'Gaming den' warning as pubs are given go ahead to hold poker games

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Card shark: Laws that have banned games of chance played for money from pubs and bars will be lifted next year

Pubs will be allowed to stage poker games in the latest twist of Labour's liberalisation of the laws on drinking and gaming.

Laws that have banned games of chance played for money from pubs and bars will be lifted next year, Whitehall confirmed.

And although new regulations will insist that pub poker tables host only low-stakes games, there will be no policing of pub gambling to prevent stakes being raised to high levels.

Nor will there be controls to stop poker games involving drunken players running on for many hours in bars that now have the right to open around the clock.

In casinos, alcohol is not allowed at poker tables to discourage gamblers from getting into trouble because of heavy drinking.

And the introduction pub poker raises the possibility that criminals could be attracted to exploit the legal presence of gambling games in bars.

The decision to lift the ban met a scathing response from experts in gambling and addiction.

Professor Mark Griffiths, gambling expert at Nottingham Trent University, said: "I don't see how a pub is going to monitor the tables. I cannot see how this can be policed.

"Poker is very different from the dominos and cribbage that have been played in the past. This is a game that is glamourous, and where high stakes games are seen on television. Pub games will be dangerous for people who a susceptible to addiction."

Psychologist Professor Jim Orford of Birmingham University said: "This is being done to an unsuspecting public.

"The results of this new liberalisation are highly unpredictable. There are many people - more than ministers think - who do not approve of the extension of gambling and who understand that it can be dangerous."

The current rules on pub gaming date from the late 1960s and allow traditional pub games like cribbage and dominos. But landlords have had to ask special permission from magistrates before they can stage games of chance such as bingo, poker and bridge.

Labour's Gambling Act, which comes into force next year, will allow poker, as long as pub operators take no profit from the games.

Regulations will say stakes must be low, with a cap of possibly £10.

Casino games which involve a banker like pontoon, blackjack and roulette will still be banned.

However, the only body which can enforce the regulations will be licensing authorities - local councils which already say they are overworked in running the new licensing regime which brought in 24-hour drinking a year ago.

The new licensing rules mean that four fifths of all pubs and bars now close later than the traditional 11 pm and a fifth are open beyond 1 am.

But only 600 of the country's 82,000 pubs and bars have been brought before a licensing review committee for breaking rules since the new drink laws came into force - and only six have lost their right to sell drink.

A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which is supervising the introduction of the Gambling Act, said the new pub rules comply with the requirement that laws should protect the vulnerable while allowing people more choice in their leisure time.

She added: "To ban poker from pubs would risk encouraging unlawful games which would be difficult to control."

But Professor Griffiths said: "People get more reckless when they drink and play.

"That is why people are not allowed to drink when they play poker in a casino. There is a contradiction in these rules."

Tory Culture spokesman Hugo Swire joined the criticism. He said: "Yet again this Labour government seem intent on promoting an increase in gambling.

"The mix of gambling and alcohol in pubs is a heady cocktail that will do nothing to help tackle the problem of gambling addiction."

Professor Orford warned last week that the removal of restrictions on internet poker and gambling next year is likely to produce a million gambling addicts.

Ministers intend to use the Gambling Act as a platform to encourage offshore internet gambling firms to exploit the opportunity the new law gives them to base themselves in Britain

Latest estimates say that as many as six million people are now gambling on the internet every month.

 

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