The Hong Kong Poker House, a private club which offered professionally dealt poker to its members and which was co-sponsored by Poker Stars, decided to close its doors due to lease problems. Last night they had an all you can eat and drink buffet for a reasonable price and a freeroll tourney at 7 pm to give away the remainder of their t-shirts, chip sets, and several entries to next month's Macau Poker Cup plus hotel packages worth up to US$3k for the top few finishers.

The turnout was beyond capacity and 3 levels into the tourney there were still people waiting on standby to get a seat. I'd got there early and was doing well. Middle of the 3rd level I woke up to KK in middle position. A shorter stack in early position shoved. I re-popped to isolate and it went heads up against his ATs. He failed to improve and I took my place among the early chip leaders. Just as I was re-stacking my chips, the tourney clock paused and everyone got very quiet. About a dozen plainclothes police officers, with 6 or so uniformed ones standing in the background, appeared and asked us all to be quiet. They announced that we were all under arrest under suspicion of illegal gambling. About 160 people were there.

The officers took all our IDs, took a picture of every person's chip stack next to their ID, placed everyone's chip stack in a separate bag, etc. They were looking for money and were very disappointed not to find any. Under the law in Hong Kong, a tournament with prizes is legal. A cash game or cash tournament is of questionable legality as the ordinance isn't clear. The Hong Kong Poker House did have cash games and in fact would have started up cash games once enough people had busted out of the tournament, so we are lucky the police got there early. Other poker rooms have been raided for much clearer violations of the law, such as the owners playing in the games (which in effect means you are playing against the house which is clearly illegal here). Several of us tried arguing with the police that this was legal. We are 100% convinced that it is and remain so, but of course they weren't listening.

After about 3 hours of sitting around, we were marched out of the club and into police vans to go to the police station. But there were only 2 vans, each with a capacity of 10. Apparently they weren't expecting so many people. The 2 vans had to make 9 trips back and forth to get everyone to the police station. As we left the building the TV cameras and newspaper photographers were waiting for us. Link to article with video below. I am the guy in the pink Polo button-down covering my face with a magazine on the far left side of the video at :11 and again in line waiting to step into the van at :17.

(edit: See post further down in thread by "3Cents" for video link)

At the police station we waited for a long time while the police did who knows what. They promised to process us quickly and have us out the door by 1 am but 1 am came and went and they wouldn't give us any information about what they were doing or why it was taking so long. There were a bunch of lawyers (myself included), bankers and other professionals among us so we were getting pretty rowdy, demanding information and asserting our rights and the police seemed not to know what to do with us. The clerks at the computers filling in info were slow as fuck and seemed to be on massive tilt for having to process so many people. Also, some people hadn't had time to hit the buffet and hadn't eaten since lunch and it was coming up on 2 am and people were getting pretty pissed. On the wall in the room where we were there was a poster detailing your rights as an arrestee, the first of which was "the right to be supplied with proper food and beverage free of charge." But they had no way of supplying food to so many people, so they told us they'd order McDonald's (which delivers 24 hours in Hong Kong) and gave us a choice of 2 sandwiches to make things easier. Both were beef sandwiches which was LOL as there were at least 20 Indian people there. Well about half an hour later we found out they had decided not to do that but said we could order food by ourselves and have it delivered to the police station. Most people ordered either McDonald's or from one of the few all-night Chinese places. But orders got mixed up so as each one arrived people descended on it like piranhas. Complete chaos.

They finally started letting people go on bail about 5:30 am. They went in table order and I happened to be on table 1 so I was one of the first to go. My bail was HK$400 which is US$50. Some people didn't get out until noon (half an hour ago). I have to go back in 2 weeks and give a statement (I will have a lawyer with me and/or refuse to make any statement obv, which is my right in HK just like in the USA) and will obviously update then for anyone who's interested. We are organizing a joint legal defense in case we are charged with anything. My guess is they don't even have enough evidence to charge us with anything. We weren't doing anything illegal. It's pretty clear they don't like poker and wanted to make an example of us. We were the last poker club operating in HK and this was a warning to anyone thinking about opening up a new one. But we'll see.

My first time ever being arrested. Makes for a funny story.

Great story! Your Kings hold up, and you then get pinched. Amazing how "bad" you can really run in poker....lol

how do you watch the movie, its all chinese n shit

squint.

The video isn't playing for me, but I can't read HongKonger.

Is there something I should be clicking on that page?

No luck with the vid. There is a pic, though. Is that you in the pink shirt in the pic?

Perp walk:


Quite a story, HK.

GL w/this, obv. Seems like you got it under control.

That's not me in the hot pink shirt. I was wearing more of a muted pink button-down Polo shirt. I was covering my face with a magazine like most of the people.

I don't know why the video won't play for some people, but it's not auto-play. You have to click on the play button in the lower left. You have to click right on the triangle, not just close to it like on a lot of video players.

lol, he's aging really badly if so

Only with Pokerstars could anyone run this badly. Def. a Pokerstars ending to what could have been a great score.

Good story, sure you will have any charges dropped. No vid regardless of what i clicked on. I feel sorry for you living in a super density city and having to see those letters/symbols every day.

Great story. There's no video though when I click that link.

http://hk.dv.nextmedia.com/template/dv_ ... 947&page=1

That link has the video with Chinese audio. You can see HKer at the same times.

The raid sucks, I spent a decent amount of time at HKPH and I'll miss both the spot and the players.

I will front page this.

Thanks to 3 cents for posting the working video link.

solid story although i'm sorry to hear you got arrested! going to the brig fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckin' sucks - i've spent like 5 nights in the drunk tank for public intoxication and there really is no worse way to spend a night than on barf plastered piss ridden concrete floors!

Yes, thanks for posting 3 cents.

There was a great mix of players there. Are you expat or local HKese?

the standard for front page news sure is low on this site.

Honestly the room we were in was very clean and hospitable, kind of like a big corporate conference room. But very crowded and people got tired and dozed off on the floor so people spread out into the hallway. There were even people sneaking cigarettes in the bathroom which could have been an additional charge if they'd been caught. The cops didn't seem to mind as they really didn't know what to do with us. I'm sure violent people or people accused of more serious crimes wouldn't be treated so casually.

From talking to people this afternoon I found out that some people were not released until after 5 pm today which means they spent almost 24 hours in police custody and were never provided with food as they should have been though they were allowed to order their own. I was lucky to have been let go after only about 9+ hours.

I reappear to give my (non-)statement in 2 weeks, some people were given dates as long as 6 weeks from now so this will be going on for a while.

First off, it is important for people to stick together and fight for recognition and acceptance of poker worldwide.

Secondly, you're a faggot.

ugh i hate having pending court cases - atleast you're not at fault for having done anything wrong. hope everything works itself out in the easiest way possible!