Gambling Rules in SL-Grey Area?

I hope someone that actually knows the true answer can help me here.
Perhaps a Linden out there?
Months ago, as we all know, gambling was banned from SL.
No more slot machines and such. No more sploders either.
However, I see more and more casino type places and dance clubs
using both sploders, and also games they are calling "skill games",
yet they really are not.
One club for example has a game they call Demons, which seems exactly
like Slingo. It can even be put on automatic. So there is no skill
involved, it's all luck. Same with several other games out there in
world. Another game I have not tried but looks the same also is called Zyngo.
Sploders seem to be all over the place again and many owners of
these are making money from them. People pay in and are paid various
amounts when it goes off. Therefore it's a game of chance, which supposedly
is not allowed.
So my questions are these.
1. What exactly is allowed and isn't allowed?
2. How are owners of these so called "skill games"
and sploder type objects getting away with having them?(besides
the obvious, that they are "calling" them skill games and changing
the game's names lol)
3. If they really are not legal in SL, and I do play them, will
I be in trouble somehow with SL?

I ask these questions because I really want to know the answers. I didn't like that SL banned gambling. I liked to play games of both
skill and chance. I wish they were all allowed in SL. It just seems to be
such a grey area. Games such as I mentioned are popping up all over SL.
Thanx ahead of time for any feedback. WG

I looked through threads on here to see if there were others on this same topic, but I couldn't find any. If there are some, could someone please direct me? Thanx again ahead of time.

The police blotter (http://secondlife.com/community/blotter.php) almost always has somebody getting smacked for gambling violations - people can rename things all they want but if LL catches them, they will (or at least may) take action.

The support portal seems hosed right now but the gambling blog update is at http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/08/09/anti-gambling-policy-update-faq/ . I think that lays down most of the law.

Thank you for the links Meade. I read the anti-gambling policy and am surprised that so many people are doing this still, and getting away with it. I'm still not clear on what would happen to me personally or anyone who does play these games. If SL really wants these types of games banned I don't understand why they're still allowing so many to continue. They're either allowed or they're not. If they are, I wish they'd just lift the ban all together. Thanks again.

I read it too
And No the ban should never be lifted, the Ban benefits SL in so many ways....

My opinion is if you think it’s a grey area, then its black, I am sure you local gaming authority would agree

Shut them down

Every single "rule" in SL (and RL for that matter) is consistently broken until the people are caught.

I have finally, after over a year here, stopped being surprised by the number of TOS violations.

For the most part, there is never any effort to enforce the TOS unless someone reports it. People just get tired of reporting, or don't want to in the first place, so violators can often get away with it for a long time.

in another thread, i opened discussion about one in particular. i am readressing that same one now again, if you are interested in tracking the thread.

i am especially concerned that one fruit loop in LL allowed it, and i hope all the LL staff is not quite as ignorant as the one recently buffaloed.

"If SL really wants these types of games banned I don't understand why they're still allowing so many to continue". They are not, you are. If you find gambling going on some place and don't AR it you are as guilty as the Lindens for letting it go on. The Lindens can't patrol all of SL looking for possible gambling violations, they depend on the residents of SL to help them with this by ARing gambling.

Manstan,
What is AR'ing? And how do you go about doing that to report offenders?
If LL wants people and places who have gambling reported, then they should tell people how to report it. Thanks.

Well after consulting with a friend I have confirmed what I have sometimes suspected. Linden Lab personnel as a collective, is clueless about nature of these games. A friend of mine has had some correspondence with Ken Dreifach, the Deputy General Counsel for Linden Lab on these games. It seems Mr. Dreifach has no idea about what these games entail and specifically about the use of chance in the random generation of tiles and numbers for games like DMC and Zyngo. He actually stated that it was his understanding that games like Zyngo do not entail random number generation or elements of chance which shows how truly clueless he is about the nature of these games. If that's what we can expect from one of the legal officers of Linden Lab how can we expect any more from people further down the ladder? Perhaps we will see a change now that he has been educated on the matter but then again maybe not. It's been over a week since he was apprised of the true nature of these games and we still not only see them all over Second Life but also in the classifieds as well.

Abuse Report. its on the pie menu when you right click on a person or object.
i have never done one of these so I don't know exactly what it is, but as far as i am aware, you fill out a form and send it off to the lindens.

And then they ignore it because they illogically insist that the game does not involve elements of chance.

To really make some sense of this, you need to understand Linden's motivation behind their madness:

Gambling was not banned because Linden doesn't like gambling, or because they have some sort of moral issue with it. Gambling was banned because of concerns over the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (enacted in the United States), which prohibits the transfer of funds from a financial institution to an Internet gambling site.

Linden does not want Second Life to get defined as an Internet Gambling Site by the US Government. If that happened, US banks would be prohibited from transferring funds to Linden Lab, and consequently a good proportion of their user base would be unable to play. (I mean pay )

In reality, this is all about keeping up appearances. Linden is going through the motions so they can say that at the very least, the practice is prohibited within Second Life & not sanctioned by Linden Lab.

In short, if you report, they will arrest the usual suspects. If you and your friends really persist, they will arrest twice the usual number of suspects.

Unless they have a really, really clear-cut case on their hands they can't ignore. I AR'ed a case a while ago where everybody got a drop-down blue menu offering to take them to a clearly identified casino site as they tp'ed into a public sandbox. I didn't care about the gambling, mind you; I cared that they were so blatant it was like asking the feds to come shut SL down. It was gone the next day, except for a police blotter report of the 14-day suspension the Lindens hand out while they're going through the hoops to make a complete and permanent ban official.