Baltasar Cruz (D-Dallas) is running for judgeship on the Texas Supreme Court. Just wanted to let you know he is a poker player who likes and respects the game … so if you like to support candidates without any real basis beyond a connection to your own self interests, then indeed, he should probably be your man! His platform philosophies seem reasonable enough, too:

“I want to prohibit Texas judges from accepting political contributions from lawyers and parties who have cases pending in front of them. Incredibly, Texas judges are free to accept political contributions from attorneys and parties who have cases pending in their courts and some judges are known to actively solicit political contributions from lawyers who have cases pending before them! This is an obvious conflict of interest which is entirely indefensible and should be proscribed by the Texas Supreme Court.”

Joe Wahlen, from Austin, is technically and officially the best poker player in all of Texas right now.

What do you mean you haven’t heard of Joe “All In” Wahlen? He’s the reigning Texas state champion of poker!

Wahlen won the Texas State Poker Championship on Friday — an event put on in Austin by our good friends at the Texas Card Players Association and held at Radiator King.

It was a $200 buy-in (no rake) … 50 players total … making for a $10,000 prize pool. When they got down to the final table, the remaining players all decided to chop and finish up the tourney for the title and the trophy.

Not to take away from Joe’s accomplishment — his past successes at the table include taking second place in a freeroll at the Shoal Creek Saloon — but maybe the fact that a non-championship event in Oklahoma has a $1 million prize pool, and the Arizona State Championship paid out $250k for first place, will help persuade the people of Texas not to be pussies so small when it comes to state pride and poker. After all, that’s what the TCPA is working for.

Until then, big congrats to Joe, who as the world champion of Texas, is sure to be feared throughout the poker world.

AUSTIN–I’m still in the Texas heartland, and I couldn’t have left here without playing some cards. All went well while playing an un-raked game at a bar that gives out awesome cheesy truckers’ hats to its patrons. I had “Brad Beats” sitting to my right — his hat said “If I wanted to hear an asshole, I would fart” — and he and I got into it about a rule that I know all too well.

You see, I made a mistake and dealt the turn prematurely. Right right, I know what you are thinking … But Dan, we have gone over this one time and time again! I know. But apparently Brad Beats hasn’t been reading his Pokerati everyday like he should, and he thought he knew the right way to rectify this dealer misstep.

Cool, I will bet you $100 you are wrong, I retorted.

“Dude, I’ve seen this happen two times in Las Vegas, so I know I am right!”

OK, then how ’bout $1,000? I’ll even give you 5-to-1 odds. (It’s fun to have a potential prop bet where you are virtually certain to be holding the nuts …)

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A big thank you to the PPA for sending out this email to their Texas membership today!
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Dear Texas Poker Player,

As you know, the Poker Players Alliance is fighting on your behalf in Washington, D.C. and at the state level to defend your right to play poker. The fight for legal, safe and fair poker is taking place here in Texas right now.

The Texas Poker PAC is an ally of the PPA and has worked hard to get great legislation introduced that will regulate and expand legal poker in Texas! House Bill HB 3186 was filed by Representative Jose Menendez of San Antonio. This will have a public hearing on Tuesday, April 3rd in the House Committee on Licensing and Administrative Procedures and poker in the great state of Texas needs your support.

This is a unique opportunity to have your voice heard in support of the game you love! Testifying in favor of the bill will be some high profile folks like Gavin Smith, Erick Lindgren, Lyle Berman, Dallas DA Craig Watkins and others.

Please join us in Austin on the afternoon of April 3rd to make your voice heard! The hearing will be held in the Capital Extension Building (North side of the Capitol) Room E2.030 (3rd Level Downstairs) at approximately 2 PM. I would love you to join me and other members of the PPA and stand up for Poker in Texas!

If you cannot make it to Austin then, please click here to send an email or call the committee members’ Austin offices. Here is a list of Committee members with their e-mails and phone numbers. We encourage you to call for poker in Texas.

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There will be a committee substitute next week. It will remove the limit on the number of tables an establishment may have and significantly lower the asset requirement on bars to apply for a permit to a monthly gross receipt of $7,500. This would, for example, make eligible about 25 establishments in Arlington and 4 Abilene.

I think this is good news! The hearing is set for next Tuesday. They may not vote on it that day, but they will take all pertinent testimony at that time. i hope to have a new copy of the bill soon.

The PPA has agreed to help us publicize our progress and the hearing. They will be sending an email I’m writing to their members in Texas (between 10-20,000) this week.

Stay tuned….

A fresh comment on a relatively old post about a Dallas poker raid caught my eye … seemed relevant in light of discussions we’ve been having about police activity in other Texas poker scenes. In it, the accused houseguy makes claims of borderline abusive behavior from police — smacking an 83-year-old man in the back with the butt of a rifle, for example.

Nothing Rodney King-like, but still, pain-addled nuisances that might kinda should be expected when dealing with armed enforcers charged with putting a scare into a semi-criminal subculture.

A poker-gamer in central Texas (not Lavigne or Austin Pete) informs us about another shakedown in A-town, Sunday night (!) … Cops reportedly shut down (temporarily?) a rather large, long-standing game that is somehow connected to a host who may or may not be going through an divorce with a low-ranking civilian employee for the APD.

Now granted, below is just one player’s word passed to another, but still … apparently we’ve got fissures in the Austin underground semi-related to overabundant junk mail, turf wars, and marital tilt … uh-huh … sounds like everything should smooth over nice and fine for everyone, no problem. Go poker!

The game has been running for about 3 years now. From what I understand 2 weeks ago they decided to have a larger than normal Tournament. They decided to advertise this by placing flyer ads up all over the area they are locate (dumbass move #1!) The ad was found by the President of the Home owners Assoc. for the neighborhood… who also happens to be a bible thumping wrath of god type (dumbass move #2!). The HOA sent a letter to the Game and told them to basically get out or they would run them out. with a LARGE tournament in the works they got the bright idea to move the game to a Hotel in the area. Well the Hotel they moved it to is the same Hotel that another LARGE monthly tournament is held at and when the guys running that game got word they flipped monkey balls and called the Hotel and told them what they were doing was ILLEGAL!!! The Hotel says thanks to the Tattle Tells and oh by the way dont ever come back you never told us this was illegal what YOU were doing and we dont want your business! Now 2 large tournaments are homeless.

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So seriously … are the cops cracking down, or just doing some intensive research? A “home game” got raided in Austin on February 2. Lemme guess … “Operation Groundhog”?