Another Harvard Blog

Dear friends it is good to have an interest in poker, but the craziness should not be something that you violate the law of land! If the game of poker is prohibited in your area, you should respect it and should not try to play it illegally. There is no harm in playing poker games at home with friends or at small parties to just enjoy the moment, but to host the games with percentage share where the state doesn’t permit is completely illegal and if you are caught you would be sentenced with rigorous punishment. Something similar to that has happened in Michigan. Police raided illegal poker game being played by few people and arrested.

It is reported that in an undercover operation the Michigan police had arrested nearly twenty people with the charge or attending an illegal poker tournament. It is actually said that the team of police had started their surveillance from November 2009 with an undercover cop who used to attend the tournaments to track the members and group who organized all those tournaments. The undercover cop of Michigan State Police attended the tournaments like a player and surveyed in his own style everything about the illegal tournaments. The undercover cop attended some of the major poker tournaments and one major during last December. Before they raided, he paid a visit, a final one over the past weekend.

During the raid in the last weekend the Saturday’s tournament was held at the Ramada Plaza Hotel in Kentwood. The poker tournament was going on full swing when the people all of sudden arrested and the group was arrested and charged with attending the gaming places and frequenting the illegal poker areas. The punishment for such a crime could be up to 90 days in prison and community service as well.

Police confirmed that they got a warrant beforehand for the raid and arrest of the operator of these tournaments and those arrested. For evidence the Michigan Police State department seized a range of poker paraphernalia from the hotel, gaming cards, including poker chips, and cash. When the police raided the place they were little surprised to find the poker tournament being served well by topless dealers. The event was somewhat more than their imagination. And the angles of the night were also performing different kinds of aerobics during the event.

According to Sheriff, the group of poker players who call themselves the Grand Rapids Poker Club has the guts to openly promote their games in the public since some days in advance. Lt. Schram told the media, “They were so open about it that it was really unusual. They put out fliers, advertised on Craigslist and were trying to bring people in by telling them it was all legal.”

But the hotel owner distanced himself from the event and said his business is to deal with customers. What they do with the premises after booking is totally their business. He also informed that when the premise was booked he had no idea that they would be actually going for an illegal activity so open. He said piously, “We value our relationship with the City of Kentwood and its leaders, and the community in which we serve and as such, we have made changes to our event evaluation process to ensure 100 percent that this will never happen again.”

You would think not, since they are a large company with more than $5B in market cap. But I’ve never come across many of the hand scenarios that I’ve seen on Party Poker while playing at home games with my buddies. How often do you see quads beat full house kings and straight flushes beat full houses? I’ve never seen that happen in real life. It would be interesting to take all their poker game data and analyze it for statistical anomalies.