There are lots of amateur poker leagues out there, and with all due respect, we don’t pay as much attention to them as we used to unless there’s allegations of grift and/or a plot to kill the guy running it with snakes. However, the Lodge Amateur Poker League has always been near and dear to Pokerati’s heart.

Back in the early boom days, All In magazine called it “The best amateur tournament in America!” Ahh, we were having some good after-church strip-club times every Sunday, with more and more players getting better each week … in pursuit of not just gift certificates and lap-dance coupons, but also, and believe it or not more important than seeing boobs for most, a seat in a $1,500 WSOP event (travel expenses included, of course).

But like so much in poker, after Dan left it eventually lost its way. The tournament carried on, but allegations of chip dumping and cheating (yes, in an amateur tourney) made it lose its luster. Then came the Texas sin tax that made this “free” tournament a $0+5 NLH — with that whole $5 going to the State — and field sizes continued to dwindle.

Courts have since ruled that tax unconstitutional, so the game is free again … and now the Lodge — named Best Strip Club in America at the 2008 Exotic Dancer Awards in Las Vegas, btw — has renewed its commitment to making its weekly amateur poker tournament not just the best in Texas, but tops anywhere. The new TD cracking the poker whip: Sharron Nix.

Very cool. She knows her stuff, and knows how to have a good time. I’ll have to make a trip back to Dallas to check it out … and I hope it becomes a regular stop for poker people passing through. I don’t know the details about prizes or anything yet, but I’m sure she’ll run a great event.

Now the details:

Beginning this Sunday, The Lodge will open at NOON with a full slate of NFL football on our gazillion big-screen TVs. Our great lunch specials go on till 4 p.m., and it’s Happy Hour all day and night.

Our new, improved, fabulous and free PRIMO POKER debuts this Sunday at 4 p.m. Our Poker Princess, Sharron Nix, will offer free Texas Hold’em lessons at 3 before the cards drop at 4. Highlights include great weekly prizes, season prizes of buy-ins at big-time tournaments, terrific food and drink specials, and beautiful dealers at every table. Plus, you’re at The Lodge.
See you Sunday!

As those of you following @Pokerati on twitter are well-aware, I ended up at my old stomping grounds at The Lodge last night, totally not realizing that, being a Sunday night, there was an amateur poker tourney going on.

Not only did I get a reminder of why it’s good to be the Phil Hellmuth, or at least the Former Jeffrey Pollack of Dallas Amateur Sunday Strip-Club Poker … they snuck me into the tourney somewhere around level 5, and even gave me a nicer chair … but I had a really good time en route to making the final table and quickly giving my chips away once the Tuaca shots started flowing.

Anyhow, that is all … the tournament we started back in, um, yikes, 2003 is still going strong, drawing five tables of action weekly. They’ve changed the prize structure and point system … the tables are a bit beat up … you can’t smoke at’em any more … and we won’t even talk about the way my attempt to steal the blinds from two absent seats was handled … but many familiar faces (and breasts, hi Lindsey!) … and plenty of absolutely terrible play.

I think by making the final table (8th place – top 3 won Lodge gift certificates) I qualified for some special mini-semi-finals six weeks from now. Perhaps I’ll have to return?

Click below for an impressive (?) list of known poker pros, authors, and celebrities who at one time or another played on these (same) tables:

(Oh, also, congratulations to Liz the longtime Lodge poker waitress and LAP player Michael Tiegs, who will be getting married this week in Las Vegas!)

Jim McManus
Clonie Gowen
Andy Beal
Gabe Kaplan
Michael Kaplan
Brad Reagan
David Williams
Rick Fuller
Greg Raymer
TJ Cloutier
Nolan Dalla
Otis
Lou Diamond Phillips
Jerome Bettis
Bob Ciaffone

Ahh, the good times …

New TDA Rule….. All Hold’em Final Tables that start 9 or 10 handed will go to final table at 10 handed. 6 handed tournaments at 7…

Hmm, not sure how I feel about that one, or how it would work at a place like The Lodge, where an extra-big field meant starting with some fold-up outer tables that were only 6-handed, compared to the 8-9-handed tables elsewhere in the room.

It’s always fun running into people unexpectedly … happens regularly here in Vegas and today I noticed Lodge player Jerry Dolan (left) playing in the nightly $120 tourney at the Venetian … and when I went to snap a picture, lo and behold the player seated to his left was Adam Schacter (right), another occasional Lodge player and a final tableist in the 2005 Pokerati Invitational. They didn’t know each other … but would get to know each other in the end, as Schacter busted Dolan in this 129-player event.

Too funny! Small (poker) world. And good luck to Adam, as he’s currently chip leader with 19 players remaining.

Pro Poker, Too

So lots of big action going on in Vegas tonight. We’ve got the WPT World Championship final table at Bellagio (word around here is that somebody won — about $2 million), the Venetian Deep Stacks main event is down to heads-up (Doug Lee vs Vegas local Eric Baldwin — for about $200k), and over on the kiddie tables outside the Venetian poker room we’ve got a Lodge/Pokerati alum fighting to see if he’s got what it takes to take one the whole way (for about $2k). Good night in V-town.

Proof: In Dallas, it’s legal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, but illegal to ride a bicycle without one.

With that in mind, another law moved forward today that indirectly relates to poker … the Texas House approved a 10 percent tax on admission fees to strip clubs, replacing a $5-per-head “sin tax” that was previously in play. I know this law well … not only because it was a major deal at my old stomping grounds, The Lodge, but also because a good buddy of mine actually wrote it. And when he did, it was a sign to me of everything that is wrong with American politics …

IMHO, my law-writing pal totally phoned it in on this one. (Sorry, dude, no offense … just sayin’ … buy you a drink next time?) It was a terribly written law designed to generate money for a charity that the bill’s sponsor (Ellen Cohen, D-Houston) was the president of … all presented to the people as “good for women”, even though it hurt the clubs that actually looked out for their girls and encouraged the dirtier ones to operate more shadily in their sexually oriented business. When the adult entertainment industry challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, the courts agreed and declared it unconstitutional … a ruling that the State has since appealed, with that appeal still pending.

OK, so here’s where poker comes in … the way the original law was written, it said the strip clubs didn’t have to change their businesses in any way beyond taking that $5 a head. At the Lodge — voted the top strip club in the nation for 2008, btw — part of their business included hosting an amateur poker tournament every Sunday (which I started way back when, fyi). To keep that legal, it was held only on Sundays, when the Lodge had no cover charge, with no drink-minimums enforced … The tournament had to be free free free. That changed in 2007, however, when The Lodge, began taking the $5 cover, as mandated by state law.

So really, what that created was a $0+5 No-Limit Hold’em tournament, with the State taking 100 percent of the entry fee. Raked poker … made legal by one law, though still illegal under another. Oops! Amazing, people still came to play … and the state profited generated money for a charity as Lodge players competed week in and week out at a card game for prizes ranging from food-and-drink coupons to small buy-in events at the WSOP.

The new bill — sponsored by HB 222-supporting Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston) — looks to correct that problem by instead taxing admission fees 10 percent … so Sundays at The Lodge could go back to being, um, cover-less, and Lodge Amateur Poker go back to being a true freeroll. If Thompson’s bill doesn’t become law, however, then the State will continue to rake “free” poker games while the courts look deeper into the legalities of my buddy’s old sin tax … which, interestingly enough, lots of other states are currently looking to copy.

Click here for a semi-SFW picture of Greg Raymer supporting the convergence of strip clubs and poker. (Zoom in for nipple.)

Sorry for being the bearer of rough news, but I thought a few of you specifically might want to know. Any financial assistance would be greatly appreciated and can be sent to:

Jonathan B Dwayne Whitehead Memorial at American National Bank of Texas

Here is the bank’s info … funds can be snail-mailed or wire-transferred to any branch. And if you’d like to offer any other assistance, don’t hesitate to contact Jay Wagoner (aka “Cowboy” or “Gandalf” to Lodge players), who can put you directly in touch with the Whitehead family.

Rough times, to say the least. But it’s good to know he’s got family, church support, and poker friends to help make it all a little better.

The Kerr County Attorney has asked for an opinion on charity poker galas. He wants to know if hosting a pricey dinner that happens to include an optional poker tournament violates Texas gambling laws if the winners are awarded prizes. Likewise he wants to know if leasing a ballroom or banquet hall for such an event constitutes a “private place” defense.

Click here to read the specific and official pending opinion request.

Back in the old days (like pre-2006) big fun underlay charity tourneys were common. High society types would pony up, say $500 (w/ rebuys) to compete in a 300-player field with first prize being a WSOP main event seat. TJ Cloutier and Troy Aikman were usually playing. These events showed they could raise hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time for different charities. But then the rule suddenly changed … with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission threatening to yank liquor licenses for any such event that gave the winner a prize; the only way to do it, TABC said, is to have a poker tournament and choose prize recipients via raffle.

This was stupid, of course … and the results led to suckier tournaments with no incentive to rebuy raising way less money for charity. Guys like Phil Hellmuth and Dale Hansen had to cancel events … but after a couple years of spotty and jurisdictionally questionable enforcement, some charities began saying “fuggit!” and throwing tourneys the old way. Recently: Phil Hellmuth did in San Antonio what he couldn’t do in Houston, partnering with Tony Parker and Eva Langoria and tons of mainstream sponsors (HEB, AeroMexico, San Antonio Spurs, et al.) to throw a wildly successful event that raised nearly $500,000 for Eva’s Heroes. (1,200 people entered this $300 w/ rebuys event.)

So anyhow, yes, now Kerr County Attorney Rex Emerson is asking pre-emptively, does the state plan to prosecute these sorts of events?

Frankly, I don’t have my hopes up for what is essentially “medicinal poker”. But it would be a great step towards the good, clean, fully legal Texas Hold’em we’re all looking for. Last time Abbott was asked for a poker opinion — in 2005 (or was it ’04?) by an El Paso DA unsure how to proceed with a wave of APL-style events in his city — the AG’s interpretation of the law made a huge difference to me personally and many Pokerati readers, as he declared free tournaments were not gambling no matter the prize … because it can’t be gambling if there is no risk … and clearly the gambling laws weren’t written with intent of stopping Lodge Amateur Poker and other similar activities.

Fingers crossed that charity poker will be seen in a similar legal light.

[Note: Links and strikethroughs are contemporary add-ons, not part of the original email.]

• What’s Going on with the Poker Bowl?
• Will the WPT see 2009?
• Is High Stakes Poker in Trouble? (They haven’t filmed yet this year)
• My time at the table with a colluder-turned-killer (now in jail)
• Rock, Paper, Kenna: Roshambo with Kenna James
• Tiffany Michelle’s Inner Stripper
• Poker Politics out the Ying Yang
• Dance AJ Dance! (AJ Benza on Celebrity Fit Club)
• Chris Ferguson’s Tip for the Heads-Up Championship
• The Arizona Judge challenging the system with a legally questionable card room
• World Series of Beer Pong
• All sorts of readers writing in with questions about poker lawyers
• Multiple restaurant reviews
• Various social party things attached to playing poker afterwards
• Skill-based slot machines
• Etiquette: Why It’s Bad to Slowroll
• How My Friend Created a Law in Texas that Challenged the Amateur Tournament i created (Lodge tourney becomes $0+5 with state taking the rake – I call my friend out for doing sloppy work, and the courts agree by declaring his law unconstitutional)
• Pauly vs. Pauly (dumb kid’s comic strip “Poker Pauly)

Yeow, if someone actually wrote about all that stuff, it would probably make for a pretty good blog, no?

“I did stop-and-go,” he said, “the best play in poker … He raised it up and i couldn’t go all-in because I only had like 1,500 more, so I just flat called and bet all-in on the flop.”

“Ah, because in that situation it doesn’t matter what you have or if it hits you — you’re just banking on it not hitting him.”

“Yeah, but it did hit me,” and he folded.

Hmm, so in that case a check wouldn’t have been better? Maybe not. Still, good stuff, DP … back in survivable action … with 520 of 2,317 remaining. Money kicks in at 198.

UPDATE: Pflaster is out. He built his stack up to 8,500 by making moves. First go was all-in with J-3 … tight table, his short stack still big enough to hurt any and all of them … everybody folds.

Next hand: AK … can’t just raise a little bit, so he moves all-in again … no one calls.

Next hand: [cards]9c Tc[/cards]. Same move again … by this point players are getting suspicious, but he still has too many chips for any of them to call … except for the dude with pocket queens. Flopped a 9, but never improved. Totally crippled, moves all-in in the dark in the next hand, late-position min-raises … they’re heads-up, but Pflaster’s Q7s fails to outflop-turn-river the raisers K-J.

CORRECTION: From the cell phone of Pflaster …

Just to clarify though, when I told you that I hit with the stop and go, what I meant was that i had Qh8h and the flop was JT3 two hearts. So even though I had a big draw I still prefer to bet and try to take it down while stillI only have Q high.

And/or click below for the song list.