Deep in the heart of Texas tonight HB 3186 will be waiting to hear the news of its existence and position. Lets take a moment to thank Dan and Lavigne of Pokerati for their great efforts in trying to legalize poker in Texas. Not only have they put a tremendous amount of work into getting the bill to the floor but they have done an excellent job informing the public.

No matter what happens tonight – Thank You for getting off the soapbox and taking real action.

Dale Hansen comes out of the closet to admit that yes, he has played and will continue to play illegal poker. You know, he is pretty good on the radio. He should so think about getting into podcasting.

Hour of Hansen
ESPN 103.3 FM – 5/8/07
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Part 1: Dale Hansen speaks with Rep. Jose Menendez about HB 3186 and why legalizing poker in Texas is an uphill political battle / scared Republicans (and problems caused by redistricting) / luck vs. skill / Lottery hypocrites / the Governor will sign if it gets to him.

Part 2: Hansen speaks with Pokerati about underground poker in Dallas and the hypocrisy of the state not taking a rake on poker / what about fishing tournaments? / Oklahoma and Louisiana advertising on the highways / the impact of raids.

Part 3: Hansen takes calls / a sweet old lady busted in the VFW game / would Dale legalize drugs?

My only regret is that I forgot to push the charity angle … and talk more with Dale about how his attempt at a major benefit (Cards for Kids with DallasCAN!) was stymied, and would not have been under the purview of a new law.

Tune in to Hour of Hansen on ESPN radio (103.3 FM) here. He’s talking poker right now. Rep. Menendez is currently speaking with Dale Hansen from Austin on how far we’ve come and the obstacles we still face.

Yes, we women think from time to time — or at least the men allow us. Especially down here in Texas where all men are rednecks and women are stupid, no? Offended? See fine print below. Anyway, I was thinking about HB 3186 and the paradox of why we are unable to play raked poker in Texas. Here is just one example:

Considering the process of Natural Selection, poker tournaments are a great example of Darwinism. When the first poker hand is dealt, Herbert Spencer’s phrase “Survival of the fittest” becomes most poker player’s motto. We are forced to learn this scientific theory in our public schools while forbidding Creationism. Let’s get something clear right now…Creationism over Evolution is not the point of this post. Darwinism vs. Creation or Intelligent Design is not the point of this post, either.

My point is … why do we force children to learn the scientific theory of evolution over the 5,000-year-old historical book of Genesis only to tell postgraduates they’re unable to practice the forced theory and make decisions on their own in life. Isn’t it confusing the government will choose what you learn in school such as capitalism, free trade and freedom (which we pay for) only to forbid these things later in life? Is it me or does it seem the government takes religion away from children and then uses it against adults?

*Sew – Pun on women being stupid and knowing how to sew. Also read the comments on this post.
*Fine Print
The statement pertaining to Texas men being rednecks and Texas women being stupid is not true. State names have been changed to protect the ignorant innocent.

As we move along in the process to regulate poker in Texas, I’ve tried really hard not to overdo the poker metaphors, but this time it really is the best way to say it.

Our bill, HB 3186, is on the House General Calendar. The deadline for hearing this bill on the floor of the House is Thursday night. However, The House of Representatives is backed up pretty bad and the legislative carnage is evident already.

We feel good about our chances if we can get a vote, but at this point there is no guarantee that will happen.

The next few nights in the Texas House will be very late as they try to work through their calendar, but every time a contentious bill comes up for debate and one side begins to stall (or “chub” as it is referred to at the Capitol) bills at the end of the calendar become less likely to pass.

We are still in this thing, and frankly we’ve gotten farther than anyone thought we would.

In the meantime, continue to email your legislators. A good citizen recently posted this site and I encourage you to take advantage of it to contact your legislators: http://www.legalizepokerintexas.com/

Stay tuned, Thursday will be a very late night!

Tim in Dallas writes in with a late-night update on HB 3186, and a question that I think he was hoping was rhetorical:

From: Tim B
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 2:07 AM
To: dan michalski
Subject: woo WOO! HB 3186 made it through calendars!

Placed on General State Calendar 05/09/2007

they havent released the calendar for the 9th yet, so i dont know where in
the agenda it is, but this does mean its going to get a vote on the floor,
right??

Indeed, Tim, this is a really good thing … but it may not be enough! Being on the general calendar is no guarantee that the House will get to it … and if they don’t, then despite all hard work and good sense, it simply dies.

To be sure the bill gets heard on the floor, it needs to be on the Major State Calendar. Rep. Jose Menendez, Lavigne in Austin, and the lobbyists are actively trying to make that happen … but that’s why pressure still matters today and tomorrow. In fact, if you happen to be a big-time Republican donor … now would be a really good time to get in touch voice-to-voice with your highest-ranking peeps and encourage them to make poker a priority.

Fingers crossed, buttons clicking, stomachs turning … it feels like we’ve flopped a set only to be up against open-ended-straight and flush draws with two cards to come.

More…

Dumb
Found at CraigsList, here

Join The Fastest Growing Industry In The World…Become A Pro DEALER
——————————————————————————–
Reply to: job-314136637@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-04-18, 10:08AM CDT

OK, ITS ALL OVER THE NEWS!!! THERE IS A BILL IN AUSTIN RIGHT NOW TO LEGALIZE POKER IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ESTABLISHMENTS. THIS BILL IS CALLED “THE POKER GAMING BILL OF 2007″. THIS BILL IS EXPECTED TO PASS AND WHEN IT DOES EVERY BAR WILL BE OPENING A POKER ROOM AND WILL BE IN NEED OF PROFESSIONAL CERTIFIED DEALERS LET “THE ALL AMERICAN CASINO DEALERS ACADEMY”, THE ONLY PROFESSIONAL DEALERS SCHOOL IN TEXAS GET YOU CERTIFIED NOW BEFORE THE RUSH. ALL INSTRUCTORS ARE CASINO CERTIFIED AND MOST ARE RETIRED PIT BOSSES OR DEALERS. DAY AND EVENING CLASSES AVAILABLE…CALL FOR MORE INFORMATION METRO (817) 857-3567. JOB PLACEMENT ASSISTANCE AVAILABLE!!!

If I have to tell you why this post is dumb, this blog is too intelligent for you. And that’s a very sad thing indeed.

More…

Not sure if this helps or hurts the poker cause … but the Texas Lottery has introduced a new $50 scratch-off game. Could spark an anti-gambling uproar, you gotta think, that might make the “no-no-no more gambling!” minority scare a few undecideds against the Texas Poker Act, which is still waiting to see if it can get on the “major state calendar” for a vote this week.

Or it could plausibly put the Lege into “fuck-it” mode … “hell, if we’ve got the biggest lottery game in the nation, then why not Texas Hold’em, gowl-dangit?” After all, even the Southern Baptist-lovin’ Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas) has publicly shilled for gambling in Texas — full-fledged casino variety, no less — on the grounds that it is the will of the public to see these dollars stay in state. Interestingly enough, it’s the Texas Lottery Commission that would be charged with the regulation and oversight of poker, as per HB 3186.

Meanwhile, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an article with instructions for wagering on Texas-related politics online via Bodog. I wonder if the ST realizes how much money they could make if they linked to Bodog with an affiliate code.

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.

More…

We’ve gotten some decent ink going into the weekend, with some more expected.

The biggest threat to our little bill is that the House of Representatives is just on this side of a total meltdown over totally unrelated issues. The Capitol Letters blog is a pretty good one if you want to learn more about that.

We have to have our bill heard on the floor of the House by Thursday if it is to continue on to the Senate. This is doable, but we need to keep applying pressure.

A Pokerati reader created a web page to make that even easier. GO THERE NOW!

HB 3186 was voted out of the House Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee. We will be seeing our first Texas House vote on Poker as early as Friday. More to come, but for now please contact your State Representative and ask them to support HB 3186, The Texas Poker Act.

It has been a little while since I last updated y’all on the progress of our Texas Poker Bill (HB 3186). When we last left our little bill it had had a great hearing in the Texas House Committee on Licensing and Administrative Procedures. At the end of that hearing it was left pending and the real work began behind the scenes.

Your team has been busy…and successful. We anticipate it being voted out of committee very soon, but we need every poker player in Texas to do something between now and Monday afternoon. Call the legislators on the committee and let them know you support the regulation of poker, specifically HB 3186.

When you call, please remember a few things:

1) Be nice
2) Tell them specifically you support HB 3186
3) Ask them to support HB 3186 too

It will only take about 30 seconds a call and there are 9 members of the committee.

We are very close to getting this bill to the floor of the House, where we believe we may have enough votes to pass this thing.

Hopefullly, I’ll be updating you with some very good news on Monday night!

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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Or not … our beloved little HB 3186 still has a ways to go. But we are “this much closer” to legal-better poker in Texas … at a minimum, people in the law business are becoming more and more familiar with our “issues” … and an increasing number of political bidders are looking at dollar signs (and calculating implied pot odds) on an unusual bill that has, let’s say, 75 percent public support …

Here is the testimony presented earlier this month for and against legalized Texas poker to the legislative committee charged with making the first rounds of decisions about this bill. You will find it either totally boring or C-Span fascinating … and if you’re in the latter camp, you’ll probably hear much that you find encouraging. Listen closer, however, and you may get a sense that some hardline politicking has only just begun:

House Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee
Austin, TX – 4/3/07

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Dallas po-po says they know about “a majority” of local games. And even though we have yet to see a single conviction (by judge or jury) of more than 200 potential defendants, here’s a list of underground poker rooms put out of business recently: (Feel free to add if I missed any — but, hey, don’t go naming your friends just to be funny!)

Aces
Jackie’s
JB’s/Goodfellows
Ace High
R&R #2
VFW-Audie Murphy
Top Shelf
Island Club
DC’s Poker House

Previously and outside of Dallas proper
EV Enterprises (Richardson)
Sons of Italy (McKinney)
Poker Pound (Duncanville)
R’s Game (Addison)
R&R (Carrollton)

Hmm, wow … OK, it looks like they’ve gotten all of ‘em. Yep … all gone. No more cardsy fun for citizens to complain about. Now poker players can take up new hobbies en masse … like fishing/bowling/golf/panhandling/beekeeping/graffiti.