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Cake Poker to Provide Interstate Poker on Tribal Lands

Tribal casinos in the United States are moving to offer interstate online poker, after an announcement that Cake Gaming has signed a licensing agreement to provide a network on Native American lands.

Cake signed a licensing agreement with Atlantis Internet Group Corp. on Wednesday to allow casino patrons at tribal casinos to play online poker on tribal lands. The agreement will affect more than 30 states where tribal casinos currently operate. The licensing agreement is backed by the National Indian Gaming Commission, the United States regulatory agency responsible for overseeing Indian gaming. The network will operate under the name of the “Tribal Gaming Network.”

The biggest news of the announcement is not the fact that Americans can play online poker as part of this network — Cake Poker already takes U.S. clients, one of a handful of online poker rooms, like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, that does. But this will be the first online poker network that will base any of its operations on U.S. soil since the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act went into effect.

It appears that the major players here do not fear that the network will be deemed illegal under that law — the NIGC, a part of the government, gave the go-ahead to Atlantis to operate in the United States in 2009. According to a press release on the announcement, the UIGEA “provided certain exceptions for Indian Casinos and Intertribal Internet gaming and states that pass Intrastate Internet gaming legislation.” The Tribal Gaming Network will operate separately from the Cake network itself, so the two player bases will not be playing against each other. The fact that the Tribal Gaming Network will operate on a private network — a “Wide Area Progressive” network — makes it different from simply playing online poker, which is available to anyone with an internet connection.

The announcement comes at an interesting time for online poker. There is currently legislation in the United States Congress that would legalize and regulate online poker. That bill has passed a committee vote, but it hasn’t been to a vote to the full House of Representatives or Senate, yet, and is still pretty far from becoming a law. In the last year, several states, such as California and New Jersey, have attempted to work on laws that would create “intrastate” poker networks for only those states’ residents. However, there has been little progress on those efforts.

The move also could be positioning Cake and Atlantis to be players if and when the federal bill becomes law. It’s unclear how the proposed federal legislation would affect companies like Cake, PokerStars, and Full Tilt — some contend that all of them have been operating illegally in the United States, and they might have a problem when it comes to being licensed under the law. The signing of the deal gets Cake a foot in the door in the United States, legally.

Cake has been in the news several times of late. Most recently, Victory Poker has agreed to join the Cake network to add to its international player base. Cake has also come under scrutiny of late for problems with its encryption system, which left it vulnerable to hackers and possible superuser accounts.

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