A “notice of development of rulemaking” recently was published in the Florida Administrative Register, referring to an all-day workshop gambling regulators will hold January 4 to “update and clarify existing language” in the state’s rules on card games. The workshop will take place at the Fort Lauderdale office of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, which regulates gambling in Florida.
The changes under consideration note the dealer position in designated player games must “rotate around the card table in a clockwise fashion on a hand-by-hand basis to provide each player desiring to be the designated player an equal opportunity to participate.”
The Seminole Tribe of Florida recently sued the state contending certain designated player games were too similar to banked card games, like blackjack, that the tribe is allowed to exclusively offer in Florida under its state gaming compact. A federal judge ruled in favor of the tribe, which settled the case against the state while it was under appeal. A DBPR spokeswoman said updating the rules would “allow the division to move beyond pending litigation.”
Regulators had said some card rooms were bypassing state law by allowing third-party companies to buy their way into designated player games and using an employee to act as a virtual, non-rotating bank. An administrative law judge said that was a sham in which “the designated player is a player in name only. The existing operation of the games does no more than establish a bank against which participants play.”
