The federal government has long considered Internet gambling illegal, though many gambling advocates say the law against it — designed to combat bookmaking activities by the mob in the 1960s — didn’t envision the Internet and applies only to sports betting.
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Retired cop Mike Rose chomped on an unlit stogie and took one last peek at his cards, then shoved the remainder of his poker chips toward the dealer.

“All in,” he announced.

Another player called the bet. Rose shook his head ruefully, turned up a losing hand and muttered, “He just caught me bluffing.”
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Barack Obama has warned about the dangers of gambling — that it carries a “moral and social cost” that could “devastate” poor communities. As a state senator in Illinois, he at times opposed plans to expand gambling, worrying that it could be especially harmful to low-income people.
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Four people have been taken into custody on illegal gambling charges, stemming from a police raid at a Drew Street residence on Jan. 16 at 12:30 a.m.

Sascha N. Kauper, 33, of Palm Harbor was charged with two counts of keeping a gambling house. Robert Nicola Gill, 26, of Tampa was charged with two counts of being an employee of a gambling house and Chastity Ann Baur, 30, of Tampa was charged with one count of being an employee of a gambling house.
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A raid on a poker operation in the San Mateo Highlands has the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office battling accusations that it overplayed its hand.

Participants in the game argue it was a friendly, low-stakes affair — not the den of iniquity portrayed by authorities. After a three-month undercover investigation, 15 officers from the Sheriff’s Office and the state Department of Justice poured into the house Saturday afternoon with guns drawn.

They arrested organizer Bert Cardenas on charges of fraud and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and participant Trish McCoy on charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The minor was McCoy’s 13-year-old son, who allegedly participated in some of the games.

The raid shocked some participants, who argued it was overkill for a social game with buy-ins of $25 to $55. News has since spread to Web sites such as Reason.com and Boing Boing, where it has sparked criticism and discussion about the laws surrounding home poker games.

Police and neighbors, however, say the operation was getting out of hand and needed to be shut down.

A Sheriff’s Office news release following the arrests charged that Cardenas organized the poker games “to fraudulently obtain money from the unwitting participants.” While private poker games are legal, the organizer is not allowed to collect any money from the participants.

Cardenas allegedly collected $5 from every participant for “refreshments,” and he took extra money from buy-ins for a “freeroll” tournament that police believe paid out less than Cardenas took in.

Philip Travisano, a San Mateo graphic designer who regularly played inthe games but wasn’t there Saturday, said he’s not surprised to hear of the raid. “I’m not clear on all the laws, but it was my impression that to take a rake or a fee to play a home game was illegal.”

Travisano took issue, however, with police’s description of the participants as “unwitting.” He noted that the games were advertised openly on Meetup.com and drew a diverse crowd of professionals from around the area.

“As far as Bert, I know he was doing it for the love of poker, not making profit on this,” Travisano said. “There was no cheating, no shills, nothing fraudulent going on.”

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Jean Carr has well-coiffed white hair, and her preferred beverage is orange juice. She’s also a regular player at the Twin Falls Poker League.

“It’s a very entertaining game,” the Twin Falls woman said, citing the challenge of play as one of her reasons for frequenting the league’s Texas Hold ‘Em poker tournaments, held eight times a week across Magic Valley. She also appreciates the friendliness of the league’s players. “They all treat me with a lot of respect.”

That might be because of Carr’s conservative style of play – “I don’t bluff” – or it might be the nature of the league’s participants, who are quick to teach beginners the game and slow to get upset over a lost hand or newbie mistake.

“This is a good place to learn, because it’s free, the people are really nice, and they’ll help you,” said Brian Fife of Twin Falls. He has played cards since the late 1970s, and said the variety of skill levels among the league players make the game challenging even for experienced participants.

The league was started about a year and a half ago by Magic Valley newcomer CR Larsen, owner of Ground Round in Twin Falls, where the group meets on Sunday evenings. He had played in poker leagues in other areas of the country, and when he discovered there wasn’t one here, he organized one.

“The first week there were 21 people that played, just three tables of seven people,” he said, of the kick-off tournament in October 2006. The biggest tournaments recently attracted between 80 and 90 participants.

Keeping it legal

As he put the league together, Larsen kept the state’s gambling laws in mind.

“I decided to leave out the aspects the state considers gambling,” he said, meaning that participants aren’t risking any money or property in the games. They don’t buy in. “It doesn’t cost anything, it’s a form of entertainment like karaoke.”

The daily free tournaments are great practice for players, while the league earns money by charging the bars a fee for holding the games there. Once a month, players have a chance to take home some cash by participating in a charity game, which – as Larsen interprets state law – is allowed if at least 5 percent of the proceeds go to a charity.

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The Poker Players Alliance has caught fire in recent months. Heading into 2008, its membership stands at a shade under 900,000. That means the equivalent of one in every 300 Americans is a PPA member. Not bad for a lobbying group that is still unpacking boxes in the nation’s capital. In case you’ve hid under a rock lately, 2008 is an election year. That means an emphasis on elections and, with caucuses already underway, the PPA has developed a targeted strategy for the New Year. As many were still cleaning up from ringing in 2008, PPA Executive Director John Pappas was already hard at work.

The PPA unveiled a plan to expand and promote itself on the local level in 2008. Back in August, the organization pushed for its members to become August Advocates, which meant contacting Congressmen when they returned to their home districts and serving as a point of contact for local media. Expect to see a push towards a more dominant local presence. Pappas explains, “We’ll be reinvigorating our State Directors program very soon by reaching out to our 875,000 members and seeing who wants to be more active at the state level. We’ll have a more sophisticated and robust plan for them to be active and the PPA will be more visible.”

There are currently 30 state directors spread out over the country working on a local level. However, more is needed, especially for an organization approaching one million members: “We’re not expecting them to work blindly or on their own. The PPA will be giving them strategic guidance on initiatives they can undertake, such as recruitment of new members for 2008. This could involve reaching out to places where poker players gather like local card rooms, casinos, or poker games. We’ll also be using them as spokespeople with local media on behalf of the PPA, whether it’s writing letters to the editor or serving as an interviewee. We’ll also use them to organize meetings in their Congressmen’s district offices. We’d like to have representation in every state.” A PPA staffer will serve as a point of contact for every State Director.

Pappas’ ideal candidate would be someone who is passionate about the game of poker and, at the same time, has a political background and understands the political process. The State Directors won’t just be doing all the hard work while the PPA takes all the credit. Pappas notes, “We’ll be making sure they’re recognized.”

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Two people were arrested and a 13-year-old was referred to Child Protective Services after undercover officers determined a San Mateo house was holding illegal Saturday night poker games.

Cutberto Cardenas, 42, of San Mateo is facing two misdemeanor charges for fraudulently obtaining money under false pretenses and for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Patricia McCoy, 47, of Hillsborough, is facing one misdemeanor charge for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

At approximately 2:25 p.m. Saturday, San Mateo County deputies and agents from the state Department of Justice found 20 adults and one minor in a house on the 1600 block of Lexington Avenue in the unincorporated San Mateo Eichler Highlands neighborhood. Officers issued a search warrant and found three poker tables, playing chips, cards, $1,300 in cash and other paraphernalia associated with gambling, according to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.

The investigation began three months ago after the Sheriff’s Office received numerous complaints from residents of the Eichler Highlands neighborhood about heavy foot traffic and parking problems.

A background investigation into who occupied the house and those who visited led investigators to Meetup.com, a Web site that allows groups to manage public events related to a number of different hobbies or interests. The Web site had a page that touted weekly poker tournaments at the home on Lexington Avenue, according to Lt. Marc Alcantara of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.

The undercover investigation determined that the gaming operation was more than just a casual card game and in fact maybe an illegal gambling operation perpetrated by Cardenas to fraudulently obtain money from the unwitting participants who were recruited online, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

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It’s almost 8:00 p.m. on a Friday night and Carlos Escobar’s cell phone won’t stop ringing.

“Yeah, man, I have a game tonight. We have 11 players so far. Why? Do you want to come?” asks Escobar — not his real name — to the person on the other side of the line. “Okay, hurry up; hold on, I have another call. Hello? Yeah, we’ll start around nine; I already have a full table, but come over anyway, man,” he tells the second caller.

At Escobar’s house, they are preparing for a long night of poker. His wife is barbecuing steak and cooking mashed potatoes for the guests who are about to arrive.

But this isn’t just a gathering of friends who like to play cards. Escobar, 32, manages a small gambling house in his garage and it’s an activity that is so lucrative that it has been his full-time job for the last seven months. The visitors come to bet, try to win money, and often go home with less cash in their pockets or in debt.

The phenomenon of underground gambling houses cropping up in private homes and small shopping centers in Houston is in vogue and increasingly attracts more people.

Police say they don’t know how many of these illegal gambling houses exist and aren’t sure how to deal with the growing illegal industry.

Marc Brown, an official at the District Attorney’s misdemeanors division, says it’s not illegal to play poker for money in a house as long as the winner takes all the earnings and there is no entrance fee to get in the game. “It’s illegal to gamble when it is in a public place and (also) when the person who is organizing the game makes money,” says Brown.

On a typical night at Escobar’s house, players have to pay $5 to participate in each hand, and they can buy as many or as few chips as they’d like. If it’s a tournament, where more money is on the table, it costs $25 to enter and each participant must buy a minimum of $100 in chips.

If the police discover an underground game in a house and arrest the participants, the players will receive a class C infraction and could get a fine of $500. The organizer will get a class A infraction and could be sentenced to a year in jail.

“If we can prove that the people who organize (the games) have been laundering money and have acquired property with that money, the charge becomes an offense that could end in two years in jail,” Brown says.

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