Boldly going where no tribe has gone before, the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel is days from launching PrivateTable.com. In the Iipay Nation’s 
viewpoint, tribal sovereignty overrides California law, permitting it to go it alone as an i-poker provider. The idea is to limit players to ones within California boundaries, so PrivateTable must have a lot of confidence in its geolocation software.
Poker is permissible as a Class II game under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and the Iipay Nation is counting on this loophole being big enough for its online games to slip through. Also, i-poker isn’t specifically forbidden in California, another loophole the Iipay will be exploiting. (The site will be poker-only, to avoid having to make a compact with the state.) The physical servers will be across the country, in the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake. Punters will be able to pay either by credit card or Bitcoin.
* In a less-controversial development, the El Cortez has come under the umbrella of Ultimate Gaming, the Internet-gambling arm of Station Casinos. Once you create an online account, you can make deposits or cash out at the El Cortez cage. It certainly puts a contemporary twist on a property we’ve always thought of as a throwback in all the best ways.
* “Even if the Control Board’s position is that married couples cannot be sufficiently separated while marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, the fact remains that, in this case and at this point in time, no laws have been broken, no incidence of a gaming violation has occurred, and no complaint has been filed,” said Bruce Familian, still gobsmacked by the Nevada Gaming Control Board‘s denial of his restricted-gaming application. Not only that, the NGCB is telling Familian’s current customers to find a new slot-route operator.
Familian held an 8% stake in medicinal-marijuana dispensary GB Sciences Nevada but liquidated it to his wife. However, that’s not enough separation for the NGCB, leading Familian to complain that it “violated the standard of due process.” He’s hoping to obtain a reversal from the Nevada Gaming Commission but he’s not on the agenda for its next hearing.
“Our notice reaffirms what federal law clearly states. Regardless of whatever legal measures are taken to separate the finances and businesses between spouses, the fact remains that a licensee would be married to an intentional violator of federal criminal law,” NGCB Chairman A.G. Burnett wrote to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “In this instance, a restricted applicant was approved for its gaming devices but a warning was issued to them not to utilize a slot route operator whose wife wishes to engage in what amounts to a federal violation.”
It looks pretty clear that the Familians are going to have choose between slots and pot.
