by Dan Michalski, Feb 8, 2012 | 9:05 am

A Houston-area man got killed this past weekend at a poker game — after a fight broke out at what appears to be a family home game, and hosts ejected a supposedly uninvited player, who then returned with a handgun, police say, and fired wildly at the table, hitting at least three people. One of the shooting victims, Angel Vazquez, 48, returned fire with his own weapon and wounded the alleged attacker, Manuel Morales, 41 … but in the end Vazquez died at the hospital, while Morales, picked up by police at a nearby gas station, is in critical condition and facing murder charges.

Hard to tell if this game in Northeast Harris County was truly a family poker night in a residential neighborhood or underground poker room … but either way, sad as it is in the face of death and painful injury, you gotta believe there is more to this story:

In a story that ran on April 15, 2010, Johnny Hughes told a San Antonio newspaper that the violence in Texas poker rooms was reaching a fever pitch — quite different (and potentially more deadly) than the fights and robberies he had witnessed over the previous 50 years of playing un-legalized Texas poker.

I think we’re up to at least five deaths by gunfire in Texas poker games now, over the past few years.