Quote:
Originally Posted by Fore
Doesn’t matter how you spin it. The law does not say you can’t rake poker. That would be easy to get around and you “BS” might even work. But that isn’t the law.
The TX law says (paraphrased) the house cannot economically benefit. This makes your tournament example clearly violating imo. When the house says they are charging $40 time (which itself would likely not hold up under review) simple reading would be the house benefits by $40 for person entered to play poker in the tournament. How is the house not benefitting economically from the poker tournament. The $ are directly tied to poker play.
Cash games are less clear since they could try to claim they simply rent you a chair and a poker game just breaks out. A bridge game or euchre or go fish game could also break out with no gambling. Would that pass the smell test upon review? Maybe or maybe not. But there at least is a claim that the $ do not depend on there being a poker game.
The other cash game issue is they only charge it when you do have a seat. When no live seats are available but only two people waiting or there are no dealers available or some other reason you can’t play poker, do they collect the time $? If not, have they now implicitly tied the $ to playing poker?
Again, this might be argued either way. But when the fee is specifically and directly tied to a tournament happening, how is it not economic benefit from the tournament? How is the tournament not gambling? How is the house not economically benefitting from gambling?
You claim the law is so poorly written. I completely disagree. If it was such a terrible law, it would not be so difficult to circumvent. Imo, you call it terrible because you want poker to be legal. Maybe the intent of the law is terrible or not connected to current populace desires but the actual law is not terrible. What is terrible is the process has taken so long to define what is and isn’t legal under the law.
The fact that 60 rooms around the state are running absolutely negates your opinion the law isn't terribly written.
You don't end up with 60 public poker rooms with 1500 employees around the state with a law that is written well. Just doesn't happen.
You also wouldn't have a judge who ruled in favor of shutting TCH down......allowing them to continue to remain open pending appeal unless the judge agrees there is a fairly reasonable chance TCH will prevail upon appeal.
And I'm not sure how you can even connect the dots in the logic the law is "difficult to circumvent" as all these 60 rooms did is just not rake a pot. LOLOL. That's not "difficult"......it was quite easy.