The Kahnawake Gaming Commission

Updated: 2025

• Established in 1996
• Website – http://www.gamingcommission.ca/
• Licenses and Regulates dozens of online casinos, poker room, sporting exchanges, and sportsbooks.
• Also licenses land-based poker clubs, raffles, and private poker rooms in the Mohawk Territory.
• Hosts the websites of all online gaming licensees on servers on the Territory.
• Current Commission Membership: Mark Jocks (chairperson), Melanie Mayo, and Lori Jacobs

Associated Entities

• The Mohawks of Kahnawake
• The City of Montreal, Quebec
• The Iroquois Confederacy (historically)
• Mohawk Internet Technologies Data Center
• Continent 8 Technologies

All About The Kahnawake Gaming Commission

Currently, around 8,000 individuals reside on the Kahnawake territory and consider themselves members of the tribe. Below is the commission's description of its First Nations tribal reservation, the history of its gaming commission, and its mission statement. The KGC describes itself thus: "[The] Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake is a sovereign jurisdiction located just outside Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission was established in 1996 and has been continuously licensing and regulating online and land-based gaming within Kahnawake since that time."

The Internet gaming business has had the Gaming Commission in earnest since 1999. For the first 2.5 years, it was mostly about the commission gaining the legal right from the Canadian government to license sites. It was mostly about finding out how to operate within the political and legal structure of the Mohawk Territory. It may have regulated land-based gaming, but how long ago did the MCK house live gaming in the Mohawk Territory?

Kahnawake Interactive Gaming Law

The Kahnawake Gaming Law was enacted on June 10, 1996. The Gaming Commission has licensed online casinos since 1999. On July 8, 1999, the Gaming Commission enacted its "Regulations concerning Interactive Gaming." In order to be licensed by the Commission, any operator must host their gaming portal at a data center called Mohawk Internet Technologies, located on the reservation. The data center is managed by "Continent 8 Technologies."

Continent 8 specializes in eGaming hosting services and provides an international network, using cutting-edge technologies to deliver security, safety, and auditing. Continent 8 Technologies has offices in 10 cities worldwide: Montreal, New Jersey, Paris, London, Dublin, Malta, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Singapore. The company describes itself as focusing on the "major global e-markets of Europe, Asia and North and South America," and says its provision of "cross-jurisdictional support" is a key value proposition.

Regulations Enforced by the Commission

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission regulates and issues licenses to poker rooms, land-based non-profit charity raffles, and interactive gambling conducted in the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake. The tribe insists that licensees host their websites on servers in the Mohawk Territory, so the Commission's regulatory authority includes all license holders.

In November 2011, the raffle policies were enacted, following Section 24 of the Kahnawake Gaming Law. If charitable gaming organizations in the Montreal area want to host events at the territory, they should read the policies on raffle gaming.

The Commission’s Membership

The commission is composed of 3 members at any given time. Members of the commission are appointed for 2-year terms. The current commissioners are Melanie Mayo, Lori Jacobs, and Mark Jocks, who serves as the chairperson. The commissioners perform their duties with the help of a collection of in-house personnel, professionals, and Approved Agents.

Mailing Address of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission

Below is the physical address of the commission. To phone the Gaming Commission, use +1 450 635 1076. To send a fax to the commission, use the number +1 450 635 1139.

Kahnawake Gaming Commission

P.O. Box 1799

Old Malone Highway

Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, QC J0L 1B0

Canada is located in the northern part of North America. It extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic. Canada is the second largest country in the world (after Russia). Although it has a land area of 9,970,610 square kilometers, Canada has a small population compared to its size and is only the fourth largest country in the world by population. According to the last census (2016), Canada’s total population was approximately 36 million people.

If you're interested in finding out more about the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, you can direct your inquiries to them via email at [email protected]. For any number of reasons, if you want to provide feedback to the commission, you can use the Kahnawake Gaming Commission feedback form.

Licensed Online Gambling Sites

Since November 4, 2015, the Kahnawake Gaming Council has granted gaming licenses to 98 separate online gambling entities. I linked to the list, because it would be unwieldy to list all of them in the body of this article and because the list changes on occasion. A number of the most famous gambling sites in the world are licensed by Kahnawake.

For example, the GGC licenses Bovada (formerly Bodog). Bovada/Bodog is the world-famous sportsbook, casino, and poker site founded in 1994 as a Canadian company by Calvin Ayre. Ayre sold Bodog in 2007. After the U.S. government seized the Bodog domain, the business changed its name to Bovada and continues to operate its enormous community of gamblers to this day.

Some of the licensed online casinos players might know are:

• Aladdin’s Gold Casino
• Allstar Slots
• Club World Casino
• High Noon Casino
• Slots.lv

• Bruckhal Services Limited
• Goldenrod Securities Limited
• Greenpot Services Limited
• PDV Management Corp.
• Technology Services Trading Limited
• Top Tech Media Limited
• Web Services Online Ltd.
• Zirconium Gaming Limited

Kahnawake Official Logo

Websites that have been licensed by the commission are required to display the official Kahnawake Gaming Commission logo. This is not just a branding exercise; it is an indicator that a site is operating legally and has been certified. But how might a player ascertain whether or not a website is using this logo correctly? They could visit the site in question and look for the logo. If the logo is on the site and you can see it, that's a good sign. If the site has somehow enclosed the player in their earthly paradise or evening casino, and you can't see the logo of the KGC, then you have some gnarly ground leads to work with. Research the operators and then report them if necessary. And always remember: If you find a site with no visible KGC logo, there's no site good enough for you to play on.

Approved Agents

The commission collaborates intimately with a series of external auditors and consultants. These third parties help provide the technical expertise necessary for the commission to carry out its central tasks of licensing and regulating suspect electronic venues. In commission parlance, these third parties are termed "Approved Agents." Currently, the commission names four such agents in its official literature: eCOGRA, Gaming Associates, iTech Labs, and Technical Systems Testing. Founded in 1998 by Microgaming, eCOGRA is an industry-led watchdog group based in the UK. It audits the sites within its network and publishes the payout percentages for those sites each month. Players can look at these figures to see just how much of a house edge they're working with. Technical Systems Testing (TST) is an Australian firm that assesses gaming operations to ensure they provide fair and secure gaming that is protected from identity thieves.

Another Australian company that performs much the same function as TST is Itech Labs. The Itech Labs website describes its business as "testing and certifying online gaming systems and games." Gaming Associates (GA) is an Australian service that has acted as a model for both iTech and TST. Since 1990, GA has provided "certification services for gambling systems." The four groups share the responsibilities of providing the security and auditing necessary to keep websites safe. There are four organizations that do this work, at least to a large extent:

• E-Comm Security
• Gaming Laboratories International (GLI)
• iSecurity and Gaming
• The National Association of Security Dealers (NASD)

Self-Exclusion List

Individuals who wish to enroll in the self-exclusion list for those licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission can fill out a detailed form to do so. This form lets you select either a one-year, five-year, or lifetime gaming ban. Remember, this only affects the Kahnawake-licensed sites. If you play at other online gaming sites, you might want to talk to them about responsible gaming and sign a similar list. We recommend the Kahnawake commission, because not all gaming regulators have this kind of form.

Brick-and-Mortar Gambling Licenses

For the past eight years, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission has been licensing terrestrial gaming events. What the commission doesn't want is for betting to seep out of the poker rooms and into the homes of the bettors and into the public spaces of the community. Finding that balance—allowing some kinds of betting without letting it become ubiquitous or socially destructive—has been tricky.

Land-Based Poker Rooms

The commission has also licensed land-based poker rooms in the territory since October 2007. Applicants may submit materials for several types of licenses, such as a poker room license, dealer permit, temporary dealer permit, and key person permit. A "key person" is a manager or supervisor who gets to enter restricted areas. To be approved for any of these licenses, the applicant must show that the game they are going to offer is allowed in the territory and that the game will be played in an approved gaming area.

A limited number of authorized social clubs run poker rooms. At the moment, only four social clubs have permission to run card rooms in the territory. Others might be given the nod to do so at some later date. The four licensed social clubs currently are the Royal Canadian Legion, the Knights of Columbus Hall, the Moose Lodge, and Kahnawake Marina. Each club is a not-for-profit that runs its poker room for the sake of funding the charitable activities they do.

Licensed Raffles in Kahnawake

The territory has strict rules that regulate who is allowed to run raffles. The only entities that can operate them are the four social clubs mentioned earlier (Royal Canadian Legion, Knights of Columbus, Moose Lodge, Kahnawake Marina) and the Kahnawakero:non. The commission defines a Kahnawakero:non as: "a Mohawk and a member of the community of Kahnawake pursuant to the Kahnawake Membership Law, as it may be amended from time to time."

Raffles run by either of these two organizations are exempted from the regulations. One of the social clubs is allowed to run a raffle if the proceeds do not go above $5,000 Canadian dollars. A Kahnawakero:non can also run a raffle, with proceeds of up to $1,000 Canadian dollars, that falls under the same category. In both cases, if the amount raised from the raffle does not fall below either of those two amounts and above that happens with a Kahnawakero:non or a social club, then both groups must follow the regulatory path.

Licensed Brick-and-Mortar Poker Rooms

Currently, the Commission d'Enquête des Mohawks of Kahnawake allows three private poker rooms to operate on the Mohawk territory. They are the Playground Poker Club, Snake's Poker Club, and VIP Poker Enterprises. These are not underground venues per se, and they are somewhat different from what you might associate with a place to play poker legally. I give a brief description of each room, along with a contact method, below.