In today's world the breadth of illegal gambling includes most sports betting, internet gambling and credit gambling, but 20 years ago the biggest problem was illegal, private poker games.

"You have to be in their inner circle to show up at the door," says a past participant in these games.

This fad lead to the creation of the Gambling Bureau in 1989.

"At that time 56 different counties had 56 different attitudes toward gambling and the enforcement," says Tom Oberweiser, Eastern District Supervisor.

The Montana constitution bans all forms of gambling, but allows the legislature to make exceptions, that's why you see electronic poker and keno as well as some card games allowed in bars, casinos, and poker clubs.

"It's governed by the state so if we did something illegal it would go against our license and we can get in trouble for that so we want to make it as fair and safe as possible," says Billings River Club co-owner, Christian Berger.

Law enforcement has been working hard to crack down on illegal gambling.

"I think the police are much more aware of what's going on as far as that it took them a while to get up to speed you know and that's understandable."

But, they know the private games still go on.

"Recently we did take down an after hours game," says Oberweiser.

In the past year, there have been around ten gambling related incidents leading to arrests. Many involved huge amounts of money at someone else's expense. Oberweiser says these losses can be recovered.

"We would like to know if someone's lost a lot of money either as a result of credit gambling, illegal gambling, internet gambling, we would like to know about that."

Berger says there are benefits to doing things legally.

"It's safe you don't have to worry about playing in the middle of the night at somebody's house....we have free food and free beverages for people to come down and they can play anytime from 9 a.m. till two in the morning, legally."

Regardless of whether it's legal or illegal gambling, this man says he's had enough.

"It was a really crazy lifestyle because it was very depressing; I don't think I'd ever want to go through it again."

Tom Oberweiser says the state's main focus is cracking down on online poker games. Internet gambling is currently illegal in all 50 states, although there's federal legislation introduced by Senator Barney Frank that could make some forms of internet gambling legal in states that choose to allow it. Even if that were to pass, Montana has a statute prohibiting all internet gambling.