New York City’s Underground Poker Scene

Actually, it wasn’t like that at all. We’d duck into the most nondescript buildings. Instead of ball gowns, I wore hooded sweatshirts and headphones in my ears, and walked into mini casinos. They had cameras at the doors, sometimes burly security guards. Some places issued I.D. cards. In retrospect, it was security theater. It was the oldest poker club in the city, with only three tables and an old Italian man cooking up the best pasta with red sauce you’ve ever had for five bucks. The busy one, Straddle, in Midtown East, which had inexplicably never been raided so everyone whispered they had someone big on the take (they would eventually, like all the clubs, be raided and shut down). There were dozens of others. New Jersey (I had no reason not to believe him, but anything that is said at a poker table should be taken with a large grain of salt), filmmakers, bankers, housewives, Juilliard students and many, many lawyers. I never went again and many others I know didn’t either. No longer able to ignore they were there, the police began raiding and closing clubs. When Genoa closed, it really felt over.I played with a lot of people who considered themselves great players but went home losers much more often than winners. I saw some incredible players there, much better than I had ever seen in Vegas or Atlantic City. I stayed as far away from them as I could. I did O.K., and I did well during a time in my life where I was playing to eat, but Internet poker wasn’t my thing. I got married, to a poker player, and got pregnant shortly after our wedding. As motivation dwindled to leave the house, online play became a regular part of our evenings. The night before I gave birth to my daughter, I won a large online tournament. Delaware, New Jersey and Nevada. If there are two states that don’t need online poker, as they have an abundance of casinos, they would be New Jersey and Nevada. Only people in those states may play on the sites. As opposed to a bunch of Draper clones in bespoke suits, they were mostly middle aged, often overweight, and dressed in cargo shorts and flip flops. The players who smoked stepped outside to the balcony out of politeness, but smoking can also be a tell, so I don’t think the room regulated the smoking. The guys were a little younger, dressed in more street gear than suburban dad attire. This was probably the bottom tier of games in the city. The waitress there was a pretty Russian girl who also sold cigarettes, which she would periodically announce to remind the players. On the way over he informed me that it was poor etiquette to ever mention another one of these rooms. He told me that they had spotters on the streets, who had already informed the higher-ups of where we were coming from, our appearance, and our arrival.  This part at least seemed exciting. I could see it was a much more moneyed operation, though with the same fluorescent lighting and casual attire. They had two rooms with poker tables so multiple games could go on at once, and more flat screens. To my delight, one room was entirely empty minus an ATM machine. Other rooms required girls to wear lingerie or bikinis, but this room had a lot of serious players who didn’t want any distractions. Occasionally one of them would ask me to fetch him a beer and tip me in poker chips. He told me who was a hired gun—a player with skills who was brought into spice up the game, and he pointed out a “Whale”—a guy who continually loses a lot of money but can’t seem to stop himself. This particular “Whale” was a large, slovenly Asian guy. I realized he’d been at the first room I had visited. Apparently when he showed up at a game, the word got out around town very quickly that a lot of money was about to be put on the table and lost. So other players showed up hoping to profit off his failures. With some trepidation I agreed, and he brought me back to the room with the second poker table, which at the time was serving as a break room. I mentally ran through all the scenarios of what I would do if shit got rape-y, eyeing my different escape routes. My forethought was uncalled for.  My “client” just had really tight shoulder muscles. British-accented dealer welcomes me to the game. Affable as he is, poker in these places is never really all that friendly. I size up the other players and am grateful that the guy to my right bets like a maniac. Sometime in the early ’80s they began playing poker, using the backgammon checkers as chips. New York scene blew up. Almost overnight, poker clubs seemed to be opening all over town. They would occupy sprawling loft spaces and load up with 15 or more felt-topped tables. But the operators became so bold that, by 2006, busts turned increasingly prevalent. November 2007, when a club on 5th Avenue and 28th Street was held up by armed robbers in ski masks. Players watched helplessly as the thugs beat a cashier and stole their money. They cut down on the likelihood of their games being robbed by making the clubs smaller and less public. So while New York remains dotted with poker-playing spots, most of them are not unlike the modestly sized, Garment District place where I wound up being relieved of 50 bucks over the course of a couple up-and-down hours. Grand Poker network, so this means some of the quickest and easiest funding of accounts can be yours exceptionally easily, as outlined in our awesome guide on how to setup these deposits and withdrawals. While illegal gambling is defined basically like every other state in that it covers pretty much every conceivable bet that could be placed. I have not demonstrated how that could possibly be true. That is where the second part comes into importance. There are no penalties for those who are involved in illegal gambling from a player’s perspective. New York, there is no penalties from doing it. This likely is why no one has ever been brought up on charges of playing poker online in New York, there is just no point in doing so, from a legal perspective.

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