Bar owner Todd Erks knew hosting Texas hold'em tournaments at his bar in South Dakota wasn't legal, but after contacting officials from the state's attorney general's office, he decided to hold them anyway.
He said he was told that, yes, the poker tournaments were illegal, but that doesn't mean the cops would come if he held them. The person he talked to was wrong.
Whenever he held his low-buy-in tournaments, the cops would come to Todd's Place, just as they did any other night, to make sure everyone in the bar was the legal age to drink. While they were there, they'd watch a bit of the poker action, too.
"And they'd ask who's winning," Erks said.
Although he never got into any kind of official trouble for his poker games, when it was time to renew his Lincoln County liquor license in June, he had a feeling there might be a problem.
"I had a sneaky suspicion that something was up," he said.
And there was. Erks said his poker tournaments caused his liquor license renewal application to be ignored for three months. He had to agree not to even have a deck of cards in Todd's Place in order to move the process forward.
Once he got his license back, Erks decided to take on the state. Erks is collecting signatures to get a referendum on the November ballot that, if passed by voters, would redefine poker as a game of skill.
Erks needs to collect 17,000 signatures, but he's shooting for 20,000, just to be sure. He think if it is placed on the November ballot, there's about a 50 percent chance it would pass.
"The only thing I'm worried about is some people have a bad taste for gambling in the state because of the lottery," he said.
He started holding hold'em tournaments at the beginning of 2005 every Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and every other Sunday. The tournament buy-ins were $25 and every other Saturday it jumped to $50. Erks took $5 out of the buy-ins for fees and the rest went into the prize pool. Depending on the day, the tournaments attracted between 20 and 60 players.
Whenever lawmakers he spoke to told him that poker was defined as a game of chance, Erks would mention the longevity of professional poker players like Doyle Brunson.
"You just don't stay lucky for 35 years. There's obviously skill involved," Erks said. "I don't know any professional bingo players."
Erk's petition wants to clarify the difference between games of chance and games of skill. Games of skill includes games like pool and darts. He's asking voters to sign his petition that will make games legal where "the role of the entrant's skill is equal to or greater than the role of chance determining the final outcome."
South Dakota is a gambling state. In just about every bar in the state, video lottery machines stand along the walls offering keno, bingo, variations of video poker, and even black jack. When Erks was holding poker tournaments at his bar, he said he was probably the only bar in the state that didn't have the machines.
He installed the video lottery machines in October to help make ends meet and is disgusted that the state would sanction games of chance like the lottery yet won't allow people to play poker for money.
"Now that I own them, I watch people piss away whole paychecks in two hours," he said.
He decided to file a petition because he couldn't endure the $25,000 or so in legal fees it would cost to fight the poker battle in court. Legal fees are already starting to pile up a little, but he said he found a good, lenient, and generous attorney to help with the fight.
"He likes to play cards, too," Erks said.
He has until the beginning of May to collect the signatures. He mailed a bunch of petitions to bar owners around the state and is hoping on a nice return. After that, it's up to the voters in November to decide whether legal poker is in the cards for South Dakota.
