sites on this page. Choose one and create your account now.

You can thank us later!