A federal appeals panel has called this poker player’s bluff — overturning a Brooklyn judge’s ruling that Texas Hold ‘Em is not a game of chance.
In its ruling issued today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld last year’s jury’s verdict of Lawrence DiCristina, of Matawan, NJ, who was found guilty of running illegal poker games on Staten Island. The 23-page-ruling reverses a decision last August by Brooklyn federal court Judge Jack Weinstein.
Weinstein had overturned a Brooklyn federal jury’s guilty verdict — to the delight of poker advocates everywhere — ruling that “Texas Hold ‘Em” is a game of skill, not chance, and therefore DiCristina was not guilty of operating an illegal gambling ring.
“Had Congress intended to limit the reach of the [federal Illegal Gambling Business Act] to businesses operating games of chance, it could have done so by inserting that language …” the panel said in its 23-page ruling . “The District Court’s decision to limit the IGBA to games of chance was based on its finding that the statute was ambiguous as to what gambling activities it covered. Because we find no such ambiguity, we decline to limit the statute’s reach beyond its plain terms.”
DiCristina was busted by the feds in 2011 for running high-stakes card games in the back room of a Victory Boulevard warehouse where he sold electric bikes.
He was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States and illegal gambling, and faced up to 10 years in the slammer.
But he challenged the jury’s verdict on grounds that the definition of “gambling” in the IGBA didn’t apply to poker because of the skill needed to play the game successfully.
In a 120-page ruling, Weinstein agreed, saying that “chance [as compared to skill] has traditionally been thought to be a defining element of gambling and is included in dictionary, common law and other federal statutory definitions of it.”