just saw this on Facebook, this is by no definition I apply a "home game". This is a frigging high-stakes business. Truly awful and biased reporting, guess it doesn't surprise me, media is gonna media.
Poker Players Take Plea Deal After SWAT Team Raids Their Virginia Home Game
Virginia Again Proves To Be Extremely Hostile To Card Players
Last week, lawyers for a group of poker players were gearing up to challenge the fascist law in the state of Virginia after a militarized police force stormed the players’ home poker game with semi-automatic weapons drawn this past November, the Washington Post reported.But the state decided to offer them a deal.
The Great Falls home game featuring a $20,000 buy-in with hired dealers and masseuses was raided and $150,000 in cash was seized from the game’s host. Players in the game were charged with crimes for engaging in illegal gambling, though the defense was prepared to fight the allegations due to poker irrefutably being a game based on skill, not chance. The state argued that since a small cut of the buy-ins was taken to pay for the game’s amenities it then constitutes illegal gambling.
The poker game in question, located not far from Washington, D.C., had been running for several years and several well-known poker pros had played in it in the past, the report said.
The criminal case will not go to trial, but it doesn’t mean the unnamed poker players won.
[T]he Fairfax prosecutors, with what the lawyers said was the police detectives’ blessing, cut them a deal: stay clean for six months and the gambling charge would be dismissed, and eligible to be expunged from their record. And for those who had cash seized from them—one player had more than $20,000, the regular player said—the police agreed to return 60 percent of the money, and keep 40 percent.
Poker Players Take Plea Deal After SWAT Team Raids Their Virginia Home Game
Virginia Again Proves To Be Extremely Hostile To Card Players
Last week, lawyers for a group of poker players were gearing up to challenge the fascist law in the state of Virginia after a militarized police force stormed the players’ home poker game with semi-automatic weapons drawn this past November, the Washington Post reported.But the state decided to offer them a deal.
The Great Falls home game featuring a $20,000 buy-in with hired dealers and masseuses was raided and $150,000 in cash was seized from the game’s host. Players in the game were charged with crimes for engaging in illegal gambling, though the defense was prepared to fight the allegations due to poker irrefutably being a game based on skill, not chance. The state argued that since a small cut of the buy-ins was taken to pay for the game’s amenities it then constitutes illegal gambling.
The poker game in question, located not far from Washington, D.C., had been running for several years and several well-known poker pros had played in it in the past, the report said.
The criminal case will not go to trial, but it doesn’t mean the unnamed poker players won.
[T]he Fairfax prosecutors, with what the lawyers said was the police detectives’ blessing, cut them a deal: stay clean for six months and the gambling charge would be dismissed, and eligible to be expunged from their record. And for those who had cash seized from them—one player had more than $20,000, the regular player said—the police agreed to return 60 percent of the money, and keep 40 percent.
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"...? Any wagers on that? Also, I'm surprised they got any of that money back. Civil asset forfeiture is the new hotness in local government.
