By Gene Huntington, Administrator
The Gambling Control Division
In recent weeks, the Gambling Control Division has received questions about card games and tournaments held in private homes or private buildings.
What is allowed and what is illegal?
The short answer is that you can have a card game with your friends in your home as long as no one is making a profit from conducting the card game.
What you cannot do is have a card game in your home or another private place, if the game is operated in a commercial manner or is in any fashion open to the public.
In Section 23-5-112 (33) MCA, Montana law makes a distinction between public and private gambling:
"(33) 'Public gambling' means gambling conducted in:
"(a) a place, building, or conveyance to which the public has access or may be permitted to have access;
"(b) a place of public resort, including but not limited to a facility owned, managed, or operated by a partnership, corporation, association, club, fraternal order, or society, including a religious or charitable organization; or
"(c) a place, building, or conveyance to which the public does not have access if players are publicly solicited or the gambling activity is conducted in a predominantly commercial manner."
This definition sets out where you can conduct public gambling as opposed to defining what the limitations are on private gambling.
If you are conducting public gambling, you must have a license.
If you are conducting gambling in a private place but you publicly solicit players to come to that private place, it becomes public gambling. If a player invites other players in a licensed card room to "come over to my place" to continue the game at closing time, the player is soliciting the players for public gambling.
Any kind of card tournament that invites players who are strangers to the owner of the property, would be considered soliciting players for public gambling.
If you have a card game in a private place but conduct the game "in a predominantly commercial manner," you have a public gambling operation.
The Gambling Control Division holds that a "commercial manner" occurs when:
--someone is making money off the card game, other than his or her winnings;
--someone is collecting a "rake" or paying a licensed card dealer, or
--all of the buys, re-buys and fees for the card tournament are not awarded as prizes.
If you have questions about conducting a private card game, please call the Gambling Control Division at 444-1972.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, February, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.