Case: M/s City Soul Hospitality LLP v. State of Haryana & Ors.,CWP-15200-2026,

Decided with Maaya Gaming and Technologies Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Haryana & Ors., CWP-20897-2026

Court: High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh

Date of decision: 17 August 2026

Introduction

Haryana enacted a new public gambling statute in 2025. Almost immediately, the statute became a reason to pause rather than a reason to decide.

Two commercial operators in Gurugram had taken premises to facilitate physical, offline poker and rummy. They sought permission. The Deputy Commissioner of Police did not say the games were illegal. He did not record that a common gaming house was being run. He simply deferred permission until the State Government notified games of skill under the Haryana Prevention of Public Gambling Act, 2025.

On 17 August 2026, the Punjab and Haryana High Court set those orders aside.

The judgment is important for a reason that goes beyond poker. It draws a line between an enabling proviso and a compulsory waiting list. If the statute already defines a game of skill, the police cannot keep a business in the corridor because a gazette notification has not yet been issued.

This article reads the judgment in full — facts, statute, precedent, constitutional holding, and the conditions on which permission now rests.

THE TWO PETITIONS

Both writs raised the same legal question on similar facts. The Court noticed the facts from CWP-15200-2026.

City Soul Hospitality LLP, a limited liability partnership, had taken on lease Plot No. 83, Sector 56, More Market, Gurugram, to carry on the business of games of skill — rummy, poker and other such games. Maaya Gaming and Technologies Private Limited was similarly placed.

The impugned order dated 06.05.2026, passed by the Deputy Commissioner of Police, deferred permission to operate a physical club. The stated reasons were:

1. the Government of Haryana had not yet invoked its power under the 2025 Act to notify any game as a game of skill;
2. an opinion had been received from the office of the Advocate General of Haryana; and
3. permission would therefore wait until a notification identifying games of skill under Section 2(g) of the 2025 Act.

In the connected petition, permission was deferred on 21.05.2026 on the same reasoning.

The petitioners asked that the orders be quashed and that the respondents be directed not to interfere with the lawful business of facilitating physical or offline games of skill.

What The Parties Argued

Senior counsel for City Soul Hospitality, Mr. Chetan Mittal, and counsel for Maaya Gaming, submitted that the proposed business had nothing to do with gambling or betting. Rummy and poker are games of skill. Success depends on knowledge and effort, not chance.

For rummy they relied on the Supreme Court in State of Andhra Pradesh v. K.S. Sathyanarayana, AIR 1968 SC 825. For poker they relied on Law Commission of India Report No. 276 (July 2018), Legal Framework: Gambling and Sports Betting including in Cricket in India.

The State, through the Additional Advocate General, accepted that a notification under Section 2(1)(g) was under consideration. Until then, it was said, the games had not been notified as games of skill. They “may involve substantial element of chance.” The operators should wait for regulatory clarity.

That last submission is familiar to anyone who has handled a gaming file. Chance is present in every shuffled deck. Indian law has never treated the presence of chance as the test. The test is preponderance.

The 2025 Act, read as it is written

Section 2(1) of the Haryana Prevention of Public Gambling Act, 2025, so far as material, provides:

(f) “game of chance” means any game where there is a preponderance of chance over skill;

(g) “game of skill” means any game where there is preponderance of skill over chance, which include game where success depends principally upon the superior knowledge, training, attention, experience and adroitness of the player, despite there being an element of chance:

Provided that the State Government may, notify any game to be included as game of skill.

The Court read this provision with some care, and the reading is the centre of the judgment.

The main clause already defines a game of skill. It expressly contemplates an element of chance. Chance is not excluded. What is required is preponderance of skill — superior knowledge, training, attention, experience and adroitness.

The proviso is only an enabling power. The Government may notify a game to be included as a game of skill. There is no mandate to publish a list before any skill game can be played commercially. “Include” is an enlarging expression. A notification can add a named game to the skill category. Silence does not convert a skill game into a game of chance.

Once that construction is accepted, the DCP’s order loses its legal footing. The authority treated a power to notify as a condition precedent. The Act does not say so.

Rummy: the Supreme Court has already spoken

The High Court did not rewrite the law on rummy. It quoted paragraph 12 of K.S. Sathyanarayana:

Rummy requires a certain amount of skill because the fall of the cards has to be memorised and the building up of rummy requires considerable skill in holding and discarding cards. It is not a game of entire chance. It is mainly and preponderantly a game of skill. The chance in rummy is of the same character as the chance in a deal at bridge. In all games in which cards are shuffled and dealt, there is an element of chance. From that alone it cannot be said that rummy is a game of chance and that no skill is involved.

That formulation has stood since 1968. The language of Section 2(1)(g) of the 2025 Act is, in substance, the same test written into a State statute. Rummy answers it.

Poker: skill on the material on record

On poker, the Court relied on Law Commission Report No. 276, paragraph 3.35, and the study by computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy. The skills identified were:

1. the ability to calculate precisely the probability of a needed card coming on a turn;
2. the skill to read opponents’ behaviour and body language; and
3. the competence to apply strategic concepts such as semi-bluffing and playing for implied odds.

These attributes, the Court held, prima facie make poker primarily a game of skill, with some element of chance of the same character as in rummy. The respondents cited no contrary material.

For a practitioner, that last sentence is operational. If the State wishes to treat poker as chance under the 2025 Act, it must place material on record. A general statement that “chance may be involved” does not meet the statutory definition.

Deferral is still a restriction

The Court then turned to the nature of the impugned orders.

As on the date of the judgment there was no bar on the commercial activity of physical or offline poker and rummy. Permission had not been declined. It had only been deferred till a possible notification.

That deferral, the Court held, had no justification. By issuing a notification the Government can only decide whether to include these two games in the notified skill category. It may do so. It may not. It may never issue a notification at all.

If a game is not included in a notification, it is to be assumed to be a game of skill for the purposes of the 2025 Act. The Act does not create a mechanism to regulate un-notified skill games. It was not the State’s case that poker and rummy had been considered games of chance, betting, or any other prohibited activity.

In that legal vacuum, there could be no restriction on the petitioners facilitating these two games. Deferring permission amounted to an unreasonable restriction on the fundamental right to carry on business under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution.

This is the holding that will travel. A new State gambling Act that defines skill, and then adds an optional notification power, cannot be administered as if the definition is asleep until the gazette speaks.

The petitioners could be permitted to run the business, the Court said, subject to reasonable conditions till the Government considers the issue of regulating or permitting these games.

Operative directions and conditions

The orders dated 06.05.2026 and 21.05.2026 were set aside. The respondents were directed to permit the petitioners to carry on the business of facilitating physical or offline playing of poker and rummy, subject to the following:

(i) Every player visiting the commercial premises shall undergo mandatory Know Your Customer (KYC) verification through the Golden Aces application, described as the platform associated with live poker competitions and cardrooms.

(ii) Every participant shall furnish PAN, Aadhaar, bank account and mobile number for identity authentication, to ensure traceability, prevent impersonation, and prevent unlawful activity.

(iii) The entire premises — gaming areas, cashier counters, entry and exit points, and operational zones — shall be under CCTV surveillance round the clock.

(iv) The premises and the aforesaid data and records shall remain open and available for verification by competent authorities.

The permission remains subject to any decision finally taken by the Government in the petitioners’ cases.

Both petitions were allowed on these terms. A photocopy of the order is to be placed on the file of the connected matter.

What the judgment does, and what it does not

The Court has held that physical, offline poker and rummy, on the material before it, have a preponderance of skill over chance; that Section 2(1)(g) does not require a prior notification before such games can be commercially facilitated in Haryana; and that a deferral pending a possible notification is an unreasonable restriction under Article 19(1)(g).

The Court has not held that every form of poker is lawful across India. It has not decided online real-money gaming, or the effect of the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025. It has not decided GST or the tax treatment of rake and winnings. It has not shut out a future Haryana notification. The permission granted is expressly subject to the Government’s final decision in these cases.

Those limits should be stated as plainly as the relief. Over-reading a favourable writ is how the next show-cause notice is written.

Practical consequences

For operators in Haryana, the immediate meaning is this. A physical cardroom offering poker and rummy cannot be kept closed only because a skill-game notification is “under consideration.” The activity must still be run as a documented, inspectable business — KYC, identity records, continuous CCTV, and records available to the competent authority.

For investigating officers, the judgment is a reminder that the 2025 Act already supplies the test. If skill preponderates, the game answers Section 2(1)(g). The proviso does not create a moratorium.

For landlords and lessors of commercial premises, the conditions in paragraph 8 of the order are useful due-diligence markers. A lease that contemplates a skill-game floor should expect KYC systems, identity capture and surveillance as part of lawful use, not as an afterthought after a raid.

Conclusion

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has not written a hymn to poker. It has read a State statute and applied Article 19(1)(g) to a file that had been parked without a legal bar.

Section 2(1)(g) of the Haryana Prevention of Public Gambling Act, 2025 already tells the administration what a game of skill is. Rummy has the authority of the Supreme Court. Poker, on the Law Commission material and in the absence of any contrary record, was held to stand on the same side of the line. The State may notify. It is not required to notify before the definition can work.

Until it does, a lawful business cannot be asked to wait in the corridor.