Cheating scheme uncovered at Houston's Jokerstars poker club, but incident also raises more questions about room

Three players found to have inserted an altered deck into a cash game then used cell phones to collude and cheat. The details, though, venture into the weird.

It’s more shady news from the Jokerstars Social Club on Houston’s west side. Less than a week after former NFL megastar Adrian Peterson got into a fistfight with a longtime friend after an argument at one of the cash-game tables, another cash game was marred by the discovery that three players were cheating through the use of what was reported as a RFID-chipped card deck that had been slipped into the game. (I tink it was likely a deck that had been stamped with UV bar codes, not one with UV chips, but the same principle applies.) One of the three players had a cell phone that had been altered with the insertion of a caed reader, and the three cheaters were able to learn the rank and suit of every card in play in real time.

Armed with the info, the three players were able to know other players’ hole cards in addition to being able to know what cards would be coming off the deck. They’d also be able to dodge each others’ made hands. While it’s not a guarantee that each player would book a big win, as a group, it’d be all but impossible to lose over any session longer than a few dozen hands.

And they were quickly caught, being clumsy and obvious as to what they were doing. Two of three cheaters, Marcelo and Ivan, managed to flee the scene, but the third, Carlito, was nabbed by security.

Carlito a former Jokerstars dealer

Here’s where the story turns strange. Carlito was a former dealer at Jokerstars, meaning he knew the ins and outs of the place well enough to swap in the marked deck of cards during a break. The club was still able to come up with a security photo of Carlito doing the old switcheroo, at which point it seems, he confessed.

But where was the dealer who should have been at the table, keeping an eye on things? Or where, if the dealer needed a quick break himself, where was the floorperson who should’ve been monitoring the area? As security goes, that’s just shoddy.

Yet the story grew stranger still. According to a PN report (and though they didn’t use those words specifically), the Jokerstars people on the scene then seem to have shaken Carlito down for some cash. From the PN piece:

“Carlito also claimed that the winnings from the cheating operation were relatively minor—around $400—but that JokerStars staff confiscated $2,700 of his own money as compensation.”

One suspects that the $2,700 was exactly how much cash Carlito had on himself when he was caught. One can also wonder if just, possibly, maybe, some physical threats were involved that might have encouraged Carlito to cough up some extra dough.

Add in the fistfight between former NFL star Adrian Peterson and one of his friends just a few days earlier, after which both fighters were allowed to continue playing, and Jokerstars shouldn’t be high on any poker players’ lists of rooms to visit.

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Jokerstars seemingly created to capture TCH Houston overflow

Everything about the Jokerstars room is a bit off, a bit odd. The name itself is a rip from a derogatory change made to online poker giant PokerStars. Whenever someone mentioned “JokerStars” in a forum thread, it was usually connected to claims that Stars and online poker were rigged.

So, how should one take the “Jokerstars” name, outside that context? Your guess is as good as mine, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have given a room I owned that name.

Then there’s the location, location, location. Jokerstars is literally across the street from the area’s largest room, Texas Card House Houston. From one front door to the other it’s perhaps a one-minute walk.

What were Jokerstars’ owners’ thoughts in opening up so close to a large, established room? Maybe the hope was to capture overflow during TCH Houston’s busiest times, but if that’s your marketing plan, it begs for some originality. The other option would be to offer discounted rake. But I have no clue if the club does that either.

What you can’t do is take not one black eye, but two, within a week, and in both instances, with elements of what occurred leaving the room itself in a less than stellar light. That’s going to keep most payers from walking over from TCH Houston, no matter ow close by it is. And if traveling a long distance, given Houston’s plethora of social-poker rooms, why would you bother?