Nov
05
I heard about this tragedy from a friend of mine named Steve, who had played poker with Frank at the old Mayfair club in NYC. Frank was one of the small group of Pot Limit/No Limit players, at a time when Limit Hold-Em was still the game of choice. Steve remembers Frank as “a decent and intelligent guy, not one to lament or chirp at the table.”
This poker tragedy makes me wonder about whether the NYC police deparment has some sort of indirect responsibility. Their decisions about the tolerance of poker are made on a precint-by-precinct basis, and this leads to inconsistencies in how poker laws are enforced throughout the city. Might this in part explain why NY state poker clubs operate in a gray legal area, and have gone “underground,” where it is less safe and secure?
As soon as I started thinking about this, I sent the story about Frank to Sean Webb, who is making a documentary film (”Underground Home Game“) about how the game of poker is under attack in the US, and someone who PokerMoments will be interviewing in the near future.
Comments
I’ve read The Spectator, and English paper, for decades, and have been amazed to find the extent to which America has conquered the world culturally. Les Froggies don’t like it but fuquez-vous Froggies.
In that magazine poker is the game that people talk about playing. “Busted flush” “Drawing to an inside straight.” And although it’s not poker, you hear them talking about greenbacks, not a thin dime, not a penny, the First Amendment, taking the Fifth, and one child didn’t get emergency help because she called 911 and no 999, which is what the Brits use.
Damn. It’s good to be an American. And a Texan in particular.