Originally Posted by
ftpjesus
As we all know SWC was somewhat popular with some folks however the whole direct gambling thing was an issue and landed Micon with a felony gambling charge in NV.. I'm wondering if a poker site setup to allow people to buy chips and play online and say they could trade chips for gift cards and merchandise (such that could be obtained from say a discount shopping warehouse or like Amazon) would fit within the realm of legality as some skirt the laws as falling under sweepstakes rules in various states... As they would technically be able to obtain physical merchandise I would think it would be legal however one could make the argument that technically playing poker online and somebody winning those chips would amount to winning something of value and thus would be gambling.. Somebody came to me with the idea and I thought I would bounce it off some folks in here vs the brainless twine that inhabits 2+2 on most days.
theres your problem right there...
if I'm remembering correctly US players were asking Somerville to do some homegame on stars.net that gave out runitup gear for prizes, but pretty sure he said he couldn't do that because that would be considered "gambling" since somebody would be winning something of value...