Allegations of Cheating at Legends Poker Room in Houston, TX

The beleaguered live Texas poker scene is now facing allegations of cheating dealers. Already operating in a grey zone legally, with players and cardroom managers unsure if their venues are about to be busted by the law, the membership-based cardrooms that deal out poker hands in The Lone Star State now confront serious game integrity concerns. The latest scandal involves Legends Poker Room in Houston and was brought to light by professional poker player Shaun Deeb.

Deeb Shares Incriminating Vids

The drama began on Tuesday, April 30 when Shaun Deeb made a post on X (formerly Twitter), starting with the words, “Got a pretty disgusting video from a player down here about the legend poker room down in Houston.” Deeb went on to explain that the video showed a “mechanic dealer” who isn’t really shuffling the cards honestly but rather arranging them according to “how they want them.”

The video was grainy, and it was very difficult to make out exactly what was going on. However, the next day, Deeb posted a higher-quality version of the video where it was easier to follow the action. He also stated that more than one dealer had been fired for “messing with the decks” within the past month. Click the tweet below to open the video in a new tab:

Though eagle-eyed viewers were able to clearly spot the cheating by watching this video, the entire situation was still a bit confusing to newcomers who lacked the experience to notice what was amiss.

Expert Card Manipulator Weighs In

Fortunately, self-described “master card mechanic and Poker Protection expert” Houston Curtis has produced an informative video in which he breaks down exactly what the dealer was doing in detail at every point in the video shared by Deeb. This video was posted to Curtis’ “KardSharp” YouTube channel, which contains info on such topics as “Deck Switching and Card Switching Secrets!”, “Can you Spot a Card Cheat?”, and “BOTTOM DEAL: How to Tutorial.”

You can watch Curtis’ video about the cheating dealer at Legends Poker Room below:

Houston Curtis exposes several distinct techniques this dealer was using to circumvent the randomizing effects of the shuffle.

The dealer clearly can be seen at the beginning of the video manipulating a chunk of cards from the bottom of the deck and placing it beneath several cards on the top of the deck. Curtis surmises that just prior to the start of the video, the dealer had stacked the top of the deck in such a way as to deal a strong hand to an unknown confederate at the table.

Next, the dealer placed the cut card on the table in front of him. This goes against correct dealing procedure. The cut card is supposed to be initially placed to the side. Only after the shuffle is completed is the dealer supposed to move the cut card to the front. This ensures that the dealer has to remove at least one hand from the deck after shuffling and before cutting.

As we see in another part of the video, keeping both hands on the deck without moving the cut card was critical to the cheating that was allegedly taking place.

The dealer commences his “shuffle.” Playing the video of the dealer in slow motion, Curtis shows clearly that while the dealer is riffling the cards together, he’s actually using a technique called the “push-through shuffle” – that is, he’s simply pushing the cards through each other and then separating them again without their having been shuffled.

At the end of this “shuffle,” the dealer looks like he’s cutting the deck, but in actuality, he is merely putting the previous bottom half of the deck intact on the bottom again and then placing the top of the deck similarly unaltered on top of it. Key to this deception is his having placed the cut card already in front of the deck. Had it been off to the side, he would have had to remove a hand from the deck to reposition the cut card, making his final push-through shuffle impossible.

Poker Community Reacts

This news understandably spread like wildfire throughout the poker community. Here’s a selection of comments made by real users at various internet forums and social media websites:

Info About Legends Poker Room

First opening its doors in October 2021, Legends Poker Room was mired in controversy from the start. The two owners, David La and Ho Jun Sin, had had a falling out with back-to-back WSOP Main Event champion Johnny Chan over a previous cardroom that the three had run together. Chan alleged mismanagement and theft on the part of the other two and actually filed a lawsuit against them. After the suit was settled, they decided to part ways with Chan opening Johnny Chan’s 88 Poker cardroom and the two others starting Legends Poker Room. Chan’s room subsequently failed and closed its doors in December 2021.

There’s Bad Blood Between Prominent Poker Pro Johnny Chan and the Owners of Legends Poker Room

David La had previously been involved in a money laundering scheme at Normandie Casino in Gardena, California, which saw him lose his gaming license in The Golden State. This was why he shifted his focus to Texas in the first place.

Legends ostensibly operates under a membership club model whereby participants must pay membership fees and possibly seat rental changes instead of a traditional rake at the tables. This arrangement is arguably legal under the strict Texas anti-gambling laws while the kinds of raked poker games found in casinos are explicitly illegal. However, word on the street is that Legends actually does take rake out of the pots, and the amount of this rake is extortionate: up to $15 per hand!

Legends Poker Room With Several Games Running

Another issue with Legends is that is has been the scene of violent altercations, such as the time in December 2021 when a dealer shoved professional poker player Sammy Farha into a wall while commenting, “I’m from Detroit, bitch! We don’t play around.” There have been numerous shootings in the club’s parking lot and even an armed robbery attempt that was foiled by a vigilant security guard.

Despite all these questionable goings-on, Legends Poker Room appears to be thriving. During peak hours, there tend to be more than 10 games active split roughly 2-1 in favor of PLO over NLHE. Even during slower periods, there are generally at least five tables running. Only time will tell if the dealer cheating scandal will have a long-term impact on these numbers.

Exterior View of Legends Poker Room in Houston, Texas

A couple of Houston poker rooms were raided in 2019 although all charges were later dropped. Still, cardrooms openly flouting the law, employing dishonest dealers, and seeing frequent shootings might create a climate in which the authorities feel they must act – to the detriment of honest operators and ordinary poker players alike.

Latest in a String of Live Poker Controversies

Although live poker is generally considered safer than online poker, dealers performing deceptive shuffles is a practice that’s only found in brick-and-mortar cardrooms and is not a concern online. In games offered over the internet, there aren’t even any human dealers who could be tempted into committing such misdeeds.

We have seen other instances in terrestrial cardrooms where cheating occurred or at least was suspected of taking place. Mike Postle, for instance, supposedly had a buddy send him illicit information about opponents’ hole cards during live streams at Stones Gambling Hall from June 2018 to October 2019. In September 2022, Garrett Adelstein accused opponent Robbi Jade Lew of cheating during a hand at Hustler Casino. And at the 2023 WSOP, several people suspected Martin Kabrhel of using marked cards during a $250,000-buyin event.

What all of these incidents have in common is that they involved individual players engaging in underhanded activity. The Legends Poker scandal, by contrast, centers around dealers and their wrongdoing. Still, the Legends case must also imply that there are dishonest players too because it makes little sense that a dealer would rig the shuffle unless he were a partner in crime with one or more players at the table.

More Evidence of Texas Cardroom Cheating

On May 1, an X account called “CoachRosa4” posted a video that he claimed showed another dealer engaging in a false shuffle. This one was not related to Legends Poker Room but rather took place at another establishment in Houston, Elite Social Club.

Houston Curtis took it upon himself to evaluate this clip too in a second expository video. Though this dealer was much smoother and more skillful than the dealer in the Legends Poker Room video, Curtis believes that he was cheating too. He found that the dealer at Elite Social Club was controlling the order of the cards and stacking the deck. You can watch this video below:

It appears that shady dealing mechanisms are being deployed at more than just one poker club. We’ll have to keep an eye on the situation to see if even more evidence comes to light of dealers cheating in Houston card clubs.

Play Online for a More Secure Game

Because there’s no dealer, the type of cheating that was found at Legends Poker Room cannot happen online. Certain other forms of malfeasance, like using marked cards and sneakily removing chips from the table, are also impossible. Overall, poker as played on the internet presents fewer opportunities for this type of wrongdoing than in the live game.

If you’re eager to jump online and enjoy a safe game of poker, then you can do so at Ignition Casino Poker as long as you reside in the United States or Australia. Upon making your first deposit with crypto-currency, you can obtain a 150% up to $1,500 poker bonus (only 100% up to $1,000 if you don’t use crypto). Click the button below to get started:

For more information on the reliable poker sites available to you, check out these guides depending on the country you reside in: