Clubs Hail Delay on Ban of Jackpot Poker : Attorney Describes Superior Court Judge’s Injunction as ‘Total Victory’

A Superior Court ruling that prohibits the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department from enforcing a proposed ban on low ball jackpot poker is a total victory for club owners, an attorney for two card clubs said this week.

“It’s pretty hard to come down on us after eight years (of offering the game), without us having our day in court,” said Alexander Pope, an attorney for the Bell Gardens Bicycle Club and the California Commerce Club in Commerce.

In low ball jackpot, a form of draw poker, the one with the numerically second-lowest hand wins.

The preliminary injunction, issued Monday by Judge Miriam A. Vogel, prohibits sheriff’s deputies from enforcing a ban proposed by Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp. In an opinion issued in August, the attorney general’s office said jackpot poker is a form of illegal lottery.

The Bicycle Club and the Commerce Club joined owners of two card clubs in Gardena, the Normandie Casino and the Eldorado Club, in seeking an injunction to block the ban.

Monday’s ruling will allow the clubs to continue to offer the poker game while they go to trial to defend it, card club attorneys said. Proponents contend it is a legal form of draw poker,

Mike Broderick, manager of the state Gaming Registration Program in Sacramento, said the state would probably appeal Vogel’s ruling, which applies only to card clubs in Los Angeles County.

Another hearing was scheduled for Oct. 30 to determine whether other variations of jackpot poker, including seven-card stud and Texas hold ‘em, should be included.

At the Normandie Casino in Gardena, spokesman Blaine Nicholson said all forms of jackpot poker were still being offered--at least until the end of October.

“We will continue to play the games until Nov. 1,” Nicholson said. After that, he said, depending on the judge’s decision on whether seven-card stud and Texas hold ‘em should also be included, “we will continue to play until such time as it goes to trial.”

Jackpot poker is illegal, according to Van de Kamp’s opinion, because it meets the three elements of the state’s definition of a lottery: It involves a prize, chance predominates over skill, and players must pay to play.

Card club owners, however, contend that the game is merely a variation of poker and, like other forms of the game, is legal under state law.

The attorney general’s office defines jackpot poker as any form of poker where players contribute to a second pot, separate from the pot played for each hand. The second pot grows over a period of days or weeks, club owners said. Jackpots average from $6,000 to $10,000, but can grow to $30,000 or more.

The player holding a low ball jackpot hand wins only when another player holds a winning hand that adds up to a lower sum. The lowest possible hand, called a “wheel” and also known as a straight, occurs when a player holds an ace, 2, 3, 4 and 5. The second-lowest, called a “six-four” or “sixty-four,” occurs when a player holds an ace, 2, 3, 4, and 6. The cards need not be of the same suit.

Vogel, in issuing the ruling, questioned whether a second pot changed the legal game of low ball poker to an illegal form of lottery.

“I don’t think the existence of a second pot and the fact that there’s a second chance of winning changes the game to a lottery,” Vogel said. Despite the second pot, she said, a player “still has to know which cards to discard, when to stand pat, when to draw. . . . It’s not just dumb luck; it’s not like drawing a lottery ticket.”

Vogel said no law has been passed to ban the game. Instead, the state attorney general found it illegal by interpreting an 1872 statute, she said, and he would be responsible for enforcing it through the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which is under his jurisdiction. There is no case law on whether jackpot poker is a lottery, she said, and the issue deserves to be decided in court.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Roy Preminger argued that, although knowledge of rules is required to play jackpot poker, chance is the decisive factor in winning the jackpot.

“You can exercise all kinds of skill,” Preminger said, “but no matter how skillful a player you are, you can’t control the cards in another player’s hand.”

When to Hold or Fold

In regular poker, Preminger said, a skillful player can win, even with a bad hand, by knowing how to bet, when to draw and when to bluff. But the goal in low ball jackpot poker of trying to get the second-lowest hand at the same time another player has the lowest hand changes the game, he said, by adding an element of chance over which players have no control.

“That’s what makes a lottery,” Preminger said. “Chance.”

But Vogel sided with card club owners, saying the game has been allowed for at least eight years in Los Angeles County and longer across the state. “It’s hard for a judge to see the merits of changing it now,” she said.

Bell Gardens City Atty. Peter Wallen attended the hearing on behalf of Bell Gardens, which is one of several cities sponsoring a bill to overhaul the section of the state penal code dealing with gambling. The section, first enacted in 1872, defines forms of gambling allowed under state law. Critics say the law is hopelessly outdated, thus forcing law enforcement officials to make a judgment about which new games are legal.

The proposed legislation would name those games that are permitted and those that are outlawed. It would also deal with a host of Asian card and tile games, whose legality has caused disputes between police and card clubs. Jackpot poker would be prohibited, Wallen said. The bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Beverly (R-Manhattan Beach), is scheduled for consideration in 1990, Wallen said.

In September, the attorney general’s office sent cease-and-desist letters to 335 card clubs statewide, advising them of the attorney general’s opinion and giving club operators until Nov. 1 to halt jackpot poker. The ban is still scheduled to go into effect for card clubs outside Los Angeles County.