Dhuber, I have respect for many dealers as people, but the j.o.b. skill set does not transfer well outside the casino industry. People who deal may and often do bring a lot of personal added value to the job, but they gain little from the job in my estimation.

The main skills every successful dealer does hone on the job are consistency and handling customer disappointment. Those are valuable. I do think dealers do gain experience from dealer job interaction with players that can transfer to general sales or other personal service occupations.

1. "Better than average math skills" hold little labor market value in today's math-automated service industry. (I personally could never keep the running math of PLO in my head like dealers can. However, very few service industry jobs allow math to be done in the employee's head, if by the employee at all.)

2. Poker dealers are accustomed to sitting down.

3. Critical decisions in the service industry transferable from pitching cards, pushing chips and calling the floor ?

4. "Uniquely qualified" compared to the rest of the service industry labor pool, how ?

However, there also are other poker opportunities at the moment ....I'd think Texas poker dealers have heard of the WSOP ?

Yeah, I hate to say it but all that makes sense.

How difficult will it be though for homesteading (meaning not travelling a bunch) Texas poker dealers to pick up and make the trek to Vegas? And how many of these temp opportunities would be available? What % do you think could result in opportunities that don't require mass-travel going forward? Or is mass-travel pretty much the optimal/viable approach to making a living at live poker dealing nowadays?

IME, someone who feels legal poker in Houston is a threat to their business. My first guess would be an underground game runner. My second would be someone connected with LA casinos, but I'm of opinion it's almost certainly the first one.

It's never some morally outraged section of the citizenry.

Was there an uptick in poker action at the Louisiana casinos this weekend?

Yes players not seen for awhile were back. Not massive up tick but some for sure.

As to prior question about players boxes....if the box had cash, slight chance player gets it back. But if it was chips, with club finances frozen and
Ikely forfeited. If owners plead or get convicted, those chips are valueless at least for a long time. One player this weekend was discussing the $15k in chips in his box. Of course the two day cash out rule they had always made it an iffy situation.

They come in like a swat tactical raid. Loud and scary and nobody moves. You are lucky to get a cell phone back left on a table. Cash in a box stays put unless somebody has the balls to slither it out unnoticed, a risky move.

It's a big room so hopefully everybody squirreled out as much as possible in the way of personal value.

All chip values are instantly $0.00.

In a private game bust the patrons are photographed and ID is recorded. They slam you for your SSN but you can refuse them which can be semi painful but ultimately they will relent. If you are not charged they have no right to that information. You can refuse presenting an ID as well or giving your name but that can end up painful too with a ride in the back of the car to the station.

what was the 2 day cash out rule?

That remains a question nobody seems to want to answer. It is interesting that similar sorts of groups in other parts of the country make their identity known and they don't use anonymity in their hosting processes.

I could potentially envision Fertitta being somewhat involved given that he has the interests just across the border. However, as small of a piece of the pie that poker is to the casino economy, I don't see him wasting his time. Further, if he were involved, they would have people that provided counsel and could better parse the various holdings...

The civil suit is not the same as criminal charges. As noted elsewhere, you clearly do not grasp the distinction between civil and criminal proceedings, and you DEFINITELY do not know the Texas Penal Code (where there is no Chapter 125).

Ironically, the civil suit lays out the premise in much the same way as counsel had given guidance on navigating the elements of Chapter 47, specifically that a membership fee was paid and that food and beverage was available on the premises. It will be very interesting if the nuisance pleading actually winds up being cited by the two respective trial courts on the criminal side as having proven up the claims advanced by counsel for the defense...

The return of service is not shown as having been imaged and there is no docketed setting for any hearings. It would not surprise me to see the case linger far longer than the criminal proceedings for the precise reason that much of the County suit and request for an injunction is premised upon hearsay and on presumptions that will require that the criminal case have been disposed of, even when one considers the lower burden that exists in the civil arena.

Here is the Texas statute chapter 125 referred to above.


CIVIL PRACTICE AND REMEDIES CODE

TITLE 6. MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS

CHAPTER 125. COMMON AND PUBLIC NUISANCES

SUBCHAPTER A. SUIT TO ABATE CERTAIN COMMON NUISANCES

Sec. 125.001. DEFINITIONS. In this chapter:
(1) "Common nuisance" is a nuisance described by Section 125.0015.
(1-a) "Computer network" means the interconnection of two or more computers or computer systems by satellite, microwave, line, or other communication medium with the capability to transmit information between the computers.
(2) "Public nuisance" is a nuisance described by Section 125.062 or 125.063.
(3) "Multiunit residential property" means improved real property with at least three dwelling units, including an apartment building, condominium, hotel, or motel. The term does not include a single-family home or duplex.
(4) "Web address" means a website operating on the Internet.

Acts 1985, 69th Leg., ch. 959, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1985. Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 959, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987; Acts 1991, 72nd Leg., ch. 14, Sec. 284(42), eff. Sept. 1, 1991; Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 857, Sec. 2, eff. Sept. 1, 1993; Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 968, Sec. 1, eff. Aug. 30, 1993; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 76, Sec. 14.03, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 318, Sec. 25, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 663, Sec. 2, eff. Sept. 1, 1995; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 1181, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1997; Acts 1999, 76th Leg., ch. 1161, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1999; Acts 2003, 78th Leg., ch. 1202, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 2003.
Amended by:
Acts 2005, 79th Leg., Ch. 1246 (H.B. 1690), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2005.
Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 596 (S.B. 1196), Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2017.
Acts 2017, 85th Leg., R.S., Ch. 858 (H.B. 2552), Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2017.


Sec. 125.0015. COMMON NUISANCE.
(a) A person who maintains a place to which persons habitually go for the following purposes and who knowingly tolerates the activity and furthermore fails to make reasonable attempts to abate the activity maintains a common nuisance:
(1) discharge of a firearm in a public place as prohibited by the Penal Code;
(2) reckless discharge of a firearm as prohibited by the Penal Code;
(3) engaging in organized criminal activity as a member of a combination as prohibited by the Penal Code;
(4) delivery, possession, manufacture, or use of a substance or other item in violation of Chapter 481, Health and Safety Code;
(5) gambling, gambling promotion, or communicating gambling information as prohibited by the Penal Code;
(6) prostitution, promotion of prostitution, or aggravated promotion of prostitution as prohibited by the Penal Code;
(7) compelling prostitution as prohibited by the Penal Code;
(8) commercial manufacture, commercial distribution, or commercial exhibition of obscene material as prohibited by the Penal Code;
(9) aggravated assault as described by Section 22.02, Penal Code;
(10) sexual assault as described by Section 22.011, Penal Code;
(11) aggravated sexual assault as described by Section 22.021, Penal Code;
(12) robbery as described by Section 29.02, Penal Code;
(13) aggravated robbery as described by Section 29.03, Penal Code;
(14) unlawfully carrying a weapon as described by Section 46.02, Penal Code;
(15) murder as described by Section 19.02, Penal Code;
(16) capital murder as described by Section 19.03, Penal Code;
(17) continuous sexual abuse of young child or children as described by Section 21.02, Penal Code;
(18) massage therapy or other massage services in violation of Chapter 455, Occupations Code;
(19) employing a minor at a sexually oriented business as defined by Section 243.002, Local Government Code;
(20) trafficking of persons as described by Section 20A.02, Penal Code;
(21) sexual conduct or performance by a child as described by Section 43.25, Penal Code;
(22) employment harmful to a child as described by Section 43.251, Penal Code;
(23) criminal trespass as described by Section 30.05, Penal Code;
(24) disorderly conduct as described by Section 42.01, Penal Code;
(25) arson as described by Section 28.02, Penal Code;
(26) criminal mischief as described by Section 28.03, Penal Code, that causes a pecuniary loss of $500 or more; or
(27) a graffiti offense in violation of Section 28.08, Penal Code.
(b) A person maintains a common nuisance if the person maintains a multiunit residential property to which persons habitually go to commit acts listed in Subsection (a) and knowingly tolerates the acts and furthermore fails to make reasonable attempts to abate the acts.
(c) A person operating a web address or computer network in connection with an activity described by Subsection (a)(3), (6), (7), (10), (11), (17), (18), (19), (20), (21), or (22) maintains a common nuisance.
(d) Subsection (c) does not apply to:
(1) a provider of remote computing services or electronic communication services to the public;
(2) a provider of an interactive computer service as defined by 47 U.S.C. Section 230;
(3) an Internet service provider;
(4) a search engine operator;
(5) a browsing or hosting company;
(6) an operating system provider; or
(7) a device manufacturer.
(e) This section does not apply to an activity exempted, authorized, or otherwise lawful activity regulated by federal law.

Added by Acts 2003, 78th Leg., ch. 1202, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 2003.
Amended by:
Acts 2005, 79th Leg., Ch. 1246 (H.B. 1690), Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2005.

By 'dodged,' you actually mean he was no-billed by the Grand Jury. As to the forfeiture, you neglect to mention that he asserted no right to the funds in question. I am sure you just forgot to mention that since you would have reviewed all of the materials on file...

And yes, he got a deferred...which was terminated early. So, one of your highly touted acorns is wandering around with no conviction stemming from this incident involving eight-liners.

Katherine Le has no conviction and no deferred disposition or even any documents related to her that appear. So, again, the headlines are out there but nothing but egg on the face of Lester from that one.

Bich Nguyen was indicted at the first degree level but, hmm...was only placed on deferred for a Class A misdemeanor. Again...prosecutorial over-reach.

Thinh Nguyen...had an arrest in 2014 that was subsequently no-billed.

Urixie Palacios-Juarez...did you READ the reason the case was dismissed? Or do your handlers not let you have that sort of information. I'll give you a hint though...two words...INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE.

Jose Palacios-Juarez...charged by Indictment with the same first-degree felony conduct as the others, but gee...the State later moved to reduce to the Class A misdemeanor of Keeping a Gambling Place. Another deferred disposition that was terminated early. And given the eight-liners that were involved, Keeping a Gambling Place was clearly the only appropriate charge.

Jose did later receive a two-year prison sentence for money-laundering in a different case, but the underlying offense was Aggravated Promotion of Prostitution. Urixie's case from that January 2018 filing is still pending.


All of the indicted co-defendants in that case are still pending, nearly a year and a half after the arrests. Some of the persons named in the original complaint, however, never even got to the point of being indicted.

Federal law is not currently at issue in the poker cases. Askew was a federal case. An additional complication in his case, aside from the multiple locations with eight-liners was that Askew "failed to keep payroll records for his employees." He complicated matters by putting utilities for the various rooms in the names of employees. Askew was actually sentenced pursuant to a plea to the Information for one count of "Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering."

Making your $600K forfeiture/restitution amount even more laughable, however, was the amount of properties at issue in addition to the more than $1.6M that had been seized. In other words, he kept more than a million as he went into custody. This was in addition to the funds that he had cleared across the more than a decade in which he operated the various rooms.

But none of this is news to your handlers since, presumably, they reviewed the case on PACER before tossing it to you like a piece of fish being tossed to a walrus. And SURELY, they explained to you the difference between State prosecutions and federal prosecutions.

Yep, Civil Practice & Remedies Code. A civil suit, not in the Penal Code, and not a criminal offense.

Nice ***** slap of HTown Poker, Michelle. Well done. As someone said above he is either an underground game runner that was butt hurt when these places put him out of business or a shill for Tillman Fertitta or one of the other OK or LA Indian Tribes. No doubt he is behind/affiliated with the SIGH site as every one of his posts references it.

Lol you bunch of pollyannas. Her argument was that no one ever gets convicted, does time, or loses money. The cases I listed...with all of 30 seconds of googling...show that not to be the case.

I personally think they're going get off light here, but that the clubs are going to stay closed and more raids are coming. I'm sure the DA, etc are going to take a big cut of the money.

It's pretty funny y'all are terrified of a bunch of retirees and church folks over at SIGH. Sign up for their mailing list if you want to go meet them. They get together monthly at local churches. The coffee's terrible, and they think we're all a bunch of degen idiots. But maybe you'll enjoy yourself. At the very least, you might get a balanced of view of all of this...they've been 100% right on how it's going to go down so far.

Nobody DID get convicted as a result of any State prosecution initiated by Harris County prosecutors. Or were you unaware that a deferred adjudication is NOT a conviction. And nobody did time as a result of those dispositions. Again, the only person you named who has done time as a result of a State-level prosecution was Palacios-Juarez and that was for his subsequent arrest where the Money Laundering charge cited an underlying offense of Aggravated Promotion of Prostitution (which is NOT gambling).

None of the named State-level defendants lost anything in which they claimed an interest. Your review of the Clerk's files would have told you this. Google is NOT how people research the law...

Terrified of them? Quite the contrary. They are a bunch of asshats who seek to toil in anonymity. Other such groups around the country are not afraid to make themselves known and, in fact, place their executive body on their website. They don't hide themselves on domain registries. But SIGH does. If they were so convinced they were correct, they would not be hiding.

I have no desire to go meet them and have no desire to be on a mailing list, even from a throwaway address.

Since I'm not up on judicial process in Texas (other to say at first glance, it's apparently different from the four other jurisidictions I'm most familiar with-let's just say it's a lot different from CA and NV), maybe you can share with the group the following:

a) I'm not sure what hearsay, not subject to any exception, exists in the complaint.
b) What interlocutory motions might be available to the defendants (TRO, PI, stay, etc.)?
c) has service of process been effectuated yet? (I would assume yes, but considering the apparent lack of moving for injunctive relief by defendants might suggest otherwise)

I mean, if I'm served with this, and really feel I'm in the right, I'm lawyering up and asking for a TRO to get my club reopened stat. The CW from my sources is that Prime isn't reopening anytime soon. Hopefully, they're wrong.

While I'm here...something dawned on me that, while in 99% of ML cases, the charge is a bull***** add-on, considering who the investors are in some of the Houston-area clubs, this might actually fall under the 1%, although I'm sceptical the DA's office did any real work on this. I will say that the DA's office probably does know exactly who they're dealing with, however.

There's also a few things that I'm curious about as well, but those things are best left not discussed on an Internet message board.

If it was cash in the box and it is proven to not be an asset of the business and if they just feel nice enough, eventually one might after long wait get cash back.

If it was chips and if eventually business not eventually proven guilty and if the accused don’t just roll over, then there is a tiny chance if and when the room resumed operating the chips would again have value.

I would agree either scenario is highly unlikely but not completely impossible.

As two the two day rule, if it was not the day or night when purchased or won and the amount was over a max value, you had to give the house two days notice to cash out those chips. I can’t recall the amount to trigger the two day notice as I never left with chips and never had or wanted a box, but it was not a huge figure.

Nothing to do with this post, but thought I would see if you were playing at the Neeme meet up game at the Texas Card room tonight or tomorrow.

I am not. Are you gonna be there?

IDK, seems like he should be fine with all his dealings in Texas, LA, Vegas, restaurants, Rockets.....maybe not.

any legal updates?

any more changes at remaining clubs?

All are running except the 2 that were raided and one other (Mint Poker) which shut down the day of the raid and hasn't opened back up.

The others are all running (there are approximately 8-10 others in Houston). 2 have changed their model to a flat daily fee rather than hourly time charge.

No. Will watch his youtube video. Maybe some Choctaw this month and then WSOP 6/12 to 6/19. GL to you sir!

The Houston District Attorney says the rooms are illegal. She is an attorney. I would never play in one of these games or an underground game. There is a greater than 0% chance the game will be robbed, raided, or there will be scamming/cheating involved. After this raid, more poker players in Houston will feel this way.

I’ll be in Vegas 6/1-10 I will try to leave some money out there for you! . GLGL!