Forget casinos, and card tables
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Rena A. Koontz
Plain Dealer Reporter
The days of the Friday night poker game when best friends sat in the kitchen hunched over a card table are fading.
From Cleveland to Brunswick to Akron, 50 players and more -- connected through amateur poker groups and the Internet -- turn neighborhood basements into mini-casinos and play for thousands of dollars. Thanks to legal caveats and poker's surging popularity, today's home games take on a sophistication akin to organized sports.
"You can find a home poker game every night of the week if you want," said Eddie "Eddie J" Jarold, who promotes his games on Eddiespokerroom.com.
The Brunswick father of a newborn broadcasts his weekly games live on the Web.
Once a month, about 20 players contribute $100 each to play in a tournament with a $1,200 first prize, often while an ESPN poker broadcast plays on a big-screen television.
Television increased the interest in poker, especially Texas hold 'em, and the Internet made it accessible, said John Coleman, who organizes the 515-member Cleveland Poker Meetup Group.
Purists say they want to feel the cards in their hands and watch their opponents' faces as they play.
The Cleveland group offers more than 20 home games in January.
Many of these are tournaments, where players pool entry fees between $20 and $30 each, and top finishers get from $50 to $300. Other contests are cash games, where players wager money every hand and can walk away losing hundreds or winning well over $1,000 in one night.
These home games are completely legal, as long as they follow one simple rule.
Under Ohio law, home games are permissible provided no one takes a cut of wagered money. In other words, every dollar bet must go to the players. On the other hand, charity gambling events -- like those in past years in the Flats -- must conform to strict rules defined by the Ohio attorney general, including the location of the games.
Police crack down when people cross the line. Law enforcement has raided several unsanctioned charity games throughout the region. Also, Cleveland Heights police last year raided a home where they suspected the host of collecting $5 for every throw of the dice and 10 percent of each pot.
"Generally, when you are playing in your own home, it's not illegal unless the house is taking a cut for something," said Cleveland police Lt. Thomas Stacho, who regularly hosts his own home game. "The only way we even hear about a game is if someone loses or is ripped off and gets mad. That would give us reason to look into it."
No one pays for the pork sandwiches that Jarold serves, which he says are really good. He paid for the two leather-padded felt tables, the durable plastic cards and casino-quality poker chips.
Jarold has one of the more sophisticated setups in Northeast Ohio. Along with his Web cam and big-screen television, he is experimenting with hole-card cameras, which show viewers the cards players are holding. He later edits the footage from his games and puts them online.
This month, Jarold also presented his first podcast, offering listeners a wrap-up of the local poker scene.
"It's my hobby. I enjoy it," he said.
The players who show up at his house on a Friday night are mindful of his wife, Dana, and infant daughter, Madeline.
Dana Jarold knew the basement of their newly built home would be Jarold's poker haven. She says the weekly players are very respectful. "They come upstairs to use the bathroom and don't make any noise," she said. "They are all nice guys."
The few smokers at the games do it outside the host's house. At Jarold's, they make sure to pick up their butts. Players rarely drink.
In another part of Medina County, card players are ranked and points tallied with the goal of playing in a final face-off for a pot that could total $5,000.
Chuck Christe and his friends elevated the competition to an organized sport when, in 2005, they formed the Medina Poker League, which has grown to 147 members. The $20 annual league dues cover the cost of transportable tables and personalized league chips that the group recently ordered. Christe said the monogrammed chips will deter cheating.
"We play with ordinary chips that anybody can bring in" and use in the game, Christe said. "We watch new players for that."
League members pay $25 when they play, with $5 going into a pot that the year's top players will play for. Players earn points for the final game, and a computer program helps Christe tally the rankings of the accountants, engineers, school janitors and truck drivers who play.
In 2005, the end-of-year pot was $1,425. Last year it was $3,195. Christe expects the total to climb close to $5,000 this year.
That kind of cash -- and the even higher totals at private games not as widely known -- could get law enforcement involved, industry experts predict. Size alone will eventually trigger monitoring and even arrests at home games by police, predicts Michael Bolcerek, director of the Poker Players Alliance, a nonprofit group organized to promote the game and protect players' rights.
Bolcerek said home games are already targets for criminals.
"Unfortunately, with this growth, we have seen elsewhere a new breed of thief that targets these home games for the poker pots," he said. "This is what law enforcement should be focused on, or at least allow for payment of hired protection for home games that are registered with local law enforcement."
Bolcerek also wants Ohio to consider licensing local venues to have games. "This is the direction that other states are taking, and it is a common-sense approach and generates tax revenue for local and state coffers," he said.
However, Ohio voters have consistently been against the expansion of casino-style gambling. Nearly six in 10 Ohioans rejected slot machines last November, and Ohioans have soundly defeated casino issues twice since 1990.
At Ohio's home games today, the future of poker is a topic of discussion as often as the weather -- or subjects more ribald. Kathy Rittwage of Coventry Township said a woman has to be thick-skinned at most poker tables. She plays in the Medina Poker League and said the jokes can be borderline offensive.
"You have to be able to dish it right back to them," Rittwage said. "I'm a regular, so they know me. I'm like one of the guys. I can hold my own." Winning a few rounds usually quiets the more vocal hecklers, she said.
"Being a woman has an advantage," Rittwage said, laughing as she revealed part of her poker strategy. "Men are so easy to distract." |
