Unfair Park from p4 In early 2020, Dallas approved its first le- gal poker room, Texas Card House. Owners of the poker club declined to talk to the Ob- server on the record, citing tensions with the city. But Ryan Crow, Texas Card House’s CEO, told D Magazine in January that the place has been busy since opening. “We knew when we opened it was going to be busy,” Crow told D. “But we didn’t know how big some of the games would be. When we do a tournament, people fly in internationally.” At the legal rooms, players pay a mem- bership fee and an hourly fee. A floor man- ager hovers around to handle any situation dealers can’t. Williams said new players should stick to lower stakes games, but whatever the stakes, if you want to make money at poker, you have to play smart. “If you’re not comfortable with the amount of money you have in front of you, then you’re not going to play correctly regardless of your skill level,” he said. “There are a lot of players that believe any two cards can win. In a given situation, yes that’s true, but over the long term, the ‘any two cards’ mantra doesn’t win,” Williams added. “I haven’t built an income for myself just playing every hand. I built an income by being selective about the hands that I play.” He also tries to be aggressive at the table. “The person who is aggressive and raising a lot, making the pot more expensive, is going to fare better than someone who is playing very passive and checking and not maximiz- ing their cards,” he said. Things continued to go well for him – and then the pandemic struck. “All of the rooms had shut down. The ca- sinos had stopped playing poker,” he said. “I was like ‘Great, here I was with this great opportunity to start pushing my poker ca- reer forward and then COVID happened and I couldn’t play anywhere.’ That’s when the underground games started pulling peo- ple in because there really was nowhere else to play.” At the time, public health officials cau- tioned against large gatherings. Williams figured he’d put a mask on and hit the un- derground rooms anyway. “I started making money in the underground scene. I was making a good side income,” he said. “It was the first time I had ever delved into that world. Of course, you’ve got the things in the back of your head: Am I going to get robbed? Are the police going to run in? Is it crazy? Are there drugs?” The rooms where he played didn’t seem to be festering with illegal activity, though the underground scene is rowdier and can be more fun, he said, which is why some people prefer it. “There are still underground rooms that are still flourishing even though there is a le- gal option,” Williams said. “The underground rooms traditionally are a more fun environ- ment. The players at the underground rooms are more fun. They spend a lot more money. They have a lot more action. The waitresses are cute. There’s free alcohol, there’s free food. … It’s just, to a professional, the rake is a little bit unattractive.” “The rake” refers to the share of each 66 pot claimed by the house. It’s how organiz- ers of underground games make their money and pay for the free food and drinks. In Texas, where gambling is generally ille- gal, it’s arguably the difference between a legal card room, which doesn’t have a rake, and an illegal one. That’s one interpretation of the gray area in Texas law, anyway, though not everyone agrees the state allows poker rooms to oper- ate at all, rake or no rake. It depends on which lawyer you ask, or in the case of Dal- las’ attorneys, when you ask them. Last year, Williams applied for a promo- tion with Fort Worth. “I didn’t get it,” he said. “It didn’t look like I was really going to move forward and progress in that position, so I put in my two weeks’ notice. That was last June.” He’s played poker full time since, though the transition wasn’t seamless. Expecting a pension payout from Fort Worth, he prom- ised his family a trip to Cancun. But the pen- sion money didn’t come in time, and he was strapped for cash to take his family on the trip. Then he heard about a tournament at a local legal room called Shuffle 214. “They guaranteed a $100,000 prize pool, and the tournament was a $500 entry,” Wil- liams said. “I outlasted 256 players, finishing in third place for over $12,356. Then we took that well-deserved trip to Cancun.” Since then, he’s started a YouTube chan- nel following his playing. These days, he fo- cuses more on the legal rooms because they don’t take a rake and are safer. “When you play in an underground game, your profit is very, very small,” he said. “And a lot of players believe you can’t even beat certain underground games be- cause they’re taking too much out of the pot. That is why the legal rooms present a much better option.” In the legal rooms, he doesn’t have to worry about getting arrested. If the legal rooms shut down, though, Williams said players will either go underground or out of state. Neither seems ideal to Trey Sweeney, an- other local player. “It just pushes those dol- lars to underground rooms, which aren’t taxed,” Sweeney said. “Or, it pushes them out of state. I think that’s a real shame be- cause, like I say, it’s a game of skill.” Sweeney said he’s been playing cash home games since he was a teenager. “It became an avenue to make profit off some fish,” he said, referring to less experienced players. He’s played in Las Vegas poker tourna- ments. He’s been to Texas Card House a handful of times and has some experience in the underground scene. But these days, he mostly plays cash games with friends like he did when he started as a teenager. When he does go out to play, he said he doesn’t see anything too out of turn going on in the illegal rooms. “It feels more like a house party where there’s poker being played opposed to at a casino where people are strictly playing,” Sweeney said. “If games do get pushed underground, it becomes more gambling because you can’t win,” he said. “I think that would be the incorrect de- cision for the city to make from an economic standpoint.” For some, the legal rooms just feel safer. Rebecca Thompson has been playing poker for about 20 years. For about the last decade, she’s played professionally. Thomp- son is also an advocate with Poker League of Nations, the world’s largest women’s poker organization. When Thompson first got into poker, it was in a thriving underground scene in DFW. She said she was involved in three raids of illegal poker games. On those occa- sions, though, she and many of the other players got off with tickets. Thompson was happy when legal clubs began opening in Dallas because she had a place nearby where she felt safer and didn’t have to worry about the law. While she has plenty of friends in the underground scene, Mike Brooks Rebecca Thompson was involved in three raids of illegal poker games and got off with just a ticket. these days she sticks to the legal rooms. If they get shut down, she thinks people will just flock to the underground. “People are going to play,” she said. “They’re going to play wherever.” That, she said, will likely lead to more crime, “because those running the establish- ments are less likely to want to get the police involved should something happen,” she said. Undeniably, some nights in Dallas’ illegal game rooms have turned violent. This month, a man was shot and killed at an ille- gal game room in southern Dallas. Most of the people who were there when the gunfire broke out were gone when police arrived, according to WFAA. Last May, two men got into a shootout at another illegal game room in Dallas. Thong Nguyen worked at the room and stuffed a large amount of cash in his shirt pocket, po- lice said in an affidavit. This was captured on a surveillance camera at the room. The other man, Laurentino Belmares Jr., ap- peared to notice what Nguyen was doing. As Nguyen was trying to walk Belmares out, Belmares pulled a gun and tried to take the cash, police said. Nguyen pulled out his own gun and the two shot each other. Nguyen was struck in the head and died three days later. Belmares was wounded in the ankle and was arrested. Devon Palk, DPD’s special investigations major, told the Observer last year that this isn’t all that uncommon and police usually go after gambling rooms tied to violent crime. Illegal gambling in the city is handled by DPD’s vice unit. At that time in July 2021, the unit had executed 27 warrants involving game rooms in the city. He said they’d also received around 75 complaints of illegal gambling. >> p8 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 MARCH 17–23, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com dallasobserver.com
