Raynham Park Poker Room Closes Amid Legal Questions

A poker room being run at a former dog track closed its doors Thursday, after questions arose about the legality of the room’s operations. The room was closed voluntarily, and not by order of the Attorney General’s office.

The poker room was located at Raynham Park, a former dog track in Massachusetts. The room offered players nearly 30 tables of poker, blackjack and roulette games, though the room was primarily used for hosting poker tournaments.

The room at Raynham Park opened in January in order to take advantage of a state law that allows for charity gambling. The law allows any charity to run up to three poker tournaments per year.

But the Raynham Park room was open far more frequently than that law would seem to allow. Operators JRM Charitable Gaming used a list of dozens of charities on a rotating basis, giving each charity 25% of the revenues made on the days in which that charity was the sponsor. Some of these charities included sports teams and social clubs, according to a report on Boston.com.

However, while that may have seemed like a way to skirt the intentions of the charitable gaming law, several of the practices at Raynham Park appear to be beyond the scope of what is allowed under it. For one, the charitable gaming law only allows cash payouts of up to $25, far below the sums being paid in the poker room. In addition, all of the money raised from gambling must go to charity, while JRM is only giving a percentage of the funds over to the charitable groups associated with their room.

Finally, the law states that only members of the charity running the tournament may work at the gambling event, and that they cannot be paid for working at the tournaments. In contrast, JRM reportedly has around 60 paid employees working for them.

The decision to shut down the poker room came just over an hour before it was scheduled to open Thursday. The decision was reached mutually by track owner George Carney and JRM poker room operator Gerald Venezia, after meeting with a lawyer from the Attorney General’s office. But Venezia says that they’re not planning on staying closed for long.

“We're not going to throw in the towel,” he said. “We’re going to continue having discussions with them and determine if we can come to some kind of middle ground.”