A few nights ago I was on vacation and decided to spend my last night playing poker. I quickly found a 1/3 game in a high-rise apartment complex which was advertised online. The apartment itself was very small and the door was within 8ft from the table. The rake was insanely high, but it was a very soft game and I had been clashing with the maniac at the table all night. About 7 hours later I cashed out $2k, about $1k of which was profit. I know this is not a very big win, but for the area I was in and to the people I had surrounded myself with, it was a monster session.

After I was paid I started walking towards the exit when the maniac says I'm looking at him funny and have a problem with him. I try to diffuse the situation but he sucker punches me in the mouth anyway and starts making a huge scene, yelling and screaming. Everyone in the room had seen this and I immediately asked the host/owner to control this guy and escort me out but she just said it wasn't her problem. With almost $5K cash on me I wasn't about to make a stand and risk getting knocked out & robbed completely. I was walking circles around the table trying to avoid this guy when finally someone tried to break it up and bought me enough time to sprint out the front door. I knew I was being chased so I sprinted past the elevators and took the stairs down, even though I was more than 20 stories high.

After I got out of this situation I texted the host and she just said she doesn't give a F. I have never seen this guy in my life before, but I know the host runs games for a living, so I would like to report the game to the proper authorities who will actually ensure the game gets shut down.

Lol thats insane. Report that game right now.

imo you should punch him back and do subzero-like fatality to him

Bet this sounds familiar to Doyle Brunson and his old crew. Not exactly a typical home game either, LOL, but an interesting read never the less! BTW $1000 is actually a fairly decent sized nite for most of us on this forum. Be carefull sir.

First of all, this is an underground club, not a home game. And this is a perfect example of one of the dangers of playing in club games: lack of security.

If this had happened in a casino, security would probably have been on top of it before the punch was thrown. If not, the guy is almost certainly permabanned from the property. If this happened in my home game, it's an easy decision for me as a host to get rid of the guy looking for a fight. I don't care if he's causing trouble with another reg or a one-time player like you. I don't want somebody with anger control issues in my house - end of story, have a nice life.

But at this club game, my guess is that the business owner simply made a business decision. You're from out of town, the other guy is likely a local reg. Regardless of how she handles this, you go away and never pay her another dollar of rake. But if she takes sides against the reg, she loses him and possibly stronger players who are there to take advantage of him.

There's no upside for her to do the right thing, only money out of her pocket.

Was this in NYC? I'm in the middle of reporting a handful of games in the city to the police so if that's where it was contact me.

Why are you reporting the NYC club games to the police? I am purely curious---I occasionally work in NYC, but have never bothered to play in any of the "home" games advertised on Craig's list.

Also curious if the cops give a damn as those games are not hard to find.

Thx

That's enough money to have concerns about security.

He was hoping to rob you.

Schmendr1ck correctly points out the fundamental difference in an underground card room. The host's goal is to keep customers. She will side with regs 100% of the time, especially in a situation like this one.

Never go back to this game, obviously. In fact, if you're from outside NYC and don't have experience handling yourself in the city, avoid underground games there altogether in the future. There are some good games out there, but the games any tourist can find on Craigslist or Meetup are not the good ones. They're mostly run by people who are totally unselective about their player base and only care that they earn their nut for the night. (I'm assuming this was NYC, where I have personal experience. If not, this advice should still hold for any major city.)

Also, learn to defend yourself. You should never let yourself end up in a spot where you're totally helpless if someone else doesn't intervene. If this ******* had been smarter about trying to jack you, you'd be tearfully explaining all of this to the police instead of telling us about it.

The person running this game is a terrible host. She may think she's preserving her income by letting this criminal piece of **** act how he pleases, but other players saw what happened. They don't want to get attacked or robbed with no recourse either, so you can imagine that her apathy toward this incident will harm her bottom line in addition to being the wrong thing to do.

I'd like to second that question: Why are you reporting them?

Specifically, what is your personal reason for wanting to report them, and what do you expect reporting them to accomplish?

As Schmendr1ck said, this is basically an underground club, not some old chums getting together for their friendly poker game once a month. This is why I recommend getting the proper training and license to carry a hand gun concealed (so nobody knows you have it). It's strictly a tool for insurance just in case you have $5,000 on you and a bunch of maniacs decide to come after you, beat you down, and take your money.

I know some of you would disagree with me, but this man was in a very bad situation and it could have been a lot worse. He was really lucky to only get out of there with one punch to the face.

I agree with you and almost said this myself, but it's a bit of a touchy topic here and can sometimes get threads derailed and/or locked. Tread carefully.

I didn't realize this game was in NYC. No guns allowed there. So my advice to you is to learn self defense (Kung fu, jui jitsu, kick boxing, etc. and try not to get yourself into that situation again.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the actual details of the game on here but it is very easy to find. This was in Hawaii and it was advertised on homepokergames.com.

I am reporting it simply because the host offered no security of any sort, which imo should be a primary concern in ANY poker game. If she displays a complete disregard for this then she does not deserve any business. This been quite a traumatizing experience for me so I will be sticking to my home casino for the remainder of my poker career.

Op good of u not to fight back as u would probably get in a much worse situation.
I would probably do the exact same, and hey it worked out, u still got the money and got out of there without much more than a hit on the face, (im guessing it wasent that hard)

He definitely got me good. I was tasting blood for a while. Left side of my lip is still very swollen and cut up, but I'll live...

Main priority to me was getting my cash out of there safely. The devastating feeling of being completely robbed would be far greater than any satisfaction I would have getting revenge and getting even with him. He was in the game for almost 3K, a significant chunk of which was credit, so he had nothing to lose.

Personally, I am on the other side of this. A guy decides he wants to attack and/or rob you in a lawless zone, and he should be opening himself up to not only getting beaten in self-defense, but re-robbed. It's only fair, right?

But I suppose you were there and I wasn't, and I've been told I'm a bad influence anyway.

If the credit was to the host, then it doesn't surprise me she didn't try to break up the fight. She doesn't want to piss the guy off who owes her money

Oh, I misread the part that should have told me the criminal had no cash on him. Totally pointless to fight him if you don't have to, then, unless your ego is particularly needy.

Yes. It's a very touchy subject. I don't carry at home games where I know everyone but if I were going somewhere that I didn't know the majority of people (doesn't happen very often) I'd at the very least have it secured in my car.

Regardless of my opinion, which I'm sure nobody cares about LOL, I'm glad OP got outta there with just a busted lip and all his cash.

ok, guy is an ass for punching you. host is spineless twit to let it happen. nobody in the room had any balls to not help you get safely out of there.

but it would be a douchnozzle move to win a big session at the game an turn around and report it because some idiot didn't like losing. If you were ok with the idiots, rake, and lousy host during the game and didn't want to report it while you were an on the upswing, it's slimy to suddenly turn against it after cashing out. They were the same morons before you got punched, and if you didn't think so, you obviously weren't paying enough attention.

don't sink to their level. take the money, ice your lip, and forget about it.

This is why I don't go to a game which was advertised online where I don't know anyone. You never know who's there and what they're like. I make sure I know at least 1 person IRL there.

I'll sometimes go to games advertised online, even if I don't know anyone, but I bring little money and I'm very wary the whole time.

I've found a couple very good games this way, as well as a few lousy ones. Never been attacked or robbed or anything like that, unless you count dishonest raking as robbery.

For all the OP knows for sure the DB might have been the hosts guy friend or even a relative. Very insecure environment. Very vulnerable. You REALLY have to need a poker fix bad to do this kind of "adventure"! To each his own. I prefer playing with folks I know at least casually with an occasional new face.

Yikes. Glad you are OK and got out.

I'm generally a fan of reporting things, even if nothing will happen for a first offense, at least there is a record. I find it hard to believe that it was the first problem, and perhaps if others had reported problems in the past, you would not have experienced that.