I can answer that. It is hit or miss. Yesterday it pretty much ran all day and was still going strong at 11:00 when I left. There were both a 1/3 PLO and 5/5 PLO going. Some days I've been there and they have 2 5/5 PLO and no 1/3 PLO going. If you get the Poker Atlas app you can always check that to see if it is going or not before you head up there.

You're kidding right? There have been hundreds of underground games going on without anyone shutting them down for years and years. They are actually at least getting some tax revenue from these new places.

Not sure why you are surprised that a declared sanctuary city that essentially quit prosecuting pot cases doesn't give two craps about poker games...

ALL of these games are in areas where the proprietors made conscious selections based upon jurisdiction and the likelihood of law enforcement or prosecutors to give a damn (or not).

The reality is that no prosecutor wants to move forward with a case that they do not know for sure that they can succeed with, and the current model being used at most of the 'above ground' games (like POPC) is one that would not result in a jury conviction. The opponents keep pointing to appellate Opinions from decades back, in an era where gambling was a felony (not a misdemeanor) and where there was a rake being pulled from the table (even if it was ostensibly just to pay the overhead like electricity and rent).

Further, you also can look to the eight-liners for guidance...there are MANY of them in operation that do not draw the attention of prosecutors because it simply is not worth their time. When there IS a prosecution, it is often because the individual pissed someone in power off (or in the case of one client, was dating a political opponent of the DA and so the DA pursued a money laundering charge since the County where the games were in operation was NOT the same one where the client lived).

None of the games 'shut down' were done by court order. They closed because the owners did not want to spend the money for counsel to pursue the legal matters and so they instead folded to the all-in bluff shove by local law enforcement...

A dealer at Mint Poker said they recently got a cease and desist letter from the authorities. Does anyone know any more about this?

It looks like Houston is going to go the same way Dallas has gone?

Anyone know anything more about this?

I play at Mint all the time and have not heard this... If true that is interesting. I do know that the local police are not providing security there anymore, they have hired a private firm..

Trust me I am glad they are open I play at them all the time But as soon as some one thinks the house is cheating etc etc and starts to complain to the police or DA they will get hit...

Things will get interesting if defense counsel shows a prosecutor the transcript of the Molly Bloom sentencing hearing. Government counsel all but admitted that tips are NOT the basis for an illegal gambling prosecution. They couched it as "without conceding..." and going into the "focus of the government's case, which is the rake itself."

How ironic it would be if a case built by the guy who essentially killed online poker and also prosecuted Bloom (Preet) provided the road map for demonstrating that Texas poker rooms, as currently operated, don't comprise gambling operations...

Galleria*

Does anyone play in the North Austin room? I might be going down that way this weekend to visit family and they live like 10mins from the room. Curious if there is a wait list on a Saturday night? What games are spread?

Michelle, Do you believe these membership based rooms are operating legally?

They are not. This is the consensus of the thread


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Contrary to JRB's post, I would not agree that the consensus is that the non-rake games are in violation of applicable State law. Quite the contrary, there was one poster who repeatedly tried to use arguments from a very anti-gambling site that ALSO still relies on appellate Opinions that date to when gambling in Texas was a felony AND where a rake WAS being taken off the table, even though it was ostensibly only to pay expenses of operation.

There are games being run that are 'membership based' that are subject to having problems if prosecution was attempted because of allowing chips off the table to pay tips and time or for food/drink. However, the membership-based operations such as POPC are far more likely to prevail in any manner IF prosecution were attempted. However, as I have previously opined here, I just don't see poker prosecution being high on their to-do list...

So, until such time as prosecution is had AND prevails, my opinion remains that "yes, there are rooms that are operating in a manner consistent with the affirmative defenses proffered in Sections 47.02, 47.03 and 47.04 of the Texas Penal Code."

1. There is no affirmative defense in 47.03.

2. The membership/time rake model everyone is using/copycatting is fundamentally flawed. Find me the part of the affirmative defenses in 47.02 or 47.04 that talks about a pot rake being bad and a time rake being okay...I'll wait.

3. Clubs have been urged to shut down in Dallas...and they complied. This is possibly starting to happen now in Houston. Sure owners can fight, but who wants to go to clubs battling the authorities? Go ask strip club owners how that went for them.

4. The one thing I do agree with you on is the question of whether or not this a priority for law enforcement. Every district attorney gets to decide whether or not he or she wants to spend time on this. In Austin and San Antonio, the DA's don't seem to care. In Dallas they seem to care. In Houston...we don't know yet, but it's not looking good.

I get that everyone WANTS there to be more legal poker in Texas. I do too. I so miss playing online poker in my underwear.

But the REALITY is we have a bunch of clowns doing no legal research with no connections and no PR skill trying to backdoor commercialized gambling into a heavily red state that's historically had none of it. Only someone with some juice like Tilman Fertitta could possibly get this done, and he's got no incentive to do so.

Btw, someone please stop Daniel Kebort with Post Oak Poker Club from going in front of Houston City Council. He's just making it worse.

Because the affirmative defenses existing in 47.02 deal with the manner by which the 'gambling' occurs, there will be the same manner of instruction given to a jury in a prosecution under .03 and .04. To fail to argue for that instruction would be ineffective assistance of counsel and grounds upon which appeal could be had if the argument was made and the objection was added to the running bill.

When such claims have worked for eight-liners, there is a reasonable presumption that the same would work for a poker defense. I am guessing you have never been involved with counsel that handled eight-liner defendants. Otherwise you would not be consistently taking the track you do in these discussions...

That a club owner voluntarily shuts down does not mean the letter they received from law enforcement has a sound basis in law. Plenty of law enforcement agencies do not actually KNOW the law. Good example of clueless law enforcement is the fiasco that was the arrest at the Hyatt last week because, ohmygawdguns. They had no clue what they were doing and, before all is said and done, that case will likely be going away now that prosecutors have admitted that law enforcement over-reacted (there have been NO weapons charges filed and they had to basically admit in the bond reduction hearing that their request for high bond was crap). I was very glad to see that he was able to hire Danny to handle the case...now he just has to come up with a few thousand to post the reduced bond.

Htowm, which underground poker room are you involved with?

Not a one. Most of those guys have no idea what they're doing either.

Who's giving you this terrible advice? Go look at Baxter v. State, 66 S.W.3d. 494(Tex. App. 2001):
"[A]ffirmative defenses such as these provided for in Sections 47.02 and 47.04 are not applicable to Section 47.03."

The amount of misinformation that is spread by people acting like they know what they are talking about is astounding.

A case steeped in a craps house is NOT the same fact base as that which exists with the present rake-free poker structure.

It again begs the question as to which underground game or anti-poker interest you are affiliated with because you continue to rely upon flawed law which has no bearing on poker as currently structured (you know, the rake-free practice in which the house is not making a profit FROM the poker. Never mind that you continue to refuse to address how often you have been involved with counsel that has handled actual gambling cases...

First, I think both of you have added a lot to the discussion... not sure where y’all rubbed one another so wrong... but I had to pull this line to ask a question Michelle...

People are gathering in these establishments for the sole purpose of playing poker, so will the court view it the same way we do? (ie: making a profit from the membership/nightly turnout as opposed to taking $ out of the game?)

I’m no lawyer, so this is genuine curiosity.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Texas has ONE set of gambling laws...not separate laws for each type of gambling. 47.03 has NO AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE for ALL types of gambling...craps or poker or whatever.

I'm just calling out the silly misinformation you guys are peddling. Using the language "rake-free" is laughable. Just because you've switched from a pot rake to a time rake doesn't mean it's rake-free. I mean come on! Who do you think you're fooling? The house is ABSOLUTELY making a profit from poker...just making it based on time played instead of pot size LIKE MANY CASINOS DO IN LOUISIANA AND LAS VEGAS!

Anyone been to VIP lately? Went for a while but hadn’t gone in a month. I saw here that they got rid of the controversial guys. However, they haven’t updated their Facebook since early December. Like that place since it closest to me in Pasadena.

Someone at another game said that VIP and another nearby room have already shut down. Not sure if accurate.

Played the Card House in Austin over the weekend. Top notch. I talked to mgmt for a bit about the Dallas rooms, etc. and they said they haven't had a single issue as far as law enforcement/city officials, etc.

I also noticed a billboard for a room called Parx in Waco, was tempted to pull off and just pop in to check it out, but wanted to get home. I checked out the website & it looks almost the same as the one in Austin, curious if it is the same people as Austin or someone just mimicking the business model, website and all.