Poker in GA - Options To Play Live, Online & Charity

APC’s Guide to Online Poker in Georgia

Is Online Poker Legal in Georgia? (Yes)
I should state first that I am not an attorney nor is anything you read here to be considered legal advice. Do your one due diligence and only play poker with money you can afford to lose.

With that said – Yes, you can play online poker legally in Georgia.

You can join an online poker site, make a deposit with a credit card, cash transfer, crypto or some other way and play real money poker online.

I’ll quickly go over the strong points of each of these sites below.

Can You Play Online Poker In Georgia? (Yes)

Yes. You can play poker online for real money without breaking any laws in Georgia.

There are a handful of legit real money online poker rooms that you can join right now.

I’ll list them below and then go into a little more detail on each of them to help you decide where to join.

1. Bovada Poker

Bovada Poker has been one of my long time favorite online poker sites. I like their underlying efforts to protect the recreational player.

The quick things you may want to know is that Bovada offers the largest USA facing poker network (along with sister site Ignition) and they pioneered anonymous online poker. You do not have a unique screen name and are just a seat number. This way professionals can not data mine your playstyle and have it available for them to use against you. It levels the playing field and gets rid of the effectiveness of helper software like HUDS.

Bovada Poker is also ideal for players who want to bet sports as well as play poker from the same account. Bovada is on the same network as Ignition and is the more well known brand as they spun off of Bodog back when Bodog left the USA market many years ago. The Bovada poker client has the highest volume of players from any of the US facing sites. Great cash games and tournaments available around the clock. They only offer anonymous poker as a way to combat the HUD software that pro’s use to know every stat about your game at their finger tips. Bovada was the first online site to use this revolutionary tactic to combat many of the issues that plagued online poker (pro’s using HUD’s and bum-hunting software. It’s very rec friendly which is good for everyone, us recreational players included.

You can learn more about them in my in-depth Bovada poker review) where I cover everything you wanted to know about this site and more.

2. Betonline Poker

Betonline Poker – This site is top choice for credit card deposit success rates from people in GA (just get international ready cards) and your deposit will likely work at Betonline even if it has failed in the past at other sites like ACR. They also offer bad beat jackpots if that is your thing. There is less volume here than at the top 3 sites but the highest success rate for credit card deposits make this a top choice if using crypto isn’t your thing.

3. Ignition Poker

Ignition Casino – as mentioned, this is the sister site to Bovada. Things are the same here as there except Ignition offers larger bonuses, freerolls and a bit more promotions than sister site Bovada. Ignition Poker is best for people looking for big bonuses. You can get a whopping $1500 poker bonus here with a 150% bonus offer for poker. I really like Ignition as it offers the same anonymous poker as Bovada as they are on the same network and Ignition has bigger poker bonuses. The mobile client works great on all phones with no app needed for download. Payouts are fast and the games are arguably the best for Georgia poker players looking for online action.

4. Sportsbetting Poker

Sportsbetting Poker – This is the sister site of Betonline and just offers a different set of bonuses. It’s a quality site with integrated sportsbook, casino and poker room. I like these sites if you are looking for non-anonymous online poker and plan on depositing with a credit card or cash transfer.

5. Americas Cardroom

We (the Atlanta Poker Club) have been playing at Americas Cardroom in our Sunday night private online tournament for over 10 years now. ACR is the flagship brand on the Winning Poker Network and they boast some of the best perks and tournament series you can play in like the Venom series with millions up for grabs.

Americas Cardroom has cash games starting at $.01/.02 blinds and go up to $200/400. Traffic and volume is second best for US players (Ignition and Bovada network has more players). There was a full 9-handed table of $15/30 going at 10am when I was looking around at the higher stakes (that I never play). They have jackpot tourneys, SNG’s, zoom poker and a casino and sportsbook, although there are way better options for casino and sports bettors in Georgia (listed below). There is PLO, PLO8 and Stud and Stud Hi/Lo offerings. They accept players from all around the world, something like all but a small handful of countries (think N. Korea). Deposits and withdrawals are fastest and easiest with crypto (bitcoin), however there are other options including credit cards, cash transfer and more once you create your ACR account and visit the cashier.

Playing Online Poker From the U.S (Georgia) – Details You Should Know

Which Online Poker Sites Do Not Allow GA Players?

You can not join sites like PokerStars, Party Poker, WSOP, William Hill, Caesars, 888, or any of the regulated poker sites that operate in New Jersey, Nevada the other handful of regulated states that offer online poker.

Those sites can only accept players who are within the geographic border of the state they are licensed in. Georgia is not one of those states.

Each state has to essentially opt-in through their legislation and political process. We in the peach state are relegated to the legal offshore poker sites and casinos serving the rest of the USA. (those I linked above).

The good news is that the offshore sites have more players, better game selection, way better promotions and they have been serving the US for many, many years.

Live Poker in Atlanta and Georgia

If you are looking to play live poker you have a few choices. Each come with different pro’s and con’s. Let’s take a look at what kind of poker you can actually play.

Bar Poker – this is the style or flavor of poker the Atlanta Poker Club offers as we believe it is the closest thing we can get to tournament poker in a casino that is actually legal in Georgia. How leagues like the Atlanta Poker Club work in general are as follows:

Free to play
Win bar cash or a ‘smaller’ amount of free roll money. Many games in the APC are $100+ up to the occasional $500 prize pool.
If you buy food and or drinks, you get free bonus chips along with your order that you can use in the tournament. At the APC we have a limit of $30 worth of food and or drinks that will qualify for free bonus chips. This is to keep people from ‘buying their way to the final table’ and keeping it competitive for all involved.
Create an organized league with monthly, seasonal and yearly competitions (you can view our league structure here if you wish)

For organized, legal, competitive and fun poker tournaments in Georgia, a good bar poker league is recommended. If you are near any of our locations and want to try it out, please do so. New players are always welcome to APC daily/nightly events! We have full time dealers and an on-site tournament director who makes sure the game runs smoothly and fairly.

Charity Poker – Is It Legal for Georgia? (Not Sure)

If you’ve looked around the Georgia poker scene you’ve certainly came across poker tournaments that are operated by a charity, 501c3 organization.

These organizations offer poker events with optional charity donations. These donations appear to go towards building the prize pool for the evening (as the prize pool changes based on how many donations are made) as well as paying for the operation and expenses of running the event itself.

Right now these events happen across much of Gwinnett county and the surrounding areas down into Atlanta. There are a small handful operators offering these games. (not the APC)

Whether or not these are legal is a question for the courts if it comes to that.

According to a 2013 report by “ProBono Partnership Atlanta (PDF) specifically says that:

At a typical poker tournament, a participant pays an entrance fee to the nonprofit organizer of the event to play poker. The nonprofit awards prizes based on the outcome of the tournament and keep the money in excess of the prizes and operation costs.
Charitable poker tournaments organized in this way are illegal in Georgia regardless of the purpose of the tournament.

According to “ProBono Partnership Atlanta” these types of events are not legal, regardless of the charity using poker tournaments to raise money.

Georgia does have specific regulations on what forms of legal gambling are allowed. They are The Georgia Lottery, bingo and raffles (source GBI website).

As a player in these charity games I would not be too worried, but as an owner or employee I might be. Georgia has recently shut down both The Poker Room on Pleasant Hill and Little Kings and Queens in Buford.

Speaking of LKQ, they were a brick and mortar poker room offering tournaments and cash games. The way this worked is that each day you paid a fee and joined a private social club. In this club you could rent a chair at a poker table for $15 / hour and play in a game of poker that did not have any rake taken out of the pot. You rented your seat by the hour as well as paid a daily membership fee to join the private club for that particular day.

You could not even tip the dealer with the same chips that you used playing the game with. You had to purchase tokens that could only be used to tip the dealer or the wait staff of floor people with.

It was glorious having a live cash room poker game here in our very own state. However just before their big fourth of July bash series they were shut down by Gwinnett P.D. You can see more about the charity poker room in Georgia that was recently shut down amid commercial gambling allegations.

Moose Lodges and American Legions – these venues seem to have more leeway than most when it comes to hosting poker games. I’ve seen poker played at Moose lodges as well as American Legions in different parts of the state. Real money games, both cash games and tournaments by these old dudes in the lodge and legion. I’m not knocking it and am all for it. These are very unlikely to be busted as long as the legion and the lodges are in charge of them.

Drive to A Casino – If you are in the Atlanta area, the closest casino with a poker room is Harrah’s Cherokee, NC. There is Pearl River in MS, Tunica, MS, Biloxi MS and a number of card rooms in Florida like Best Bet Jacksonville. Recent attempts to legalize aspects of gambling, paving the way for brick and mortar casinos to arrive have been shot down with various reasons over the past few years. It appears that Georgia is still firmly in the grasp of the religious right when it comes to things like gambling and controlling how other adults spend their hard earned money. There are currently no Alabama Poker games to be found, either.

Private home games – Your final options is to find a private home game. These are out there but it’s a who you know kind of thing. Talk to people and ask and perhaps you can get invited to one of these. Again as far as the legality of this, it’s a ‘who knows’ from us. Many claim that as long as the house is not taking a rake that it is not an illegal game. Others say that those are technically illegal but no one is going to worry about busting up a private home game between friends.

Georgia Gambling Legal Links

- Gambling as defined by the state of Georgia
- The LexisNexis results for Georgia codes for ‘gambling’ search.
- Georgia O.C.G.A. § 16-12-21 – Gambling
- Georgia Code Title 16 – Defining what Georgia says gambling is and the different types of gambling offenses.
- Nonprofit Bingo Games
- Bingo in Georgia – GBI claiming there are only three legal forms of gambling in Georgia. Bingo, Georgia Lottery and raffles.
- The Douglas County Sheriff explains the Raffle law in Georgia
- GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shows you how to apply for a Charity Bingo License in Georgia. He also re-iterates that the only legal gambling in Georgia is Bingo, lottery and raffles.

Playing Online Poker From Ga

The real crux of the situation is that there are plenty of offshore online poker sites that accept players from the state of Georgia. The challenge is getting money on and off the poker sites. This is a challenge that is overcome by using bitcoin or other crypto-currency.

The online poker sites listed above pay out in crypto. Bitcoin or a stable coin (that is paired 1:1 with the U.S dollar) is the payout method used by the above poker sites. The good news is that crypto is fast, easy and secure. It works 100% of the time once you are set up properly. If you are new to crypto and feel it’s too confusing for you to even want to try to get involved in then I HIGHLY recommend you check out this Grandparents Guide to Bitcoin. It’s not nearly as hard as you might think. You can follow along and get set up with a bitcoin wallet and safely buy your first portion of a bitcoin to get started.

Other Georgia Gambling – Sports Betting & Casino?

Georgia Sports Betting – no casinos or regulated sportsbetting allowed in Ga. But let’s be real – there are more local bookies taking action than you can shake a stick at. Just hang out at your local pub and get to know some regulars. I’m sure you can find a bookie. It’s not regulated or legal at all, but it’s readily available for cash business.

If you are like me and would rather bet from the comfort of your computer or phone then you can look at a couple of legit offshore options. If you want to place sports bets online from Georgia then I have a couple of very good and very reputable recommendations for you.

1. Bookmaker – this online bookie has been in business for over 25 years although they just started using the Bookmaker brand in 2007. They have early lines, accept tons of different wagers and excellent customer service. They accept bitcoin, credit cards, cash transfers and a good bit of other options as well including a myriad of other cryptocurrencies if you do not want to spend your Bitcoin. New bettors can snag a nice deposit bonus and there are on-going promotions (see the current bookmaker promo list here). I like how fast their lines appear and withdrawals are also lightning fast if using crypto.
2. Bovada – sports betting + poker all in one. You can bet every game, parlay and sport you can think of here. Bovada sprang forth from Bodog and have maintained a reputation of fairness. Plus they kick out personalized promotions and bonuses once they see what kind of bets and gambles you like to make. I think you will be happy gambling at Bovada sportsbook.
3. Sportsbetting – it’s in the name. The main thing about Sportsbetting is how well they process credit cards for deposits. If you have had trouble getting your CC to work at one of the other bookies then give Sportsbetting a shot. Solid bonuses, ton’s of betting options and a smooth interface make this site the home to tens of thousands of Georgia based sportsbettors.

If you want to gamble in the casino then Bovada and Sportsbetting are your better options. Bookmaker does have a casino but in my opinion it is less enjoyable than the others as it feels older and more clunky. The sportsbetting is top notch at Bookmaker but casino is lacking. Give the other two a shot if slots, blackjack (live blackjack option), roulette or any other of the gambling games strike your fancy.