The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, which oversees gambling, recently published proposed rules on designated player card games. The changes propose that “card games that utilize a designated player shall be governed by the cardroom operator’s house rules.”
In addition, the changes specify house rules must including assuring the dealer position “rotates 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.”
Also, the changes are meant to “allow the division to move beyond pending litigation in order to open the card room rules to future development designed to ensure that the rules are closely aligned to statute.”
The litigation refers to the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s lawsuit against the state, in which the tribe claimed certain designated player games were too similar to banked card games, like blackjack, which the tribe offers exclusively in an agreement with the state. A federal judge sided with the tribe, the state appealed and the cased was settled.
DBPR spokeswoman Suellen Wilkins said, “The Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering takes very seriously its duty to ensure card games are played in accordance with Florida law.”
Regulators alleged certain card rooms, during designated player games, violated state law by allowing employees of third-party companies to act as a virtual bank that did not rotate among players. An administrative law judge said in that situation, “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.”
