Dallas Could Have Had a Legal Poker Room — If Only the City Council Hadn't Folded

Dallas came this close to getting its first city-sanctioned poker room Wednesday. Right across the street from what's left of my beloved Valley View Center, too. But in the end, the City Council folded. The same folks who banned a porn expo from the downtown convention center now won't let us have poker rooms either. And I don't mean the illegal underground poker rooms, both sketchy and budget-lux, that pop up in rundown warehouse districts or empty storefronts. Or the poker houses Dwaine Caraway used to protect from the police.I'm talking about the brightly lit, secured, members-only poker rooms or social clubs or card houses or however they're branded all across Texas. The kind of places where you have to be a monthly member to play. Where the house doesn't take a cut of the pot. Where everything's aboveboard, at least according to owners who say they've jumped through every loophole in Texas' gambling laws that prohibit profiting off games of chance but just might allow contests of skill conducted in private places.  Continue reading...