Not so underground illegal cardrooms

[FNdonkey]

I've lived in Oklahoma basicly my entire life. I played poker and had a poker related business even before the boom. When the Boom hit there were very few people in OK with ANY experience with cardrooms so it gave me an opportunity to go right to the top. For 8 years I worked managing card rooms, training dealers, and my favorite gig was working for management companies opening new card rooms. When the boom died I did my own thing. I have 3 small businesses that I run and work 10X as hard to make less money than I did when I had a good poker gig going. To continue in my poker career I would have to abandon my other businesses, sell my house, and relocate away from most of my family.

However there is a poker market right where I'm at, we've thrown the idea around of somewhat underground games half jokingly for a while. However I just got back from Kansas this morning. There are card rooms like a place called "Nillas" that are clearly illegal card rooms running somewhat openly. Nillas has been open over 4 years and operates openly under the premise of benefiting a charity. Rumor has it that this years 11th place finisher in the One drop event bankrolled the place.

Obviously we're talking about a place that's over state lines but I'm wondering if anyone would really fight it here. I have the money and even the building to run such an establishment. I've heard nothing but Rumors about it up there but I've heard things like they pay off duty police officers big bucks to work security so they leave them alone etc. The bad thing is if my name was Chief squatting dog I could do this legally here, but due to the color of my skin I can't, I almost wonder if this is a fight they would even want in court.

[shortbuspoker]

It's the same way in certain places down here in Alabama. When I first got out of college, I had a piece of a game that I also dealt. Back in the 2003 to 2009 era, we were making money hand over fist running a 1/2 NL and a 2/5 NL table 3 nights a week.

The guy I was partners with had a handshake agreement with the county sheriff that as long as we did not have craps, slots, video poker, and didn't let minors drink we would be left alone. The funny thing is that in Alabama "promoting gambling" is only a misdemeanor and the majority of judges down here will not issue a search warrant for a misdemeanor. That meant as long as you didn't let an undercover cop into the game there was really nothing they could do anyways. Of course, if you ever got raided they would take your table, chips, cards, and all of the house money that was on the premises.

Edit:

There is a caveat to the search warrant issue though. We ran our game in a strip mall where we rented out space, but if you ran a game in a licensed bar you were subject to being searched at any time the doors were unlocked without a warrant due to provisions that the ABC built into state liquor licenses.