OK, poker rooms in Texas - basically "clubs" are grey areas under Texas law at the moment. But they are going strong, there are quite a few of them - poker bloggers are blogging from them on YT - why is it prohibited to even discuss them on 2p2? Is 2p2 scared of a legal issue? Why suppress information that could be helpful to posters here?

Currently they can be discussed in the Home Poker forum, there's a large thread there. The last time the mods/admins had a large discussion about this, that was the decision.

Texas Card House in Austin has only been operating as a business for four years now. Maybe if a WSOP or WPT circuit event gets held at one eventually mods at twoplustwo will figure out it isn't a home game.

legal concerns have been expressed. are there any reps from these rooms posting or willing to post regarding these issues?

I find allowing Oregon private clubs in the "Venues and Communities" forum and not Texas ones a little weird, as they both operate in the same legal grey area, and clubs have shut down in both states after getting cease-and-desist letters, though none have faced any official legal action in either.

My personal feeling is that we should not be deciding legal issues on 2+2 and should just have a disclaimer saying something like "2+2 does not warranty the legality of a given venue or endorse it just because it has a discussion thread in this forum."

That said, management did, as mentioned above, make that decision when we discussed it last time.

was there an argument to treat them differently or should the oregon clubs be moved as well?

a popup disclaimer is also an ok solution, probably.

I think the reasoning behind allowing Oregon, but not Texas clubs was that Oregon clubs charge a session fee (I mean, "daily membership") only, whereas Texas rooms also charge a "seat rental" that is more similar to rake, and therefore skirt the law more closely. To a certain extent, I get that argument, but I just don't feel like we should be making a call on where the legal lines are.

My personal feeling, is that if a room is operating openly (as opposed to underground clubs) we should allow it in Venues and Communities. A lot of states have either "private clubs" that are open to the public if you buy a "membership," or "charity rooms" that give a (usually unspecified) cut of the profits to charity. In some states, those games are formally regulated by a gaming commission, but in many they are not and are therefore are in-between underground games and regular cardrooms.

I think it makes more sense to allow discussion of them but specify that we're not endorsing their legality, but a decision that we only allow rooms that report to a gaming commission would also be consistent.

"Texas" hold 'em, such an unfortunate name

I thought the division was that government regulated games would be in venues and communites and those that weren't regulated where put into home games. The rational was that we didn't have to have these type of threads where people were arguing whether a room was "legal" or not.

Interesting. In a group of forums where everything from "Should Aces ever be folded face-up?" to "What is the proper syrup to put on pancakes?" and every topic in between is constantly being discussed, WHO decided that the legality of poker rooms is a verboten subject? As long as we are banning certain thread types, I nominate "Is this an angle shoot?" to become a non-discussion subject.

9 arrested as authorities raid 2 Houston poker rooms

Yup. As I said, I'd never claimed that they were legal, just that they were claiming to be and that none had yet faced any official legal action. For the record, they still are claiming that their model is legal, and are fighting the charges. I think the fact that they were levied will have a huge chilling effect on the model, though.

Some of the rooms in Houston closed voluntarily after this incident, afraid of being next. Others switched to a daily fee with no hourly seat rental, which seems much more likely to pass a legal test to my non-lawyer self. Others have said "damn the torpedoes" and kept going with the same model.