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MaduroBU wrote:Fertitta is the current manifestation of the Maceo crime family. They've gone legit as far as I can tell, but their history on the island is checkered. Fertitta is also terrible to his emoloyees, which makes me suspicious of him as a person.

I am not familiar with his history. I was trying to be a bit funny by saying I wanted to be him when I grow up. I know only of his business successes.

I actually was chatting with a guy Saturday evening who said he was from Dallas and confirmed that the rooms there had all been shut down. He claimed this was an action of the city council through zoning enforcement. Apparently, there was extensive lobbying and campaign contributions coming from the likes of Winstar which is the nearest legal casino to Dallas, and which has a sizeable poker room. I have no idea whether this is accurate.

I will say that similar lobbying could happen in Houston since Tilman Fertita is pretty well connected, and he owns one of the two large, full service casinos that are close to Houston. I know that he had been lobbying the other way, to allow casinos in Texas, but wanted them to only be allowed on islands that were larger than X acres (which as defined would pretty much only be Galveston island where he owns some property). If he puts his money behind shutting down all competing gambling, that would be bad news for these poker rooms in Houston. On the other hand, if he were to embrace it and open his own poker room, he could make a killing. I'm thinking of doing things like giving players comps that they can use for free rooms at his casinos in Lake Charles, Biloxi, Vegas, and Atlantic City. He already gets a leg up on his Lake Charles competition by letting you use comps earned at that property for meals in Landry's restaurants throughout Texas. I think I wanna be him when I grow up.

VectorWega wrote:FYI, all of these "legal" poker rooms were shutdown in the Dallas/Ft Worth area quite a while back. A room in Dallas was raided and I believe 1 or 2 were raided in Collin County too. There were no announcements made beforehand. That being said, I don't believe any patrons were arrested and I believe it's pretty standard even in underground games to let patrons go home free (provided they don't have drugs or warrants) and just go after the game runners.

When did these shutdowns occur? The rooms near Houston all opened last summer, and they are citing legal interpretations from around that same time, I believe. I'm not sure what you mean by "a while back". To me, that means years ago, so it would have predated the rooms we are now seeing.

From my intel, I have also heard that when the police raid actual underground games, they let the players go and just go after the folks running the game. From a player's perspective in those games your bigger fear is a robbery. Some of those rooms can have $50k or more in cash on hand. That is quite a motivation for some folks. This is all based on things I have heard, of course.

None of this is to be confused with home games, which I believe are completely legal as long as no one is making a profit from running the game. The home game I play in has at least 2-3 HPD cops playing on any given Saturday night and the stakes are much lower, so pretty safe all around. On a tangent, cops tend to be pretty good poker players since they have both patience and the ability to be very aggressive. It is unusual for these two personality traits to coexist in the same person, and law enforcement is one of the few professions where both are needed.

DKB wrote:I would paraphrase "Parimutuel Betting" as variable-odds betting. It generally only applied to Horse & Dog tracks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting

My concern in carrying at a poker room would be if it got raided on suspicion of illegal gambling then they might look at you as carrying in the commission of a crime. If you later beat the illegal gambling charge you might beat the unlawful weapon rap, but you'll probably still take a ride.

You'd be "taking a ride" (aka getting cited) whether you are carrying or not since the only way carrying is illegal (assuming no 30.06) is if your being there is also illegal. These places are operating VERY MUCH out in the open, so if a local DA wants to shut them down, I would expect them to make a public announcement first, just from a PR perspective. They are pretty popular and have a cross section of folks with money / good jobs as patrons. It might be a career boosting move for a DA to crack down, but even if it is, I don't think it would be a career boosting move to do so in a heavy handed manner with a bunch of arrests. Then again, I think most voters in places like Houston and Austin might look unfavorably on any crack down, and since DA's are politicians, a crack down becomes unlikely, IMHO. IANAL.

The most popular one in Houston used to have compliant 30.06 and 30.07 wording at the very bottom of the glass doors and it was white lettering on a clear background, so questionable. They now have added additional signs on the doors that are black lettering on a white background. So if one is not exempt from 30.06, then I would strongly advise not carrying there. They also search all bags so a sub-2000 probably won't work either.

There are a couple of these rooms in Houston. From talking with the wife of one of the owners, my understanding is that they are simply renting out a space and providing the use of cards, chips and dealers. The house is charging a fee (daily + hourly) for this service. They are not directly profiting from any poker bets. The analogy would be if you want to rent a location from me so you can host a "casino night" for your church group, or whatever. I agree to provide a room, some tables, chips, dealers, and cards. You pay me a fee for the night. Is that illegal? I don't think so.

I do know that home games are not illegal as long as the person hosting the game does not make a profit. The one home game I play in has 4-5 cops that are regulars, so it is either fine, or they simply couldn't care less.

Getting back to the OP's question, please don't ask anyone to post a 30.06 sign. Ever. If you think it could possibly be illegal to carry somewhere and you don't want to be a "test case" then just don't carry. Having them post signage does nothing to reduce the possibility of you being a "test case".