Strike one up for Fairfax County Virginia, as they have nabbed another bunch of violent criminals that were doing irreparable harm to the citizens of The Commonwealth. No longer will these violent thugs be able to rip the very fabric of society to shreds and corrupt the populace by playing cards inside the privacy of an upper class home.
Via The Washington Post:
On a quiet weeknight among the stately manors of Great Falls, ten men sat around a table in the basement of a private home last November playing high stakes poker. Suddenly, masked and heavily armed SWAT team officers from the Fairfax County Police Department burst through the door, pointed their assault rifles at the players and ordered them to put their hands on the table. The players complied. Their cash was seized, including a reported $150,000 from the game’s host, and eight of the ten players were charged with the Class 3 misdemeanor of illegal gambling, punishable by a maximum fine of $500. The minimum buy-in for the game was $20,000, with re-buys allowed if you lost your first twenty grand.
This was not your everyday cash game with the neighbors. The buy-in was twice what it costs to enter the World Series of Poker’s main event in Las Vegas (though the Great Falls players did not have to pay the whole $20,000 up front). Two established poker pros were at the Great Falls table and another was hosting the game, taking a roughly 1.5 percent cut from the buy-ins to pay for two dealers and two assistants to make coffee runs or give massages to the players. “Taking a cut” is what elevates a poker game, in the minds of the Fairfax police, into a criminal enterprise. But the host has not been charged and the search warrant used to raid the house remains sealed. The host declined to comment. Read More...
My favorite quote in the Washington Post article comes from Fairfax police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell, who said, “With these large amounts of cash involved, the risks are high. We’ve worked cases where there have been armed robberies.”
Yeah, like the one just committed by the fucking government? All is not lost however, while the strong arm of the government frowns on the violent thug who hosted the game taking a cut of the action, the State only seized 40% of the money and let the players keep the rest.
This is of course about 1000X the size of the average buy-in that I’ve played in basement poker games with friends, but this is fucking ridiculous none-the-less. The only crime that was perpetrated was the government sticking the hands where they don’t fucking belong.
