Business

Online poker could come to New York and New Jersey by end of year

Poker lovers in New York and New Jersey could be placing bets online by the end of the year.

With Uncle Sam recently deciding that online casino games were legal, the Empire State, its cross-river neighbor and three other states are expected to start pushing legislation — a process that may take eight months to complete and allow games to go live by Dec. 31, one Wall Street firm said in a research note yesterday.

“We believe there soon will be enabling legislation in some of these states, which could expand quickly as other states in desperate need of tax revenue seek to tap into a new (and potentially large) revenue source,” Harry Curtis, a gaming analyst with Nomura Securities, wrote in his report.

Curtis said Nevada, California and Illinois could also be among the first states to have online poker games go live.

The spark has been the US Justice Dept. finding that the Interstate Wire Act of 1961 — the federal law that has kept online gambling at bay — only applied to sports gambling.

“This has opened the floodgates for states to set up online poker laws so they can offer it through their own lottery systems, without any federal involvement,” said analyst Roger Gros, publisher of Global Gaming Business.

New Jersey collected $2.6 billion in 2011 alone from lottery tickets. Its legislature, and that of New York, are expected to take up bills about online poker and other gaming issues in coming months.

Gros said that Nevada and California are considering a joint poker room that would create a huge betting pool “in the billons.”

He said that poker bets across state lines wouldn’t be a problem for state lotteries because they already run multi-state games, such as Mega Millions and Powerball.