Another late comment on an older post, semi-related … comes from Marisa in the Midwest:

I have been a licensed poker dealer in the midwest for 13 years, and I have been waiting many years for Texas to legalize poker rooms in Texas. I am originally from the midwest, but lived in the Dallas area from 1981 to 1989 and have wanted to move back to the area for quite some time, but I would like to stay in the poker industry. I am currently employed by the largest poker room in the midwest (34 tables), and it is located at a horse racing track. We are a card club/horse track only. It has been a wonderful combination. From the rake we take in the poker room, at least 25% of that is put toward the horse racing purses which has allowed our horse track to increase its payouts and draw more and better quality horses. We also have a “casino games” room in which we spread blackjack, carribian stud, pai gow poker, let it ride, 3 and 4 card poker. Although those games are normally considered “house games” ours are not. The only “profit” that the house makes from these games is by taking a fifty cent rake from these games put up by the player. Any monies lost by the player are put into a “player’s pool”. This money must be given back to the players by the end of the year. It is given back in the form of bonuses for each of the different games (example…get 3 blackjacks in a row, win an extra $500. And for every blackjack in a row after the intial 3, the player is awarded $1,000 bonus for each consectutive blackjack).

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Today’s a big day for poker in Dallas County. Sorta. Some cases from JB’s/Goodfellows are at the Dallas County Courthouse right now. I don’t have many details — perhaps some of the defendants can fill us in as their cases get postponed/settled/dismissed (or otherwise adjudicated, of course).

Perspective forthcoming …

UPDATE: All cases against players dismissed. Charges against dealers and room operators put on deferred adjudication … meaning if they can stay clear of running a poker room for 90 days, all problems will go away.

Julian in Dallas writes back with official (but terse?) information about last night’s armed poker robbery. Says the DPD vice unit deputy chief:

We had an Aggravated Robbery about 12:30 AM, at 13340 Audelia, #108. The offense location is a high stakes poker game room. Three suspects entered the game room with a rifle and shotgun. Shots were fired. Twelve people were robbed of a significant amount of money. One person was shot.

So there you have it. No word on whether or not anyone the injured player was transported to the hospital. But generally, getting shot really hurts.

ALT HED: Oklahoma Anyone?

As the World Series has concluded and the new poker year begins, just like that we get a reminder of some real issues facing poker players in search of a good, honest game.

Details are sparse as they filter in to Las Vegas, but we’re hearing that a room in Northeast Dallas was robbed at about 1 am central. According to unconfirmed reports:

• Three men burst into a big Omaha game firing rifles and shotguns.
• One player hit, either from ricochet or shrapnel.
• Dallas police were called to the scene and responded.
• Local news crew in tow.
• Typical player here lived in Plano, Richardson, Frisco, or McKinney.

This has been at least the third armed robbery of a Dallas poker room in the past few months, fourth if you include the attempted pillaging where the gunmen were briefly locked in a lobby and a dealer tried to hide herself in a trash bag.

LAS VEGAS–Word spreading to the Pacific time zone is that a big batch of misdemeanor cases from the made-for-TV paramilitary poker raid on Aces have been dismissed. Can anyone verify the truth to this?

Julian in Dallas writes in with a trip report from his most recent poker activity:

On Friday night, June 1, 2007, the Dallas Vice Unit and Northwest Division Patrol officers executed a Search Warrant at:

“Live Straddle”
7141 Envoy Ct.

28 citations for gambling

5 arrests gambling promotion M/A

seized:
4 poker tables,
poker chips,
playing cards, computer equipment, assorted paperwork, $4,599.00 cash

Deputy Chief J Bernal
Narcotics Division
Dallas Police Department

Umm, I guess $4,600 is a nice score … but really Deputy Chief, if you keep on being such a table bully, it won’t be long before you have no one to play with. I mean you probably feel like you’re winning … but really, check your bankroll … are you?

From what I hear, you and your players are not allowed in Oklahoma … and I have a feeling that’s where most of the Dallas action is headed, because, frankly, people are troubled by the way you guys play. Not trying to be judgmental or anything, I just suspect that once you have no more poker to contend with … c’mon, we both know your past … you’re gonna get back into drugs, aren’t you.

I don’t know much about Dallas but I heard a room was raided last night…

“[Name removed] room (The Straddle) got raided last night”

Does anyone have information on this?

Aaron in Carrollton also writes in inquiring where to find a good low-stakes limit game to develop his chops:

I know this isn’t something you want to write about via email so you can text or call if you want, but I’m trying to find a decent limit ca$h game, maybe 2/5 or 5/10 limit. I’m going to Vegas twice next year (if the schedule lets me of course), once in January [...] and in the summer for the WSOP. But I need to primer my game here, so to speak, and really get better at a limit 5/10, maybe even 10/20 then go out there and see how I do vs. the better players.

I dont really want to go to card rooms since they’ve obviously been getting busted a lot, but shit maybe I have to, to get good. Let me know what’s up or who I should call, etc. Any advice on this? Thanks Dan.

Even though my first games I ever played in Dallas were 3/6 limit, really, as far as I know they are all gone now. Your best bet? Oklahoma. Or maybe Louisiana. I’m not positive of what they are spreading — but I am almost certain you can find a good 3/6 or 4/8 table at Choctaw, WinStar, and a few others to the North. Likewise for the Horseshoe and Eldorado in La.

Police busted through the doors of another Dallas poker room on Thursday — this time not to round up a bunch of low-stakes misdemeanor offenders, but rather to serve a warrant on a convicted cop-killer wanted in connection with the death of Meaghan Bosch, the 21-year-old SMU coed whose lifeless body was found disposed of in a portable toilet last week.

Click here to read the kinda scary story by Jason Trahan in The Dallas Morning News.

James McDaniel, who ran what Dallas players knew as “James’ Game,” admitted to having lunch with Bosch around the same time she sent her friends a text message saying she was with her drug dealer, shortly before she disappeared. Not sure who conducted the raid on McDaniels’ poker room — the Texas Rangers are taking the lead on this investigation, not DPD — but he was not there, nor was he at his house in Pleasant Grove, and is now apparently on the lam.

So much more to this story … developing.

CLARIFICATION: McDaniel was convicted of killing an ex-Dallas police officer in 1978, not one on active duty.

TO BE FAIR: Sources of unknown reliability are telling Pokerati there may be evidence supporting claims of innocence for that crime. Hmm, a black man falsely convicted of murder some 25+ years ago in Texas? Yep, certainly plausible enough … just as it would be that an assertion of “didn’t do it” is a bluff.

Yep, turns out there was indeed another poker game robbed in Dallas Wednesday night … yeesh, sounds very friggin’ scary. It appears to have been low-stakes action, but that didn’t stop three men from busting in to take whatever loot they could find. The main bad guy was wearing an orange ski mask and carried a pump-action shotgun. The other two wore black ski masks — one was brandishing a semi-automatic pistol, the other was standing guard at the door with a baseball bat, according to what two of the eight victims told police officers.

Wednesday Night scoreboard (amongst armed, masked men acting out of turn):

Cops: $1,473
Robbers: about $800

Click here to read the police reports.

Meanwhile, as Dallas Police were busting a poker game last night, an 8-Liner room less than a half-a-mile away was getting robbed. (Maybe not at the exact same time, but pretty close to it.)

I am not sure that non-poker people realize that even though the charges are the same, we could kinda care less about 8-Liner rooms getting tagged by the 5-0. We are selfish like that. I mean we don’t want anybody to get shot/robbed/killed … but, shit, they don’t even have blogs! Clearly the slot-machine players here have gambling problems, and they would be better off discovering the educational joy and subsequent Zen of Texas Hold’em.

(NOTE: My opinion might change if they ever bust Grandma Michalski, who loves her some nickel slots, but can only find quarter machines when she goes on church trips to Oklahoma.)

ALT HED: War on Video Poker?

UPDATE: It was a poker room that got robbed, not an 8-Liner room. DPD’s mistake … but hey, they were busy writing tickets to players down the street, right? Developing …

Really, it’s almost like the people robbing rooms know when the police are busting other joints. That’s three robberies (one just attempted) in a row on the same night that the cops were also confiscating cash from poker players. Whaddya think, coinkydink?

Good story in today’s DMN about the VFW poker bust, the Texas Poker Act, and police frustration with the issue of illegal Texas Hold’em games in North Texas. No mention of the armed robberies that police don’t/can’t handle … and the person who accuses poker players of throwing bottles in her yard doesn’t give her name, which is too bad. I wasn’t aware of any poker players who have ever left poker rooms carrying beer bottles … in fact, I am so confident that these sorts of nuisance crimes from poker players are so infrequent that I would like to volunteer Pokerati’s services to clean up whatever mess poker players do leave in any particular residential neighborhood. I’m being serious. But we can’t help you or any accuser who isn’t willing to give their names/meet eye-to-eye.

That’s the thing with the anti-poker forces, whatever and wherever they may be … they don’t know what they are talking about.

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Seems like everyone is prepping in some way or another for the WSOP. And that includes a lot of Dallas dealers. About a dozen or so of our favorite hometown card-flingers will be working the Series this year … so expect some quality pitches at the Rio this time-around, along with a strong understanding of poker rules and maybe even extra suckouts. Tell me if you disagree: When it comes to passion and professionalism, Dallas dealers are better than most. Right? At least the ones I know who will be working the Series are. After all, some of them are Pokerati’s Myspace friends.

Dealers from Dallas and all across the country have been auditioning in Las Vegas for the past month (and will continue to do so through May 8. Some will be returning next week for additional training (on games such as Badugi and triple-draw). Very cool … because the qualification process alone suggests that Harrah’s has taken last year’s disgruntled dealer problems to heart, and overhauled its dealer operations, which should be good for players and dealers alike.

ALT HED: Thinking inside the Box

OK, I know this makes me such a homer, but I gotta say I feel pretty good about seeing at least one Dallas pokerer at the final table of Event #1 — the $500 Casino Employees tournament.

Turns out it’s true … while we were all abuzz about police poker raids last month, there was not only the attempted robbery that we already told you about, but also there was an actual robbery just a few days later in Dallas proper* — and this time the armed bad guys were successful.

Pokerati’s “facts” are still fuzzy … perhaps we’ll get some more right here. What we do know is that the victims were at a $5/$10 game located somewhere along what many of us have called “Poker Row” or the “Dallas Poker Corridor.” The perpetrators were two black males (as was the case in the foiled robbery above), and one of them put a shotgun to the face of whomever answered the door — I believe it was a woman. From there they barged in and took somewhere around $7,000 (an extremely rough number based on the typical size of this game) … and as far as we currently know, police were not called.

Perhaps these robbers are just building their bankrolls for the WSOP?

*NOTE: It is Pokerati’s editorial policy to not name poker rooms in Texas unless the operators are overtly public about it and/or it has been shut down. Ahh, remember the good ole days when they used to buy ads?

Julian in Dallas writes in with some official information about this past weekend’s poker busts, and … perhaps like a player intentionally showing his hole cards? … informs Dallas pokerers about what the police plan to do next.

(Austin poker people may also want to take note.)

In a nutshell, I think what he’s saying is stop playing poker giving citizens reason to complain about illegal gambling … or their gonna getcha, and might possibly sick the Feds on yo ass! As things stand now, 79 players were ticketed this weekend, 18 of whom are soon to be arrested … with some TABC violations to boot.

Hey, I’m just passing on info — and perhaps contemplating hosting a charity tournament freeroll for the Assist the Officers Foundation — so don’t shoot the messenger:

Dan …

Just FYI, we did not take the persons charged with M/A Keeping a Gambling Place to jail on Saturday night. Those charges have now been filed and those persons will now be picked up and placed in jail. In the future, all persons charged with M/A Keeping a Gambling Place will be placed in jail. Persons charged with M/C gambling are also subject to arrest and could be placed in jail depending on the circumstances. All persons recently charged with Gambling M/C were issued citations and released.

For the purposes of your website, I think you all should know that the Vice Unit would much rather have voluntary compliance from the businesses and citizens of the City of Dallas. Gambling investigations are in fact time consuming operations and we have other priorities that we could be working on. Let me repeat, we would rather have voluntary compliance from a group of normally law abiding citizens. If we cannot get that compliance then we will have to conduct operations that will ultimately discourage those normally law abiding citizens from engaging in such behavior.

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