Specific guidelines for charities trade one set of problems for another.   

Officers with the state’s newly created Gaming Control Division swooped into Kendallville this week, arresting people and confiscating cash and equipment allegedly connected to illegal gambling.

But if LaShonda Wilcox’s Para- dise Billiards had simply been a bit more “charitable,” she might be counting her share of the take today – not facing up to three years in prison.

The rise, fall and rising again of Fort Wayne’s Hold ‘em Palace – and its imminent marriage to the Jaycees – proves it.

When I first wrote about the Palace 14 months ago, the poker-for-profit casino was, to be generous, operating on the edge of the law. State law at the time made it a felony to conduct “banking or percentage” card games or to “accept or offer to accept, for profit, money or other property risked in gambling.”

Owner Caream Kamide, however, coyly suggested the business at 5125 Executive Blvd. was perfectly legal because he established the winnings and paid out not in cash but in gift cards redeemable at his Little Vegas gambling-supply business next door. Just 5 percent of the cards’ value had to be used at Little Vegas, however; the rest apparently was convertible to cash. As one player said at the time, “You could win $1,000 here on a Friday night.”

Despite curiosity from the local prosecutor and police, Kamide’s legal sleight-of-hand prevented a Kendallville-style raid – until a change in state law July 1 rendered the question moot by making for-profit card games unambiguously illegal. The Hold ‘em Palace quietly folded.

But that is changing. According to the Web sites of both the Hold ‘em Palace and Fort Wayne Jaycees, the Palace will reopen later this month under a license granted by the Indiana Gaming Commission.

“What previously could have been considered by some to be illegal will now be legal as long as it is associated with a charitable operation,” Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards said, making little effort to hide her frustration over a law that was intended to clarify gambling enforcement but succeeded only in trading one set of problems for another.

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Author Contact Info: Kevin Leininger, The News-Sentinel

This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Charity Poker, Headlines, IN, State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can from your own site.