A North American Online Poker Update: Maine, Virginia, and More

Maine: Online Poker Legalized

On January 10th, 2026, Maine became the ninth state to legalize online poker, joining Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The bill, now law, regulates which providers are going to expand into the state and partner with one of the four tribes eligible for license, meaning that there will be at most 4 providers of online poker in Maine. 

The biggest obstacles right now is that this legislation did not explicitly allow Maine to join MSIGA, the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement, which would allow players to play online poker with players outside the state. The regulation also needs to be drafted, meaning that online poker will not officially be legal until the end of 2026, if not 2027 and if that happens, it may be limited given that the population of the state is roughly 1.4 million people. 

Long story short: don’t expect online poker to be live in Maine this year.

Virginia: #10?

With the news of Maine legalizing online poker, news came that a bill was being introduced in Virginia to bring virtual gaming to the state. It was only seven years ago, in 2019 that brick and mortar casinos were allowed in the state, while 2020 brought sports betting. However, any prospects for online poker looked dead, until now. We covered the introduction of Bill 161 in detail a little while ago and you can read that article here.

If things progress positively, it could eventually result in Virginia having up to 15 platforms in the state. As is, this bill would allow iGaming to join MSIGA, meaning that the eight million people in Virginia would have access to the shared liquidity of online poker with Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia. This could create a significant market for online poker, bolster prize pools considerably, and further strengthen the regulated online poker market in the US.

Ontario, Canada: Fenced-in No More?

One of the biggest regulated poker markets, and one of the most successful since launch, is in Ontario, Canada. The 16 million people in Ontario essentially have access to all the major iGaming companies and online platforms, but have been closed off from the global player pools since launching in 2022. 

This hasn’t stopped significant events to happen in the province however. PokerStars awarded Platinum Passes to a group of players leading up to the 2023 PSPC, while GGPoker was initially branded WSOP.ca and has held online ring and bracelet events, as well as provided satellite opportunities to the WSOP in Las Vegas and in Toronto, and even went as far as branding the newest poker room in Toronto in 2025.

In February, 2024 the Ontario Government filed a reference question with the Ontario Court of Appeal asking if violations to the Criminal Code of Canada would occur if Ontario residents were allowed to participate in peer-to-peer gaming online, both with players outside of Ontario, and outside of Canada. In layman terms, essentially asking if it was legal to allow Ontario to play online poker with the world. 

It took until November, 2025 for the Ontario Court of Appeal to issue its verdict, but in a 4 to 1 decision, agreed that provincially regulated online gaming operators could allow players to participate in these games with players all over the world, provided that the oversight of the AGCO was preserved.

This means that you could see players from every Canadian province playing in the same online poker tournaments in the future, but like Maine and Virginia, changes are not going to come soon. The AGCO would need to draft a revision to the current regulations, the online operators would need to agree to this, update their platforms that are specific to Ontario, and then integrate back into the global pool.  It’s expected to take months to years for any Ontario player to see a change, but the framework is in place that if the operators and players want to rejoin the ranks of the world, they could. That in itself might be the hardest part to overcome.

US Tax Law: Is a Change Coming?

Finally, we talked at length about how the Big Beautiful Bill could single handedly kill US sports betting, gambling and poker with its changes to the tax laws for professional gamblers. On January 12th, 2026, Congress saw a bill dubbed the FULL HOUSE Bill that would restore the tax rules to allow individuals to deduct 100% of their gaming losses against their winnings for tax purposes. 

Now the process of getting a bill passed into law is not an easy one. A congressional committee has been assigned to review the bill, research it, and potentially modify it before approving and sending it back to the House of Representatives where it would be debated and voted on. From there, the Senate would get their hands on it, debating it further and voting to pass it along to President Trump who could sign it into law, or, veto it, killing the changes. 

Trump has publicly said that he’s interested in fixing this, so it’s not likely to be vetoed, but the process to get this amendment to the BBB has been slower than poker players would have liked. There was considerable noise among prominent law makers in 2025 that this add-on was unjust and needed to be fixed, but it’s only now that pen went to paper. 

Time will tell if this actually comes to fruition, but poker players in the US have hope that this will be corrected before the end of the year. Whether the bill signed before the WSOP remains to be seen.

We’ll keep you updated on the progress that Maine, Virginia, Ontario, and the US Government make this year and if any other states decide to throw their hat into the online poker ring!