Poker in New Hampshire

Poker in New Hampshire

The gambling industry has found a friendly environment in New Hampshire. Thus, poker in New Hampshire thrives.

While Puerto Rico, a US autonomous region and not a state, hosted the first lottery 30 years ago, in 1964, the state of Nevada is the first in the US to establish a state lottery.

On the other hand, New Hampshire was the first state on the continental United States’s eastern seaboard to implement a state-wide lottery. When the New Hampshire Sweepstakes first began, the numbers weren’t chosen by randomly selecting them from a bowl of numbered balls but rather by betting on the outcomes of horse races. Strangely enough, the winning numbers were the same as the winning horse numbers at the races held at Rockingham Park in Salem.

In 2019, New Hampshire made a huge step forward in another form of gambling by legalizing sports betting at brick-and-mortar establishments. Ten retail sportsbooks opened for business in the state within a short time frame.

With the help of the New Hampshire Lottery, the online fantasy sports platform and sportsbook DraftKings launched the state’s first sportsbook in Manchester. After a year of planning, in October of 2020, the New Hampshire Lottery hired its first filmmaker of sports gambling.

You don’t have to be a gambling aficionado or a lottery buff to enjoy your time in this state. Thankfully, the locals also have access to a wide variety of brick-and-mortar poker rooms. For a state with a population of only 1.3 million, Nevada has an impressive “spread,” with eight legal casinos and a total of 114 active poker tables, according to Wolrdcasinodirectory.com.

Quick Summary

• 1,360 thousand people
• Concord is the Capital.
• Money in U.S. dollars ($)
• NW is the shorthand for New Hampshire.
• UTC+5 is the time zone designation.

Where You Can Play Poker in Casinos:

• Lebanon Poker Room
• The Brook Casino
• Filotimo Casino & DraftKings Sports Book
• Chasers Poker Room and Casino

New Hampshire’s Most Notable Poker Players

Concord, New Hampshire, is the state capital, and that’s where Howard Lederer was born.

During the course of his career, he finished in the money in more than $6.5 million worth of live tournaments. In addition, he was a guest on legendary poker television shows such as Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker, and the NBC Heads-up Championship (which he won in 2007). He has won two gold bracelets at the World Series of Poker.

Unfortunately, none of the aforementioned is what he is best known for in the poker world. Instead, his role as a manager at Full Tilt during the illegal money mismanagement scandal led to the poker room’s second closure after the infamous Black Friday events of 2011.

Annie Duke (whose last name is also Lederer) is Lederer’s younger sister and a professional poker player in her own right.

With one WSOP bracelet to her name, she has amassed a live tournament winnings total of $4,270,000. Her final year as a professional poker player was 2012. As the official spokesman for UltimateBet, a poker site that also closed after Black Friday, she was affected by the event.

Unfortunately, Hendon does not list any of the siblings as New Hampshire players. Thus, a man named Dan Chalifour from Spofford, New Hampshire, with a total of $741,666 in earnings, tops the site’s all-time money list for the state. To the tune of $88,930, he finished eighth in the $3,500 No Limit Hold’em event at the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown in April 2019. He has never won more money at a single live tournament than he did in that one.

In-Person Poker in the Granite State

Regulation of Live Poker in New Hampshire

Games of chance are illegal under New Hampshire law, specifically Section 287-D. It begins with a rundown of the various forms of illegal gambling in the state and the penalties for each, but it ends with some wiggle room in the form of Section 287-D-31.

Dispenser devices approved by the commission and located at the regular meeting place or at an institute of contemporary, leased, or utilized by a charity cause licensed under RSA 287-E:20 are the first and most important.

It’s legal for casinos on cruise ships to dock in the state for up to 48 hours so they can serve residents. In addition to these exemptions, as we mentioned in the introduction, the bill passed in June 2019 made legal sports betting in 10 jurisdictions.

The New Hampshire Gaming Regulatory Oversight Authority is responsible for issuing licenses and enforcing regulations on the state’s gambling establishments.

Rooms Offering Live Poker in New Hampshire

Seabrook, New Hampshire’s Brook Casino, features a poker room with a respectable number of cash games. There is a mixed game table with $2/$4 stakes, as well as $1/$2, $2/$5, and $5/$10 No Limit Hold’em.

All-in-pot-limit-hold’em (NLHE) tournaments with $30 to $100 buy-ins are held daily.

The Chasers Poker Room and Casino can be found in the old New Hampshire city of Salem. There are $1/$2, $2/$5, and $5/$10 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) cash games, $3/$6 Limit Hold’em (LHE), $2/$2 PLO, and $5/$10 PLO Limit games available. One of the tables features a mixed game of NLHE and PLO for $2/$5. You can win up to $1,500 an hour in one of their generous high-hand promotions.

You can get in on the poker action in two other New Hampshire locations: Lebanon Poker Room in Lebanon and Filotimo Casino & DraftKings Sports Book in Manchester.

New Hampshire Gambling Halls & Poker Parlors

State of New Hampshire Legalizes Online Poker

As of January 1, 2019, betting with real money on sports over the internet is legal. That’s encouraging news for poker players and across New Hampshire poker sites, and it’s a step in the right direction.

Online gambling, including poker and casinos, is unfortunately not legal in this state at this time. So if you’re a New Hampshire resident and you want to play online poker, you’ll need to do what the rest of the United States does and use a virtual private network (VPN) or unregulated grey-market app.