They each released a YT vid at the same time discussing it:

Neeme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDpx7EQKaf8
Owen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYLtFE4Gxck
Polk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLS9vpQpjxE

Pretty cool development, excited to see how this turns out. I wish them the best.

I like all three of these guys, think they are good for poker and have good ethics and morals.

But I don't think any business run or managed by a poker player has ever ended well. Maybe there are a few, but there are 100s of failures - Full tilt, Run it once, Epic, etc.
Pokerstars doesn't really count either, he was a business man who played a bit of poker and that's the difference.

Would love them to prove me wrong though.

Good Luck:

https://guides.sll.texas.gov/gambling/poker-clubs

I know several poker players who quit to successfully start/join their own business.

Does the fact that I used poker money to fund my business negate the fact that I have an MBA? Sounds kinda ridiculous to me.

Weird to me. The Lodge mgmt for the past year have been bragging about their expansion and how they are the premium poker club in Austin. Now they need investors? Imo these clubs will be shut down in the near future anyways because the Texas legislature and govt will want to make sure they are getting a big cut of the profits. And what is going on now, the unregulation of poker in Texas? That won't last.

They may not need investors - maybe they just decided to take some money off the table for what they've built so far. Also, with Polk's/Neeme's/Owen's draw it's also a smart marketing move to attract more players for expansion.

Not when these clubs will all be forced to shut down sooner rather than later.

I don't disagree about that risk - I posted a link above hinting at the legal challenges they face. All the more reasons for the existing owners to take some money off the table by selling a stake of the business.

Yeah I saw your link. I think it was a stupid decision for the 3 poker players to invest in this but very smart for the current owners to rid themselves of some of the stake.

Seems unlikely. These poker rooms are really really small potatoes in the state of Texas. If these rooms were to be shut down it would likely be as part of a broader gambling bill establishing casinos in Texas. Such a bill seems unlikely to pass although there are certainly people that think it will pass.

The other possibilities would be for the religious right types to come after poker rooms for moral reasons. However, from my perspective a change in the law hardly even seems necessary considering multiple poker rooms in the Dallas Ft Worth area have been shut down or blocked from opening altogether without any new laws.

Frankly, these poker rooms are still hardly on anyone's radar. Johnny Chan's place stole lots of player funds and that didn't even seem to be covered by the local news. Sure, it was all over poker news sites but very few people in the state of Texas are reading those. These poker rooms have been running since 2015, so I don't know why you think they will be shut down in the near future when the Texas legislature doesn't even meet again until next year and this is hardly on their radar.

Also, doesn't even seem like a fight worth fighting for a politician considering all the Texas politicians claim to be anti-regulation and have shown that to be the case with laws they have passed in recent years but now they are gonna go full bore "we need to regulate poker rooms" and for what? Bread crumbs?

Texas is only anti-regulation if you're on the right side of the politician's favor and donor list. To give you an idea, Tesla isn't allowed to sell cars directly to customers in the state because Texas has a law against selling new cars without a dealership. If the richest man in the world couldn't get that ridiculous regulation repealed then what chance do a couple of poker club owners have for repealing anti-gambling regulations?

ohh, so they don't own it per say? Just investors? I wonder just how much input they will have in the business if any?

sounds like existing management doing a hit and run

One of them (Andrew?) said they bought a 'majority stake' in the Lodge IIRC but wouldn't be making major changes. I would assume they will be in on management level decisions (and marketing/promotion obv) but they aren't going to be there overseeing the day to day stuff.

Yup. I respect what Dream Crusher wrote on here but I think these clubs are already on borrowed time. The owner is smart to get out.

First off, that's a red herring argument. You are asking how are they going to repeal anti-gambling regulations that don't exist. This after I just insinuated that I don't see much political expiency to passing such legislation. In fact, there were two major pieces of gambling legislation being pushed in the state of Texas last year and neither one had anything to do with poker rooms. If you think it is politically expedient to pass anti-poker regulation, I'd love to know which representatives will be behind said legislation.

In North Texas, had the likes of 52 Social and Champions been allowed to open the rooms that they tried to open, then I could see that create a ground swell of support for new legislation (in that part of the state). However, local and state officials were able to score political wins without one piece of legislation being drafted.

I'm not saying it won't happen, but where is the support from this going to come from? Midland, TX is one of the most conservative good ol' boy cities in the entire US and I can't find a single news article where people in Midland want the poker room shut down. So where is this support going to come from? Austin? Houston? These rooms have been operating going on 7 years now.

As for Elon, hopefully he didn't spend too much on that one. I know some of the power players on the other side and he could have just paid me to tell him that it wasn't going to happen. BTW, I actually don't agree that said law is "ridiculous."

Anyways, people with money are a dime a dozen in Texas. Even in death billionaire Sheldon Adelson continues to throw money at Texas trying to get his casinos in the state. Maybe at some point Sands will finally get its way and have 4 resort casinos in Texas and maybe they'll slip some poker room legislation into the bill, but until then who are the politicians trying to get the law changed?

You said Texas is anti-regulation, I gave you the prototypical example of how it isn't. It's about power and money - the anti-regulation image is just a matter of which donor side of the regulation you're on. And Texas doesn't need to pass anti-poker regulation - gambling is already illegal in the state. The only question is whether Texas will be cracking down on the clubs that are using a loophole in the existing laws.

I absolutely never said that.

unregulated electric utilities is why the Texas grid crashed last year.

Can't see that they could make a lot of profit. 50 tables is a lot but now they need like what, 60 or 70 dealers, floor staff, chip runners, security, etc.

Food and beverage could bring more in but with all the other costs wonder how much profit a room would bring in on an annual basis? They aren't taking rake but charging 'members' time. Maybe they could charge for parking.

How about Two Plus Two Publishing LLC and Two Plus Two Interactive LLC (before it was sold).

Another example, again before it was recently sold was Anchor Loans founded and run by poker players Dan Harrington and Jeff Lipton.

There are more. However, your point is still well taken since many poker players who did get into business didn't do that well.

Best wishes,
Mason

Then I would definitely be more interested. Hopefully this venture is incorporated into some of their vlogs. Would be interesting to see.

On a side note watching Polk's video it was interesting that he called them the OG of poker vlogs when it is the one and only Trooper who was the OG. Neeme and Owen came much later and even they give homage to Trooper for starting it all.

Gambling is not illegal in Texas. These poker rooms are in a grey area but most lawyers that have studied this believe that the membership time charge poker room model is within the law.

I do believe there are clubs in Houston that are likely operating outside of the law but even those rooms may get a free pass because the Harris County District Attorney got in hot water when she previously went after a poker room. For someone to go after poker rooms, it has to be politically worth it to do so. The city of Dallas has shut down multiple poker rooms but they also worked hand in hand with TCH to get that room open. The powers that be that shut the other clubs down in Dallas have no reason to come after TCH (I'd argue it's better for their interests to keep it open).

I don't have any reason to suspect that Doug Polk, Andrew Neeme, and Brad Owen will operate this club outside of the law. So unless you have information about parties trying to shut down this business or politicians actively trying to change the law it seems like a moot point considering poker rooms have been operating in Austin for like 7 years with little political opposition from what I can tell.

I've observed this a lot over the years and many poker players tend to have a "big score" mentality and are not prepared for tedious and time consuming work that a business will often require. However, with that being said, Doug has been involved with Upswing Poker which is ver successful. So, at least for him, I don't see this as a problem.

Mason