Mob enforcers Police officials quickly muscle out the competition do their duty to keep a high moral standard in the state:
Officials have shut down a central Indiana business where they suspect patrons were illegally playing poker for money.
The Indiana Gaming Control Division served a search warrant Wednesday night at the Hold 'Em House in Tipton about 30 miles north of Indianapolis.
They suspected poker was being played. At a place called the Hold 'Em House. Geniuses.
Comments
Indiana law says gambling is illegal. But does Texas Hold'em qualify as gambling?
(d) "Gambling" means risking money or other property for gain, contingent in whole or in part upon lot, chance, or the operation of a gambling device, but it does not include participating in:
(1) bona fide contests of skill, speed, strength, or endurance in which awards are made only to entrants or the owners of entries; or
(2) bona fide business transactions that are valid under the law of contracts.
California has pretty much the same definitions, and the courts there have concluded that there's a substantial amount of skill involved in draw poker.
I have to agree. If you want to argue that the "contingent in whole or in part" makes Texas Hold'em gambling, then golf tournaments are gambling, too.
Of course, the next sections of IC 35-45-5-1 say that
e) "Gambling device" means:
(1) a mechanism by the operation of which a right to money or other property may be credited, in return for consideration, as the result of the operation of an element of chance;
(2) a mechanism that, when operated for a consideration, does not return the same value or property for the same consideration upon each operation;
That would seem to define every vending machine as gambling devices. The worst are parking meters, especially in winter.
Sometimes, you can get nasty with the vending machine and it'll fork over what you paid for, but that's dangerous. The CPSC says dozens of people have died, arguing with pop machines over the money they stole.