Was there a poker robbery in Dallas last night — or perhaps talk around some tables about an old one?
Not trying to start anything, rumor or otherwise … I just happened to notice a few visitors coming to us via Google searches overnight for \”dallas poker robbery\”. Not to give my secrets away, but monitoring Google traffic isn\’t too different from the way night-shift journos used to listen to police radios back in the newspaper day … and when I\’ve noticed a quick surge in such searches before (or more commonly, \”dallas poker room raided\”) it usually meant something was up. But other than this \”hunch\” I\’ve got nothing.
UPDATE: Yep … VFW hall that screams poker room was popped last night:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26065611
VIDEO: http://video.nbc5i.com/player/?id=283511
UPDATE: Oh, dude, I recognize exactly where this is! One of the best and biggest games kinda-sorta but not really in Dallas. Have played there a handful of times, and always enjoyed the action. Interestingly enough, both cops and robbers have been here before. This was the place where the guys who just might be the Dallas Poker Bandits got their start …
It was a totally botched robbery about two years ago … where one (Michalski-trained) lovely boisterous lady dealer crawled inside a garbage bag to hide during the commotion. (We didn\’t teach that in Lodge amateur dealer class, of course, but I applaud her creative thinking in the face of bad guys with guns.) I forget why the police were there like six months ago, but they did a walk-through and play was hardly halted. Then sometime earlier this summer (or maybe spring?) some robbers did show up and again were thwarted!
Previous to that I had been hearing from someone who supposedly had an inside connection with a cop that people might want to steer clear of this game because the Dallas police were finally all over it and just waiting for the right moment bust in and take it down.
A better analogy would be monitoring a CB radio (citizen band), but I think it’s a great system. Use all the tools at your disposal!
When I was a kid in the ’70s, my family had a CB radio, and my “handle” was “Yogi Bear.” If memory serves, we bought one for each car about a week or two after watching “Smokey and the Bandit.”
While I’m playing hunches, I might as well fish for other “big” stories as well … I’ve got a feeling some executives might be cheating at another online site … anyone? Anyone?
Ooh, and that there’s gonna be some big huge sale of something somewhere. And some pro is mad at another pro. Anyone searching for anything like that?
And has anyone seen Paris Hilton running around naked somewhere last night? Because a lot of people are googling “paris hilton naked” a lot — and to think, at a time when she’s doing political commercials!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26065611
Looks like this might be what you were talking about… why else would a VFW have a bunch of people and be robbed at 5am?
Wow, whaddya know … there ya go. I’m gonna move that link up into the main post. Thanks Birdy.
Now we’ll have to see if we can find out any details. I’m out of the Dallas loop, of course … last I heard the Dallas Poker Bandits were still on the loose, but police were hot on their tail (because one of the thugs dropped his cell phone at the scene of the crime).
Also heard about a potential inside lookout being identified, but don’t know what to make of that.
Any updates — either publicly here or privately to me via email — would be appreciated.
Natural first assumption is that it is the same Dallas Poker Bandits … but it could plenty conceivably be copycat robbers. And by copycat, I mean they copy the other robbers money-extraction MO, and the police’s game-targeting strategy.
The reason that this room has been running for so long and successful is that one of the owners is an ex-cop. They run games everyday starting at noon. Their action is (was) better than Winstar. It will be nice to expose the ring and see some po-po get busted.
It was the only 1-2 game I know of that would have $15k on the table.