The Gambrills Elks Lodge busted by police for an illegal low-stakes poker game was reprimanded last night for violating its liquor license, but the club faces no other sanctions.

“All the fraternal lodges that I know are good neighbors to the community,” said Thomas E. Riggins of the county Board of License Commissioners, the agency that oversees the club’s license and could have revoked it. “And I refuse to believe that you guys were not acting as good neighbors.”

The club faced losing its liquor license and additional fines for an eight-man Texas Hold’em game held weekly in the back room of the lodge.

Acting on an anonymous tip in August, the liquor board dispatched investigators to the billiards room of the private club, where police detectives seized $400, a casino-style poker table and a cache of poker chips.

Gambling anywhere in Anne Arundel is illegal, and the practice also violates provisions of the county’s liquor laws.

“They thought it was a friendly game of pok-er,” said county police Detective Elmer Aulton, who made the bust.

The anonymous tipster who set off the bust had walked up to liquor board Chief Inspector Van Lee as he pumped gas at an Edgewater service station, Mr. Lee testified.

“How much longer will the liquor board allow the Elks Club to hold poker games?” Mr. Lee recalled the man asking.

Although the August bust was the second time in a year that the liquor board received an anonymous complaint about poker games in the club, the three-member commission accepted the explanation of club leaders.

“We can call it being naive,” Eugene D. Mattison, an attorney and the Elks’ leading knight told the commission. “Needless to say, we hadn’t read the law. We have now.”

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Recovered from the Poker Players Alliance archive index. This is the archived item as preserved.