Joe Whitbeck gives a slight smile as he reaches out to the center of the green felt table and pulls back a pile of poker chips. He stacks the black $100 chips on the already substantial pile and puts the green $500 chips and purple $1,000 chips in their respective stacks. He owed this addition to his stack to a pair of nines.
Whitbeck was the chip leader at his table, one of three tables Monday night at the Mirage Sports Bar on the South Side of La Crosse. Maybe his smile would have been broader if the chips represented real money, but he was playing for points instead.
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A West Salem resident who grew up in Onalaska, Whitbeck caught the wave of Texas hold ’em poker mania a couple years ago after his brother got him interested. A few months ago, he started playing in the Midwest Poker Texas hold ’em league that features eight-week sessions, with no charge to players. At the end of the eight weeks, the points leader wins a trip for two to Las Vegas.
Whitbeck came out on top in the last session and plans to go to Vegas sometime this winter. During that session, he played almost every night and consistently finished high in the chip totals to win the championship. This session, he’s cutting back. He’s already got his trip, and besides, his wife insisted.
The Midwest Poker league offers free poker every night of the week but Friday and at two venues Tuesdays, with a total of six venues in the La Crosse area. Most nights of the week, Whitbeck also could find a bar hosting a Texas hold ’em tournament where he could pay a “buy-in” of $20 or more and play for a share of the pot, as much as $300 if he comes away with all the chips. On a Thursday night, for example, he could walk into the Onalaska American Legion or Hunter’s Last Chance Saloon in West Salem and pay his $20 buy-in for a chance to win some money.
Whitbeck has played in a few Texas hold ’em tournaments with cash buy-ins as well as in the free poker league. There’s an added element of excitement with those, with the chance you might walk away with a wad of cash, but he enjoys the free poker league as much if not more.
It didn’t bother him, he said, that the cash buy-in tournaments are illegal. Apparently, it doesn’t bother anyone else, either.
Against the law
Three elements have to be present to add up to illegal gambling, said La Crosse County District Attorney Scott Horne: “prize, consideration and chance.”
“Consideration” means the players have to pay something to participate, and “prize” means at least one of the players gets something of value out of the game. “Chance” refers to the game relying on an element of chance to determine the winner, whether it’s a raffle drawing, a roll of the dice or a card game.
As much skill as good poker players might have, Horne said, “poker has been historically recognized as a game of chance.”
So when somebody pays $20 to play poker in hopes of winning a share of the pot, that is illegal in Wisconsin. But so are the dice games popular in some bars and so are video gambling machines and so are office basketball pools. Even the raffles held to benefit the local youth sports teams are against the law if the proper permits aren’t in hand.
So, theoretically, Horne and his prosecutors could be spending a lot of time prosecuting people for illegal gambling. Of course, that’s not happening.
“Gambling is something we typically wait for complaints on,” Horne said.
Onalaska Police Chief Randy Williams, who also is president of the state police chiefs’ association, takes a similar approach. “Should we receive any complaints, we would follow up on that,” he said.
West Salem Police Chief Dennis Abbott shares that philosophy, too, and in 30 years of police work, he’s never rally had a complaint. One time a few years back he had to confiscate some video gambling machines from a local tavern during a get-tough phase on video gaming in bars, but that’s it.
With the cash buy-in Texas hold ’em tournaments, there’s really not much to complain about for Abbott. People aren’t going to lose their shirt playing in a poker tournament with a $20 buy-in. They might walk away with a little money, but what they’re really buying is entertainment, he said.
“I mean, I’m not in favor of gambling. Gambling does cause hardship within families,” he said. “But if it’s just 20 bucks worth of entertainment, that’s just like going to a movie. … It’s not like you set down to the table and every hand is going to cost you $5.”
Low priority
The approach in La Crosse County is common across the state, said Kelly Kennedy, director of communications for the state attorney general’s office.
“We haven’t seen much enforcement of this at all in the state,” he said.
Part of the lack of enforcement has to do with limited resources for police and prosecutors. Other crimes rank much higher on the scale of priorities for law enforcement officials. Kennedy said that has been especially true since the state Legislature moved a few years ago to reduce the penalty for video gambling machines.
“It has really sent the signal that gambling is not a high priority for enforcement,” Kennedy said.
The penalties for illegal gambling can be hefty. Somebody convicted of taking part in illegal gambling, a Class B misdemeanor, could face up to nine months in jail and/or a maximum fine of $1,000. Running an illegal gambling operation is even more serious, a Class E felony, with a conviction carrying a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to 15 years in prison.
Those penalties might seem out of proportion compared with the relatively low level of concern about illegal gambling demonstrated by police and prosecutors, but nobody at the Legislature as making a lot of noise about reducing the penalties for poker as was done for video gambling.
Assembly Majority Leader Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, said he has heard of no legislation aimed at making cash buy-in poker tournaments legal, and he doubts any will be proposed because it would complicate the state’s relationship with the tribal-run casinos.
“As soon as we start talking about opening up gaming for anybody other than Native Americans, that opens up the gaming compact,” Huebsch said.
Sen. Dan Kapanke, R-Campbell, has heard no rumblings of legalizing Texas hold ’em on the Senate side, either.
Huebsch recognizes that Texas hold ’em is an incredibly popular game. He enjoys playing it himself once in a while, though he has not studied the game enough to be very good at it. “It’s a fun game, there’s no question,” he said. But, he added, “I’m one of those guys who can turn $25 into $2 in about four minutes.”
One nice thing about the $20 buy-in poker tournaments, Huebsch said, is a person can only lose a certain amount, which contrasts with the hundreds or thousands of dollars people could lose playing online poker, which also is technically illegal.
Even with the limited exposure to loss, Huebsch said, “I don’t see saying we might as well legalize it.”
Harmless fun
Dave Hundt, owner of Hunter’s Last Chance in West Salem, said he’s going on his second year of hosting cash buy-in Texas hold ’em tournaments at his bar, and he makes no secret about it. On Thursdays, he puts a sandwich board sign out on the sidewalk in front of his bar advertising the tournament, and last week he put an ad in the Coulee News to let people know he would be hosting a $50 buy-in poker tournament to be held Sunday afternoon.
It’s hard to say whether the stakes were too high or the weather was too nice, but only six people turned out to play, despite the Packers bye week. That lack of interest was unusual, though, as the regular Thursday night tournaments usually draw around 30 players, with a high of 51 and a low of 19.
All the money paid in buy-in fees goes into the pot for the winners, with nothing going to the house. That doesn’t mean the house doesn’t get anything out of it, though. Hundt’s tavern gets more more traffic on Thursday nights and more revenue from beverage sales.
Hundt said he knows the poker tournaments are illegal, but he also knows it’s highly unlikely that he would ever be prosecuted for running a gambling establishment. And, to him, that’s appropriate.
“Nobody’s really getting hurt in these tournaments,” he said.
The Onalaska American Legion started holding weekly Thursday night Texas hold ’em tournaments Sept. 8 for the same reason Hundt holds his — to get people in the door, said Clarence Stellner, former Legion post commander and former Onalaska mayor.
“We’re trying to bring more people into the club,” Stellner said. “We’re not out there for big dollars. … What we’re trying to do is increase our business at the bar.”
As with the tournaments at Hunter’s, the house doesn’t take any of the pot, although with the Onalaska Legion tournament, a small portion is held back to sweeten the pot for a championship tournament to be held in December for all the winners of the weekly tournaments.
The Onalaska Legion buy-in, like Hunter’s, is $20, and the tournaments have been drawing similarly sized crowds, with a high of 35 so far.
Stellner said he knows of quite a few other taverns and Legion posts that host poker tournaments, and he said he sees no harm in it.
“Where are you going to get that kind of entertainment for $20. You couldn‘t play a penny machine at the casino and last three hours,” Stellner said, referring to the three-hour time limit in place for the Legion tournaments. “It’s a social event is what it amounts to.”
Social ill
For Rose Gruber, executive director of the Wisconsin Council on Problem Gambling, the explosion in the popularity of Texas hold ’em means more than a harmless social event. It could mean big trouble.
In Wisconsin, 5 to 7 percent of the adult population has a gambling problem, whether it’s betting on football games, playing the slots or playing cards. “People can get addicted to poker just as they can anything else,” she said.
Last year, 9,407 people with gambling problems called the WCPG’s gambling hotline, and Gruber said that record will likely be broken this year. The hotline counselors are having to deal with more and more cases where the problem is poker, she said.
Where the poker problem seems particularly acute is with teens, Gruber said. Teens have roughly double the rate of adult gambling addiction, yet many parents are encouraging their children to have their friends over to play poker, thinking it’s a lot better than having them out roaming around engaging in more dangerous activities, such as drinking or sex.
The thing is, Gruber said, “gambling is really a gateway activity to those other activities.”
One high-risk activity can lead to others, said Gruber, and gambling is considered a high-risk activity.
What’s really scary, Gruber said, is how easy it can be for poker players to get caught up in their addiction without leaving home by playing poker online.
Whether it’s linked to the poker craze is unclear, but Gruber said that the state has seen a notable increase in gambling related embezzlements and other crimes in the past year and a half.
And gambling addiction can lead to worse things than stealing. Gambling addicts, Gruber said, have a 20 percent higher suicide rate than people addicted to other things.
Of course, Gruber said, the vast majority of people are going to be able to play poker without becoming addicted, without turning to crime and without taking their own lives. “For most people it’s just going to be fun,” she said.
Just for fun
The Midwest Poker Texas hold ’em league started in the La Crosse area last April and has been a phenomenal success, said Dean Townsend, who runs the local leagues. “It took off right away,” he said. “The first night we had 12, and from then on it’s been a steady 30 plus every night, with as many as 60.”
The point of the Midwest Poker league is the same as the tournaments at Hunter’s and the Onalaska Legion, to bring people into the bars. But instead of having the people who come to the bar pay, the bar owners pay Midwest Poker to come in and run the games. In a way, it’s just like a bar owner hiring a band to attract people, Townsend said, only poker is a lot less noisy.
At the Mirage, Midwest Poker has been a good bet, said Beth Woodruff, who owns the bar with her husband, Jeff. “It’s brought in a lot of people that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
The top three chip holders in the nightly tournaments win $15, $10 and $5 worth of food or beverages at the venues. That’s not much compared with the $300 paydays for winners at Hunter’s or the Onalaska Legion, but then again, the Midwest Poker league players aren’t paying anything either.
The winner of the tournament at the end of the eight-week session, however, gets a trip to Las Vegas, and this session there also will be a drawing for an iPod. Townsend said he hopes to convince an area car dealership to offer a free car to the first one to get a royal flush in the session-ending tournament of champions.
Royal flushes are the best possible hand in poker and don’t come along too often. In all the Midwest Poker league games since April, there have been four royal flushes. Unfortunately for Townsend, who plays when he can, one of those royal flushes knocked him out of the game when he was holding a full house.
One nice thing about the Midwest Poker league, Townsend said, is it’s a good place for new players to learn the ropes without risking any money.
It’s also a good way to meet other people, Joe Whitbeck said. “Everybody here is pretty cool.”
The Midwest Poker league attracts a variety of people, men and women, young and old, experts and rookies. Most of them seem to have a pretty good sense of humor.
Like Whitbeck, Shawn Kearns grew up in Onalaska, started playing poker a couple years ago and won a trip to Las Vegas. His came in the league’s first session.
Unlike Whitbeck, Kearns plays a lot of poker online, but he likes the Midwest Poker league for the chance to socialize. “This is just fun,” he said.
Making cash side bets is prohibited in the Midwest Poker league, but there’s nothing in the bylaws about betting your hair. On Thursday night at the weekly league tournament at Loon’s on La Crosse, Kearns was planning to go head-to-head with another player, with the loser having to get up onstage and have his head shaved on the spot.
Now that’s high stakes poker.
Source: Coulee News
