Poker Tournaments and Home Games Targeted by Robbers: How Safe Is Your Game?

There have been a lot of news stories in recent weeks regarding armed robberies at small local tournaments and home poker games. While poker robberies are far from a new phenomenon, players definitely need to do a better job of protecting themselves when they gather for what should be a fun night of card-playing.

Poker games are actually easy targets for robbers: Cash on hand; a set number of people with little chance of bystanders or witnesses stumbling into the area; and a somewhat illegal activity where players may be unwilling to get the authorities involved -the larger, and more illegal, the game the less likely it will be reported.

One area that can be blamed for increasing the number of robberies that cannot be overlooked is the Internet: Players post games on different sites and forums, and tournaments are listed both publicly and on social networking sites like FaceBook. It doesn’t take much reconnaissance for would-be thieves to find a game that is ripe for the picking: Location, buy-in, number of players, etc.

Another problem is that people use a very lax screening process before allowing players to participate -a lot of this has to do with there being so many poker games and the need to fill empty seats. If you are a new player looking for a poker game, there is no longer the need to “know” a player in the game who will vouch for you; you can simply find a home game that is looking for players and the host will just send you all the details -from experience I can say that numerous people have e-mailed me specifics about a game, some with stakes as high as $10/$20 limit, where you would likely have close to $10,000 on hand!

If a player solicits information from you about your game, make the details generalized, and NEVER give out the address or the precise time you play. Also make sure the players involved in the game aren’t shouting it from the rooftops -you’d be surprised how many people will talk poker at work, in a bar, or anywhere else for that matter; and you don’t need someone saying how he won $2,000 at your weekly game.

Poker players, and especially players who host a game, need to take a page out of the old-timer’s handbook and keep their game a little more hush-hush. Make sure your poker game isn’t public knowledge, and make sure you know who is showing up -or have a close friend that can vouch for them. True, your attendance numbers may drop a bit, but the added security will benefit your game in the long-run: Not to mention that if your game is held-up at gunpoint it will likely be the last game you host!