Police Bust Poker Game in South Texas

In Brownsville, police bust a poker game where the operators were charging patrons $5 an hour to play tournaments. The police say the operators were making between $5,000 and $10,000 a night. Some more police propaganda if you ask me. $5000 a night? Please. Do the math. $5000/$5=1000. If the operation was open say for 12 hours, 6pm to 6am, that means you need at least 83 people paying $5 for every one of those 12 hours or 166 people to make $10,000. Not likely, especially since there were only 11 patrons when the place was busted. Go here and here to read more about the bust.

This makes me angry. You see the news organizations have it both ways. I was watching TV last night and one of the local TV stations is using a gambling theme in their commercial to promote their sports coverage. The commercial dipicted the sports casters rolling dice, playing black jack, slot machines, and various other gambling references. No doubt that gambling is hot right now, but it is these same people who will blow a poker bust so far out of proportion that it is just sickening.

When the Austin Poker Club was raided a couple of years ago, the news put up file pictures of slot machines and rolling of dice as a way to "spurce up" the bust. In actuallity, all that was going on were a bunch of people sitting around a table playing cards. But you see this just doesn't give the sensationalism that they need. So they juice it up. "They were making tens of thousands of dollars!" IF that were true, do you really think that all of the casinos would have closed their poker rooms over the years? They only started re-opening them in the last year or two because of public demand, not because they make significant amounts of money. The only people making any decent money in poker are the poker players who are skilled. Am I saying game operators don't make money? NO, not at all. I am saying they aren't making $5000 a night.