Las Vegas casino offers online poker

The operators of a Las Vegas casino say they are preparing for online poker to be legal in the United States by opening a free-play public online site. SouthPointPoker.com allows the public to play on the Internet but not with real money, the Las Vegas Sun reported. South Point Casino hopes to have a customer base if the United States makes online poker a legal and regulated game. "The obvious reason is you would want people on your site already playing so we are hoping to get that with the free site," spokesman Tom Mikovits said. "We wanted them to get comfortable with an aesthetically pleasing, good-looking site that's easy to play on." Players can compete for seats in the 2012 World Series of Poker through the online site, another move to drive traffic. South Point is the first Las Vegas casino to make the move into online poker. The site went live earlier this month and was only open to members of the casino's players club until Monday. Copyright 2011 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.