A bunch of my friends and I were thinking of hosting a poker tournament with a PS3 for the winner. We were going to charge a buy in and give away a % of the winnings to the winner and top players. Is this legal or not (for California)?

Originally I was thinking it was because people enter other tournaments, like sports or video games, where there is an entrance fee, and the winner takes a % of the pot. This would be no different, but poker is a gambling game.

Anyways, I don’t want to do anything illegal so hopefully someone knows the answer. I was planning on opening it up to the public because most of my friends don’t play poker as far as I know.

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