You Gotta Know When to Hold 'Em

The Poker Players Alliance, an advocacy group for poker enthusiasts, is on the hunt for some good legal minds with an affinity for five-card draw. The group has just started a litigation support network to help its nearly 1 million members parse through federal and state gambling regulations and to provide attorney referrals to members who find themselves with the deck stacked against them, so to speak.

Former Sen. Alfonso D’Amato (R-N.Y.), who is the chairman of the alliance and has been playing since college, says it’s important for players to have a network they can turn to with questions about the law. “This is a great American pastime which has been unfairly singled out by various groups that say it’s a scourge. Well it’s not a scourge. It’s a game of skill,” he says. D’Amato’s poker game of choice? High Low.

Patrick Fleming, a poker player and solo practitioner in New Hampshire, heads up the fledgling litigation support network and hopes to sign up attorneys in all 50 states to provide advice and representation. “There’s a lot of similarity between poker and litigation,” says Fleming, who prefers Texas Hold ‘Em. “Poker is a game of trying to outsmart your opponent using limited information and that describes most of my trials.”

Indeed, two high-powered D.C. litigators and avid poker players (see this Legal Times piece), Thomas Goldstein of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and Kenneth Adams of Dickstein Shapiro, represented the alliance and a professional poker player in a 2007 tax case before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. But Adams, a no limit Hold ‘Em fan who is also on the board of directors for the World Poker Association, says that for legal problems at the state and local level it’s generally best to find local counsel.

And here’s a Law Blog link to some Harvard law profs protesting the Massachusetts governor all for the love of poker.