14 April 18 - 24, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Besides his and others’ objections to the city’s proposals, there’s another reason why 2929 S. Hampton Road shouldn’t be home to a new homeless facility, Crawford said. In 2020, Dallas City Council agreed that even- tually every district should have one home- less facility. Because district boundary lines were redrawn in June 2022, District 3 al- ready has a different homeless facility in the works that was originally in District 8 — the former Townhouse Suites building that the city also purchased in 2022 to help house the homeless. “We’ve already given,” Crawford said. “We got our facility.” ▼ GAMBLING DALLAS DON’T PLAY OTHER TEXAS CITIES GIVE POKER CLUBS ROYAL TREATMENT. BY JACOB VAUGHN A s a battle continues over the legality of poker rooms in Dallas, the busi- nesses are operating without a hitch in other cities in the state, including right here in North Texas. Texas Card House has been operating in Irving since May 2023, CEO Ryan Crow told the Observer. While he had to get approval from the Irving City Council before he could open up shop, Crow said business has been smooth in the city. Irving is the only city where Texas Card House operates that re- quired City Council approval before open- ing. But the hardest part was getting approval from the Las Colinas Association in Irving to put up signs advertising the business, which happened only recently. “I hate to say it, but it was much easier than what we went through in Dallas,” Crow said. Texas Card House was ultimately al- lowed to open in Dallas a few years ago, “but then, of course, things changed,” Crow said. Dallas granted Texas Card House a certifi- cate of occupancy to operate the city’s first poker room in 2019. Everything was going fine at the club until 2021, when the city revoked its certificate even though nothing had changed about the business. The same thing happened to another club called Shuffle 214. After an odd bout of legal wrangling that saw the city sue its own Board of Adjustment District Judge Eric Moyé ruled in the city’s favor in 2022, saying the board had abused its power when it re- turned the certificates of occupancy to the poker clubs. This decision is under appeal, Crow said. The poker rooms have continued to operate in the city, and Dallas has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to re- solve the case. Dallas has also kicked around a few ideas for how to allow the poker rooms to remain, but these ideas were so restrictive, some said it woud be hard to open up a poker club in the city at all. Meanwhile, it’s been relatively easy to open locations in cities like Austin, Houston and Irving. All of Texas Card House’s locations in the state run as private clubs that charge mem- bership fees to play poker, but the house doesn’t take a cut of the bets. Crow said his lawyers looked at the Texas penal code and identified three crite- ria that some argue make poker clubs legal in the state. First, the games have to be in a private place. Second, everyone has to have a fair chance of winning. “So, there’s no blackjack. There’s no roulette,” Crow said. “There’s none of the house-type games, only player versus player.” The third criterion in question, and this is the controversial one, is that there can’t be an economic benefit. “That’s the one that tends to get people the most tripped up and people are the most divided over,” Crow said. The question is whether this should be applied to any eco- nomic benefit from anything going on around the game (like membership fees and hourly rates), or just the game itself (such as a rake, where the house takes a cut of the bets). Some say these three criteria in state law were intended more to protect people playing private games at their homes, not businesses operating as poker clubs. The way Crow sees it, the law means to say that there can’t be an economic benefit from the game itself, mean- ing membership fees and hourly rates are fine. Things seem to be going smoothly for Crow and his business in every city he oper- ates in besides Dallas. He recently expanded into Austin and plans to open another club there. In Houston, a second location has been opened. “In most of the cities, it’s been very, very positive,” Crow said. “I mean, it’s been al- most the opposite of what we experienced in Dallas.” Wikimedia Texas Card House is expanding its presence across the Lone Star State. Unfair Park from p12