Poker Room News Players Poker Room Gets Featured In Royal Oaks Magazine! “A Winning Hand” Players Poker Club By Angey Murray Private poker clubs are hot, and right here in West Houston, a new addition at 11326 Westheimer Road brings the action right around the corner from Royal Oaks. Texas Card House, which operates poker rooms in Austin and Houston, will soon open the first legal card room in Dallas, thanks to finally receiving permission from the City Council. HOUSTON – Less than 48 hours after a series of poker room raid s, HPD Chief Art Acevedo pledged that his department was just getting started in its crusade against all things Texas. He declared that owners of boot shops and barbeque restaurants will soon be in the crosshairs of his SWAT teams.
Hours after Houston police raided Prime Social and Post Oak poker rooms on May 1, the owners and operators found themselves face-to-face in a holding cell at the Harris County processing center, and they started trading stories. The conversations inside the jail holding cell were the beginning of a defense investigation that resulted in the cases being dropped, federal authorities picking them. Breaking News: 2 Poker Clubs in Houston Raided, 9 Arrested On the morning of Wednesday, May 1, 2019, police raided the Post Oak Poker Club and Prime Social Poker Roomin Houston, Texas. These two establishments are poker rooms that use a membership-based model to get around Texas' strict anti-gambling laws.
A pair of Houston card rooms were raided by local law enforcement Wednesday afternoon and more crackdowns of these establishments might be on the way.
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Prime Social Club and Post Oak Poker Club were raided by officers from the Vice Division of the Houston Police Department. In total, nine owners and managers were arrested on charges of money laundering and engaging in organized criminal activity.
“Poker rooms are illegal in Texas,” District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. “We are changing the paradigm regarding illegal gambling by moving up the criminal chain and pursuing felony money laundering and engaging in organized crime charges against owners and operators.”
Officers seized computers and hard drives in the raid. At Prime Social Club, the raid took place just a few minutes before the start of a $580 no-limit hold’em tournament with a $150,000 guaranteed prize pool.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told local media that this is just the start of a larger crackdown on poker rooms in Houston.
“We’re not going to tolerate it,” Acevedo told the local ABC News affiliate. “We got two of the bigger ones today and this is just the beginning. We need to shut them down. If you want to have these kind of establishments, the legislature needs to authorize it. Otherwise, we’re going to do our jobs and shut them down.”
Law enforcement clearly believes these clubs are breaking the state’s gambling laws. The operators, on the other hand, believe that they are in full compliance with state law since they don’t collect a rake. The card rooms only charge membership fees and consider themselves a private club.
“We’re just facilitating the play between the players,” said Daniel Kebort, one of the five owners of the Post Oak Poker Club that were arrested yesterday.
Wayne Dolcefino, who worked for Prime Social Club both in researching the law before the club opened its doors and in promoting certain events, said that the idea that they are hiding a criminal operation is laughable.
“In my view, a business trying to cover their tracks wouldn’t be in a giant building on Westheimer,” said Dolcefino.
While no players were arrested, both clubs had their bank accounts and assets frozen. According to an October 2018 article from the San Antonio Express, there are “about 40” of these poker clubs operating throughout the state.
Poker rooms operating in Texas have no plans to shut down. They believe in their right to operate enough to take it to the courts if they must.
The loopholes in the law, in addition to the antiquated laws surrounding poker in Texas, may be challenged in just that way, as club owners have strong legal counsel in their corners. But that isn’t the only reason the poker rooms continue to exist. Another is that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton decided last week not to issue an opinion on the topic.
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By Paxton leaving it to the courts, he is allowing the ultimate court decision to set the precedent since lawmakers have chosen not to close the loopholes or pass laws that would clarify current wording.
AG Refuses to Play
The issue was put to Paxton by Texas State Representative Geanie Morrison, who sent a request to the Attorney General’s office. “Are poker gambling enterprises that charge membership or other fees or receive other compensation from gamblers playing poker – but do not receive a ‘rake’ – permitted under Texas law?” she wrote, according to KHOU.
The chairperson of Paxton’s opinion committee, Virginia Hoelscher, responded, “When a legal matter is being litigated, the courts are generally the appropriate forum for resolving the issue.”
She added, “It is the policy of this office to refrain from issuing an attorney general opinion on a question that we know to be the subject of pending litigation. This policy, which has been in effect for more than sixty years, is based upon the fact that attorney general opinions, unlike those issued by courts of law, are advisory in nature.”
Houston City Councilman Greg Travis was upset by the AG’s refusal to rule. He has been a vocal critic of the poker rooms, one of which (Post Oak Poker Club) is in his district, and believes the clubs are illegal. He hoped that Paxton would rule on the issue. “It’s either legal or it’s illegal, regardless of what lawsuits there are,” he told KHOU. He noted that Paxton’s statement was “very strange,” adding, “There must be more to the story, and I’m going to find out.”
The Post Oak Poker Club in Houston, the first licensed poker club in the state, is excited to announce the first major poker tournament tour stop ever in Texas.
STORY & SCHEDULE: https://t.co/ibe06uhekSpic.twitter.com/kc8mys9ZCH
— Card Player (@CardPlayerMedia) May 16, 2018
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An Unusual Lawsuit
The litigation cited is a lawsuit involving poker rooms in the cities of Austin and San Antonio. Texas Card House owner Austin Card Room filed the suit in late June against SA Card House owner FSS Venture alleging unfair competition. Texas Card House has reportedly lost membership due to the SA Card House offering cheaper rates.
Why would one poker room sue another in an already-murky legal environment? Austin Card Room wants the court to clarify that law, the one under which both card rooms currently operate.
It may seem that the court battle could result in both poker rooms being shut down, depending upon the judge’s ruling and any subsequent actions. The call to request a ruling from Attorney General Paxton could have been that result, but Paxton declined to get involved.
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In fact, the lawsuit could have a negative impact on the 30+ poker rooms in the state. KHOU estimated there are at least 19 poker rooms in Houston alone. All of them operate under the interpretation of the law that they are hosting private games and no rake is collected. Instead, the room operators profit by charging membership fees and benefiting from the sale of food and drinks. However, law enforcement officials can have varying interpretations of the law and shut down the clubs for operating illegally, which has happened in some cases.
Ultimately, lawmakers could take the matter into their own hands and pass a new law regarding poker. However, the plethora of clubs in the state and the masses of Texas residents who travel to neighboring states to play poker clearly indicate that there is a desire for some type of legal gambling in Texas, poker rooms at the very least.
Existing rooms take legal risks, and the poker players who frequent them take safety risks, as law enforcement isn’t always on their side or available to protect the clubs from robberies and other crimes.
All would benefit from some clarity of the current laws, but the desire for that clarification could result in the shuttering of all Texas poker establishments. It remains to be seen.
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