Nice and Nasty Poker Busts

Poker busts, in which the police raid a poker game, can come in many varieties. The police can be either pleasant to all or meaner than sin. From what I can tell, the type of raid has less to do with the law than the attitude of law enforcement in a specific local jurisdiction.

Here is an example of a raid in the Chicago area, where the police were both courteous and efficient. There were about a hundred people playing in a poker tournament that was held in a VFW hall. The Cook County vice squad had some agents playing in the event, plus several others in the building. Here is a synopsis of what one of the players wrote in an Internet posting after the bust.

"We were about 10 hands into the event when the agents at the tables got up, and more uniformed agents as well as deputies began filtering in. I was amazed at some of the reactions from the players, ranging from 'We gotta get out of here' to 'The cops are here to make sure no one robs us.' As the cards were still being dealt, the officers began hauling away the laptops (which were running the tournament director's software), a projector, unused chip sets, the hosts, and the prize money. This is when it started sinking in to most of the people that our fun was over. Finally, a close friend of the hosts began to field questions from the players. The first one was, 'Did they confiscate the money?' That is when one of the officers stepped in and explained that we were not in any trouble whatsoever and could stay and continue to play for fun, but the event broke up quickly after this announcement that the prizes were removed."

I am sure that a lot of people think the above scenario is the way the police normally handle a poker raid. They would be appalled by what really goes on all too often. Sometimes, the poker players are treated no differently than people in a raid on a crack house. In fact, it may well be this branch of law enforcement that usually deals with drugs that carries out the poker bust, since it has a lot of experience busting down doors and making sure no evidence is left undiscovered.

Here is an example of one of the nastier busts I have heard about. It occurred this past April in South Carolina. There was poker being played in a private home in Mt. Pleasant, a suburb of Charleston. The mayor of Mt. Pleasant said, "I am proud of our nationally certified force and satisfied with the clear message they are sending to lawbreakers. We will not tolerate this type of activity in our town." Midge, a 78-year-old woman who was one of those lawbreakers apprehended there by the police, said, "They came in with masks and with their guns drawn. It was like something out of a TV show." The police described the place as "home to a high-stakes game," although the buy-in amount was only $20.

Here are some of the actions taken by the Mt. Pleasant police that make me call this a nasty-type raid. The info I have comes from newspaper articles, website postings, and personal e-mails to me by someone who is friends with quite a few of the players.

1. The police, of course, had a warrant, but they knocked only once and then came in, through both the front door and the patio door.

2. The players were held there for a long period of time. As people came to the door, presumably expecting to play poker, they also were arrested, without ever getting to play a hand.

3. The police did not confiscate just the money that was in play, but all of the money they could find on the premises. Midge had only $18 in front of her, but another $85 in her purse, all of which was taken by the police. Everyone was searched and had all of their money taken. The police also confiscated money from bedroom dresser drawers and from cars belonging to the players.

They took about $5,800, although the players claimed that only about $250 was actually being used for playing poker. The police trumpeted this figure of almost $6,000 to show that they had busted a high-stakes game, but nearly all of it was personal money not used in the gambling.

I do not know what it is like to have a gun pointed at me by anyone. I am a very lucky poker player, having never been in a poker game that was raided or robbed. But I have had some close calls. When I visited my Canadian friend Doug Young in Halifax, the game had been robbed a couple of weeks before I got there, and then raided only a few days before I arrived. The robbery was done by two men, only one of whom had a gun. Doug told me the police raid was far more scary than the robbery, because there were so many people pointing guns at them the entire time. One can only imagine how a 78-year-old woman would feel in that situation.

One of the reasons that I love my country is that here, a man's home is his castle; but if you are a poker player, that's true in only about half of our states. People who are friends of mine from other countries can hardly believe that the police would break down the door of someone's home just because they heard there was a poker game being played there. I am sure a lot of Americans who now watch poker on television are unaware of how outdated our poker laws are in many places.

The U.S. Supreme Court has been widening its protection for the American home. For example, as of 2003, a sex act between consenting adults in the privacy of one's home can no longer be considered illegal by the states, regardless of the type of act or the gender of the partners. This is often referred to as protection for the bedroom, but it really is for the whole house. So, basically, if your home has a recreation room with a table, you can have sex on it with some willing adult, but cannot play that person some penny-a-point gin on it afterward without breaking the law in half of our states. Wake up, poker players; wake up, America. We need the right to have our homes protected against being raided for playing a private and sociable game of poker, but it looks like we poker players are going to be the last group of people in our country to get our rights.

Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Holdem Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons: e-mail [email protected]. His website is http://www.pokercoach.us/, where you can get his rulebook, Robert's Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called http://www.fairlawsonpoker.org/.