![]() Over objections from state officials, Lessin steered the regulations toward maximum profitability for the charitable gaming industry, prompting the General Assembly to nullify the poker regulations the Lessin-led board approved in late 2020. But as that process got underway, VDACS officials clashed repeatedly with board chairman Chuck Lessin, a Richmond bingo hall owner who was planning to launch his own poker room. The law authorizing charitable poker left it to the Charitable Gaming Board to write more detailed regulations for how the poker tournaments would work. The General Assembly opened the door to state-sanctioned poker games as a way to give the charitable gaming industry, perhaps best known for fading bingo halls, a chance to reinvigorate itself as sports betting, casinos and horse-racing themed slots parlors arrived in the state. “The fine gives a small agency a big stick,” she said. The steep fines the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services will soon be able to assess against operators who run afoul of the General Assembly’s rules, McNeill said, were a way to bring a stop to that. “It is the wild west out here today,” McNeill said, saying unlicensed poker games were happening with no consequences because police have “better things to do” than go after charity poker. Lawyers for the state argued the new laws represented the General Assembly’s effort to get a handle on an industry that was operating with virtually no oversight under rules written by members of the state Charitable Gaming Board who stood to profit from poker.Įrin McNeill with the Virginia Attorney General’s Office repeated a phrase the judge used earlier in the day, when Shockley denied the bond appeal of a man accused of firing a gun in the air and said, “This isn’t the wild west.” “I just told 71 people they’re not going to have a job,” Tejchman said after the ruling. Tejchman, the general manager of the Beach Poker Room in Virginia Beach, said the outcome will push poker out of the safer environments those poker rooms offered and back into illegal house games. It’s unclear how the handful of charity poker rooms that have opened in Virginia over the last few years will respond, but the immediate consequences could be dire. “’Cause … well … I should keep my mouth shut.” “Hopefully the General Assembly will get these things straightened out,” the judge said. But Shockley suggested the legislature had made a mess, saying the state is seeing some “very strange and very contradictory things sometimes coming out of Richmond.” Virginia Beach Circuit Court Judge Anne Bonwill Shockley denied the request for an emergency injunction, saying Petersen and his clients hadn’t convinced her they had a clear chance to win on the merits of the case. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, asked a judge Thursday for an emergency order suspending enforcement of those fines and requiring the state to start acting on long-stalled applications for poker licenses. Spearheading a lawsuit on behalf of Billy the Kidden Rescue and the poker operation that sends it roughly $500 a week, Sen. But after a lengthy dispute over how the games should be regulated and alleged self-dealing by key players in the charitable gaming industry, the General Assembly quashed the poker rollout and passed new legislation that effectively forces unlicensed poker rooms to shut down Friday or run the risk of crippling fines. Virginia legalized charity Texas Hold ’em poker tournaments in 2020. And the law won.Ī cat-focused animal rescue in Virginia Beach went to court Thursday to try to block a General Assembly-ordered crackdown on charitable poker games from taking effect Friday, when a new law will kick in threatening unlicensed poker rooms with fines of $25,000 to $50,000 per violation. VIRGINIA BEACH - Billy the Kidden fought the law. ![]()
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