How to Play Online Poker in Louisiana
Residents of Louisiana will be happy to know that for the most part, playing poker is acceptable. However, there are a few exceptions. Be sure to read these before playing a game of poker in the Bayou State.
** Disclaimer: It is your responsibility to know the exact laws in your state. Use of the information in this article is at your own risk. **
Home Poker Games in Louisiana
From the looks of it, playing home poker games in Louisiana should be fine. Here is a section of the state law to back that up:
Gambling is the intentional conducting, or directly assisting in the conducting, as a business, of any game, contest, lottery, or contrivance whereby a person risks the loss of anything of value in order to realize a profit.
As you can see, the law clearly targets “businesses.” So, you would be committing a crime only if you were to charge a fee (rake) to play in your game. As long as you don’t do that, you should be fine. If you do, you can be fined up to $500 and/or serve up to 6-months in jail. If you’re trying to illegally run a (poker/gambling) business, you can be fined up to $20,000 and may have to serve up to 5 years in prison.
Keep in mind too, that you’ll want to keep your home game out of sight (or play in games that are out of site). Gambling in public (or disturbing the peace via gambling in any way) will land you a fine of up to $500 and/or up to 6-months in jail.
Online Gambling in Louisiana
The only thing that Louisiana drops the hammer on is playing poker online. It’s illegal, and if caught gambling online, you’ll be fined up to $500 and/or have to serve up to 6-months in jail.
In many cases where it’s illegal to play online poker, you can’t even open an account at a poker site. However, in the few trial tests that I ran, you still could in Louisiana. This isn’t so you can play poker for real money — but so you can play for play money.
If you don’t have an account at a poker site online, we suggest you try out Lock Poker. Their play money games see a lot of traffic and there are incentives for accumulating a massive amount of play chips. You can learn more at www.LockPoker.net, Lock’s site dedicated to play money.
Live Casino Poker in Louisiana
Another option that you have in Louisiana is live poker. Only a few casinos have live poker, although that seems to be gradually increasing. If interested, here are a couple of casinos in Louisiana that offer live poker action:
- Cypress Bayou Casino: Cypress Bayou Casino spreads holdem, stud and omaha games. A couple things worth mentioning would be that they hold bounty tournaments and have 6-figure bad beat jackpots.
- Paragon Casino: Paragon Casino spreads holdem $2/$5 cash games and holdem tournaments. They also have a bad beat jackpot promotion.
Related "How To" Posts:
- How to Play Online Poker in Indiana
- How to Play Online Poker in Illinois
- How to Play Online Poker in Kentucky
Written by Matt Geer