Playing poker in your house? New bill would offer protection to North Carolina gamblers

North Carolinians may soon be able to raise the stakes of card games played in their homes and neighborhood clubhouses.

A House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday advanced a bill that would provide legal protection to people who gamble on card games, board games, dice or dominoes on private property. It’s currently illegal to bet money on such games, regardless of how much money is exchanged.

Enforcement of the law is rare, but Republican state Rep. David Willis says the bill is needed to protect people who are having harmless fun. Willis said he felt the need to file a bill after hearing of a dispute between one of his Union County constituents and their homeowners association.

The types of games people are playing in their homes do not need to be broken up by HOAs or law enforcement, Willis said.

“Nobody's betting the farm,” he said. “Nobody's losing a mortgage. Folks have been getting together and doing this long before any of us were alive and they’ll continue long after we're gone.”

The committee voted 7-3 to advance Willis’s bill to the House Rules Committee — but only after several members expressed concerns that it could expand organized gambling around the state.

State Rep. Dean Arp, a fellow Union County Republican, pointed to a part of the bill allowing gambling in a community clubhouse or “similar structure.”

“The way this bill is written … you can open this up to casino style gaming tables across the state, possibly inadvertently,” Arp said. He said he thinks the bill is unnecessary, adding: “I don't know of anybody who's been arrested” by playing games in private.

State Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, said she couldn’t support the bill as written, either.

“I appreciate what you're trying to do and I understand it's crazy that you can't play poker and exchange dollar bills or whatever the stakes are in your house or in your clubhouse,” Harrison said. “But at the same time, I do have concerns … about how this is being interpreted and potentially expanded to something that you all aren’t intending.”

Willis said he’d be willing to change the language of the bill to close any loopholes that might lead to the creation of gambling rings. He noted that the bill explicitly forbids slot machines and electronic gambling machines.

Willis’s proposal comes a year after state lawmakers made it legal to gamble on sports in North Carolina. Sports bettors wagered more than $5 billion in North Carolina last year.